Comparing notes around the camp-fires in the evening, we found that our success had been owing to the Major’s instinct, his grasp of the situation, and the soldierly way in which he took advantage of it.  When he reached the summit of the hill he found the Rebel line nearly formed and ready for action.  A moment’s hesitation might have been fatal to us.  At his command Company I went into line with the thought-like celerity of trained cavalry, and instantly dashed through the right of the Rebel line.  Company K followed and plunged through the Rebel center, and when we of Company L arrived on the ground, and charged the left, the last vestige of resistance was swept away.  The whole affair did not probably occupy more than fifteen minutes.

This was the way Powell’s Valley was opened to our foragers.

CHAPTER III.

Living off the enemy—­reveling in the fatness of the country—­soldierly purveying and camp cookery—­susceptible teamsters and their tendency to flightiness—­making soldier’s bed.

For weeks we rode up and down—­hither and thither—­along the length of the narrow, granite-walled Valley; between mountains so lofty that the sun labored slowly over them in the morning, occupying half the forenoon in getting to where his rays would reach the stream that ran through the Valley’s center.  Perpetual shadow reigned on the northern and western faces of these towering Nights—­not enough warmth and sunshine reaching them in the cold months to check the growth of the ever-lengthening icicles hanging from the jutting cliffs, or melt the arabesque frost-forms with which the many dashing cascades decorated the adjacent rocks and shrubbery.  Occasionally we would see where some little stream ran down over the face of the bare, black rocks for many hundred feet, and then its course would be a long band of sheeny white, like a great rich, spotless scarf of satin, festooning the war-grimed walls of some old castle.

Our duty now was to break up any nuclei of concentration that the Rebels might attempt to form, and to guard our foragers—­that is, the teamsters and employee of the Quartermaster’s Department—­who were loading grain into wagons and hauling it away.

This last was an arduous task.  There is no man in the world that needs as much protection as an Army teamster.  He is worse in this respect than a New England manufacturer, or an old maid on her travels.  He is given to sudden fears and causeless panics.  Very innocent cedars have a fashion of assuming in his eyes the appearance of desperate Rebels armed with murderous guns, and there is no telling what moment a rock may take such a form as to freeze his young blood, and make each particular hair stand on end