the fires, Garfield mounts his horse, and with a thousand men enters the deserted camp at nine in the evening, while the blazing stores are yet unconsumed. He sends off a detachment to harass the rebel retreat, and waits the arrival of Cranor, with whom he means to follow and bring Marshall to battle in the morning.

In the morning Cranor comes, but his men are footsore, without rations and completely exhausted. The most of these cannot move one leg after the other. But the Union commander is determined on a battle, so every man who has strength to march is ordered to come forward. Eleven hundred, and among them four hundred of Cranor's tired heroes, step from the ranks, and with them, at noon on the 9th, Garfield sets out for Prestonburg, sending all his available cavalry to follow the line of the enemy's retreat, and harass and destroy him.

Marching eighteen miles he reaches, at nine o'clock that night, the mouth of Abbott's Creek, three miles below Prestonburg-he and the eleven hundred. There he learns that Marshall is encamped on the same stream, three miles higher up; and, throwing his men into bivouac in the midst of a sleety rain, he sends back an order to Lieutenant-Colonel Sheldon, who had been left in command at Paintville, to bring up every available man with all possible dispatch, for he shall force the enemy to battle in the morning. He spends

the night in learning the character of the surrounding country, and the disposition of Marshall's forces, and makes a hasty dinner off of stewed rabbit eaten out of a tin-cup-he sharing the single spoon and the stew with one of his officers.

Jordan, the scout, now comes into play once more. A dozen rebels are grinding at a mill, and a dozen honest men come upon them, steal their corn and take them prisoners. The miller is a tall, gaunt man, and his "butternuts" fit Jordan as if they were made for him. He is a rebel too, and his very raiment should bear witness against this feeding of his enemies. It does. It goes back to the rebel camp, and Jordan goes in it. That chameleon face of his is smeared with meal, and looks the miller so well that the miller's own wife might not detect the difference. The night is pitch dark and rainy, and that lessens the danger; but still Jordan is picking his teeth in the very jaws of the lion.

Jordan's midnight ramble in the rebel ranks gave Garfield the exact position of the enemy. They had made a stand, and laid an ambuscade for him. Strongly posted, on a semi-circular hill at the forks of Middle Creek, on both sides of the road, with cannon commanding its whole length, and hidden by the trees and underbrush, they awaited his coming.

Deeming it unsafe to proceed further in the

darkness, Garfield, as has been said, ordered his army into bivouac, at nine o'clock in the evening, and climbed the steep ridge called Abbott's Hill. His tired men threw themselves upon the wet ground to wait till morning. It was a terrible night, fit prelude to the terrible day that followed. A dense fog shut out the moon and stars, and shrouded the lonely mountain in almost Cimmerian darkness. A cold wind swept from the north, driving the rain in blinding gusts into the faces of the shivering men, and stirring the dark fires into the cadences of a mournful music. But the slow and cheerless night at last wore away, and at four in the morning the tired and hungry men, their icy clothing clinging to their half-frozen limbs, were roused from their cold beds and ordered to move forward. Slowly and cautiously they descended into the valley, that to so many of them seemed the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The enemy was waiting them, they were waiting him. The last bivouac had been held, and there was nothing left but to advance and measure their lives against the foe.

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CHAPTER XII.

HAIL COLUMBIA'S SOLDIER AT THE BATTLE OF MIDDLE CREEK.

A

S the day breaks in the east, and the gray mists that have been the blankets for Garfield's little force slowly draw up from the inhospitable ground, the advance guard, rounding a hill that juts out into the valley, is charged upon by a body of rebel horsemen. Forming his men in a hollow square, Garfield gives the rebels a volley that sends them reeling up the valley, all but one, and he with his horse plunges into the stream, and is captured.

The main body of the enemy, it is now evident, is not far distant, but whether he has changed his position since the visit of the scout Jordan is yet uncertain. To determine this, Garfield sends forward a strong corps of skirmishers, who sweep the cavalry from a ridge they have occupied, and moving forward, soon draw the fire of the hidden rebels. Suddenly a puff of smoke rises from beyond the hill, and a twelve-pound shell whistles above the trees, then, plowing up the hill, buries itself in the ground at the feet of the adventurous little band of skirmishers.

It is now twelve o'clock, and throwing his whole

force upon the ridge whence the rebel cavalry have been driven, Garfield prepares for the impending battle. It is a trying and perilous moment. He is in the presence of a greatly superior enemy, and how to dispose his little force, and where first to attack, are things not easy to determine. But he loses no time in idle indecision.

Looking in the faces of his eleven hundred men, he goes at once into the terrible struggle. His mounted escort of twelve soldiers he sends forward to make a charge, and, if possible, to draw the fire of the enemy. The ruse succeeds admirably. As the little squad sweeps round a curve in the road, another shell whistles through the valley, and the long roll of nearly five thousand muskets chimes in with a fierce salutation. The battle has begun in earnest.

A glance at the ground will best show the real nature of the conflict. It was on the margin of Middle Creek, a narrow and rapid stream, and three miles from where it finds its way into the Big Sandy, through the sharp spurs of the Cumberland Mountains. A rocky road, not ten feet in width, winds along this stream, and on its two banks abrupt ridges, with steep and rocky sides, overgrown with trees and underbrush, shut closely down upon the narrow road and little streamlet. At twelve o'clock Garfield has gained the crest of the ridge at the right of the road, and the charge of his handful of horsemen has drawn Marshall's