delay. Simultaneously the skirmish line also advanced. I waited until General Pleasonton came up (he being then with the advanced), explained to him briefly the topography of the country, the direction the enemy had taken, my fears for Fort Scott, its situation, amount of stores, &c., and then hurried forward again to the skirmish line. The movement was then rapid and continuous till the skirmish line was checked near the verge of the Osage timber. The woods seemed alive with rebel soldiers but in rapid motion. The skirmishers kept up occasional firing at them until the advance brigade came up and we all charged rapidly down into the timber, but the enemy disappeared before our arrival. Colonel Cloud was in this charge, with about sixty veterans of the Second Kansas Cavalry. He halted in the timber to rest his horses for a few minutes and I pushed on with the advance brigade, which I think was Brigadier-General McNeil's. At all events it was commanded by a general officer. We followed down the stream some distance, crossed at the ford, and just as we were emerging from the timber on the south side the head of the column was fired on by the enemy's skirmishers. We soon dislodged them, however, and pushed on toward a corn-field to the left of the road. The head of the column was here checked by a heavy fire from the field, and it was evident that another battle was to be fought. Accordingly the general formed his brigade in close column of companies, and made them a little speech while forming to the effect that it made no difference whether there were 1,000 or 10,000 men on that field, he wanted them to ridge right over them and saber them down as fast as they came to them. The men responded with a yell, the dismounted skirmishers tore down the fence in the face of a galling fire, and the column swept through it like a tornado.

In the rear of the corn-field another line was formed on the prairie, the right resting on a skirt of timber fringing a small stream, which the advance of the brigade, rapidly deploying into line, charged and broke at the first onset. A third line of battle was formed still farther to the rear, in a low basin, where there had been an evident intention to encamp, and which was surrounded by a semi-circle of hills, where they held us at bay under a severe fire for about twenty minutes or more, and until the whole brigade formed in line and charged. Before this impetuous charge they were again broken, and as I passed through their temporary halting place there was abundant evidence of the haste they were in, in the broken wagons, dismantled forges, fragmentary mess chests, and smashed crockery with which the ground was strewn. The chase this time lasted about a mile to the top of the hill south of the valley of the Osage, and on getting view of the enemy again from the summit of this hill, I was gratified to observe that he was bearing very palpably to the east, thus giving me my first reasonable hope that Fort Scott might be spared. I noticed, too, with increased satisfaction, that we were at least a mile east of the wire road and that for the first time the enemy's direction was turned from this place. Satisfied that I could render no further service, I determined to come directly here to see to a certainty whether the post, which was my especial care, was safe or not, and to satisfy those cravings of hunger which, though persistently ignored for three days and nights, would still, despite of resolutions, occasionally become clamorous. As I had been a sharer in all the fighting, and a participant in every charge heretofore during the day, I determined to get a good position and look at one from a safe distance, as I saw the enemy had formed two lines of battle a mile or more to our front. Accordingly, I secured the highest spot of ground in the vicinity,took out my field-glass, unused in all the previous events