While we were sipping our coffee we discussed the events of the previous day.  The General was visibly affected and greatly worried.  Even then we did not know the full extent of our losses.  The dead were left where they fell and only our wounded carried out.  Would the country justify the sacrifice of life, not knowing the character of the country over which we had fought?  Speaking of the lava beds, the General remarked:  “I have seen something of war and know something of fortifications.  I commanded 19,000 men at the battle of the Wilderness and saw many of the great engineering works of the Civil war, but I do not believe that a hundred thousand men in a hundred thousand years could construct such fortifications.”  This will give the reader a faint idea of the lava beds.  Indeed a regiment of men could conceal themselves in its caves and fissures and ten thousand men could be marched over them without seeing a man.

Placing the wounded in ambulances we now broke camp and started to our camp at Van Bremer’s ranch.  After a tiresome march by way of Lower Klamath Lake, the wounded men undergoing terrible sufferings, we reached camp at 11 o’clock that night.  Here another difficulty confronted us.  Our provision train had not arrived and we were reduced to beef straight.  There was some murmuring among the men, kept up and agitated by a doctor attached to Kelley’s company who told the men that they had been robbed and swindled by the officers.  Hearing of this I hunted him up.  He said that a “soldier did not dare to complain without being called a s-of-a-b.”  Twenty or thirty volunteers were standing around.  I explained that the wagons had been two weeks on the road; that they had made only ten miles in seven days; and that a man, private or officer who would talk about asking for his discharge, though all were entitled to the same, was a son of a b-h, and a d—­d one at that.  He went to Gen. Ross and complained of my language, but was told that the “Colonel knew what he was talking about.”  The disgruntled pill mixer mounted his horse and left, and that was the last we heard about being discharged.  We continued feasting on beef straight and fattened on the diet, at least I did.

The day after our return we buried the man I had seen shot through the stomach, while crawling on his belly.  Patrick Maher was buried with military honors.  On the fourth day the troops sent to relieve Col.  Bernard arrived at camp, and the reports all being in we found that 41 men had been killed in the fighting on the 16th and 17th of January.  The death of Patrick Maher made 42, besides a long list of wounded.  When we consider that there were not more than 500 engaged, counting McKay’s Indians, the loss was heavy, and would the Government endorse or censure the officers, was the question.