Joe Johnston was fiercely contesting every hilltop and narrow gorge to
gain time to adjust his army to the unexpected movement through Snake
Creek Gap, and save the stores he had accumulated behind the heavy
fortifications around Dalton.

Though they had felt themselves completely worn out by the work with
the train, the prospect of a fight put new life into the 200th Ind., and
they leaned on their guns and listened to the crackling of musketry
and booming of artillery far away to their left, to their right, and
apparently in their rear. Sometimes the sounds would come so near that
the wave of battle would seem to be surely rolling down on them. Then
they would clutch their guns more firmly, and their hands instinctively
seek their cartridge-boxes. Then the firing would as inexplicably die
down and stop, when they would again sink on the ground with fatigue.

So the late afternoon wore on. It grew very quiet all around. Even the
dull booming of the cannon far up the valley where Howard and Schofield
were advancing on the heavy works immediately in front of Dalton, died
down into sullen fitfulness.

The silence of the woods and the mountains as night drew on became more
oppressive than the crashing sounds, the feverish movements, and the
strained expectancy of the day had been.

The whip-poor-wills began to fill the evening air with their mournful
calls, which accentuated and intensified the weird loneliness of the
scene, where but a little while before there had been no thought but of
deadly hatred and bitter strife.

"I never heard the whip-poor-wills whip so gloomily," remarked the
sentimental Alf Russell, after the regiment had stacked arms, and the
men were resting, exhausted and out of temper, on the ground. "Seems
to me it sounds altogether different from the way they do at home; got
something savage in it."

"Probably they're yelling their satisfaction over the number of men
they've seen killed and wounded today," ventured Monty Scruggs. "Does
'em good to see men shooting at one another instead of birds."

"Dumbed little brutes," grumbled Shorty, nursing his hurt foot, "if
they'd bin wrastlin' all day with a mule train they'd be too tired to
go yellin' around like that. I always did hate a whip-poor-will, anyway.
They hain't got sense enough to do anything but yell, jest like a pasel
o' rebel cavalry."

"Great Scott! I wisht I knowed whether we're goin' to stay here
tonight," said Si, handling his blan