confirmed, and the matter was brought to me for action. Puzzled but
not convinced, and thinking that as McCook's command was new to the
country, it would be better to send some one who was used to
scouting in the mountains, I ordered a lieutenant named Bontecou, of
the Second Kentucky Regiment, to take a small party and examine the
case anew. Bontecou had done a good deal of successful work in this
line, and was regarded as a good woodsman and an enterprising scout.
He too came back at nightfall, saying that there could be no mistake
about it. He had crept close to the sentinels of the camp, had
counted the tents, and being challenged by the guard, had made a run
for it through the thicket, losing his hat. The position of the
enemy was, by all the reports, about three miles from us, diagonally
in rear of our right flank. It now seemed that it must be true that
some detachment had been delayed in joining the retreating column,
and had found itself thus partly cut off by our advance. I therefore
ordered McCook to start at earliest peep of day, upon the
Chestnutburg road (on which the wagon-master had been foraging), and
passing beyond the hostile detachment, attack from the other side,
it being agreed by all the scouting parties that this would drive
the enemy toward our camp. My own brigade would be disposed of to
intercept the enemy and prevent escape. McCook moved out as ordered,
and following his guides came by many devious turns to a fork in the
road, following which, they told him, a few minutes would bring him
upon the enemy. He halted the column, and with a small skirmishing
party went carefully forward. The guides pointed to a thicket from
which the Confederates could be seen. His instinct for topography
had made him suspect the truth, as he had noted the courses in
advancing, and crawling through the thicket, he looked out from the
other side upon what he at once recognized as the rear of his own
camp, and the tents of the very regiment from which he had sent an