behind the guns and went on, the Lord knows whither.  A moment later the field was gray with Confederates in pursuit.  Then the guns opened fire with grape and canister and for perhaps five minutes—­it seemed an hour—­nothing could be heard but the infernal din of their discharge and nothing seen through the smoke but a great ascension of dust from the smitten soil.  When all was over, and the dust cloud had lifted, the spectacle was too dreadful to describe.  The Confederates were still there—­all of them, it seemed—­some almost under the muzzles of the guns.  But not a man of all these brave fellows was on his feet, and so thickly were all covered with dust that they looked as if they had been reclothed in yellow.

“We bury our dead,” said a gunner, grimly, though doubtless all were afterward dug out, for some were partly alive.

To a “day of danger” succeeded a “night of waking.”  The enemy, everywhere held back from the road, continued to stretch his line northward in the hope to overlap us and put himself between us and Chattanooga.  We neither saw nor heard his movement, but any man with half a head would have known that he was making it, and we met it by a parallel movement to our left.  By morning we had edged along a good way and thrown up rude intrenchments at a little distance from the road, on the threatened side.  The day was not very far advanced when we were attacked furiously all along the line, beginning at the left.  When repulsed, the enemy came again and again—­his persistence was dispiriting.  He seemed to be using against us the law of probabilities:  of so many efforts one would eventually succeed.

One did, and it was my luck to see it win.  I had been sent by my chief, General Hazen, to order up some artillery ammunition and rode away to the right and rear in search of it.  Finding an ordnance train I obtained from the officer in charge a few wagons loaded with what I wanted, but he seemed in doubt as to our occupancy of the region across which I proposed to guide them.  Although assured that I had just traversed it, and that it lay immediately behind Wood’s division, he insisted on riding to the top of the ridge behind which his train lay and overlooking the ground.  We did so, when to my astonishment I saw the entire country in front swarming with Confederates; the very earth seemed to be moving toward us!  They came on in thousands, and so rapidly that we had barely time to turn tail and gallop down the hill and away, leaving them in possession of the train, many of the wagons being upset by frantic efforts to put them about.  By what miracle that officer had sensed the situation I did not learn, for we parted company then and there and I never again saw him.

By a misunderstanding Wood’s division had been withdrawn from our line of battle just as the enemy was making an assault.  Through the gap of half a mile the Confederates charged without opposition, cutting our army clean in two.  The right divisions were broken up and with General Rosecrans in their midst fled how they could across the country, eventually bringing up in Chattanooga, whence Rosecrans telegraphed to Washington the destruction of the rest of his army.  The rest of his army was standing its ground.