rds us. We halted him, and made him wait
until a report was sent back to Corps headquarters. The Rebel officer
was quite chatty and talkative with our picket officer, while waiting.
He said he was on General Cleburne's staff, and that the troops that
charged us so fiercely the evening before was Cleburne's whole Division,
and that after their last repulse, knowing the hill where we were posted
was the most important position along our line, he felt that if they
would keep close to us during the night, and keep up a show of fight,
that we would pull out and abandon the hill before morning. He said that
he, with about fifty of their best men, had volunteered to keep up the
demonstration, and it was his party that had occupied the traverse in our
old works the night before and had annoyed us and the Battery men by
their constant sharpshooting, which we fellows behind the old tree had
finally tired out. He said they staid until almost daylight, and that he
lost more than half his men before he left. He also told us that General
Scott was captured by their Division, at about the time and almost the
same spot as where General McPherson was killed, and that he was not hurt
or wounded, and was now a prisoner in their hands.
"Quite a lot of our staff officers soon came out, and as near as we
could learn the Rebels wanted a truce to bury their dead. Our folks
tried to get up an exchange of prisoners that had been taken by both
sides the day before, but for some reason they could not bring it about.
But the truce for burying the dead was agreed to. Along about dusk some
of the boys on my post got to telling about a lot of silver and brass
instruments that belonged to one of the bands of the Fourth Division,
which had been hung up in some small trees a little way over in front of
where we were when the fight was going on the day before, and that when,
a bullet would strike one of the horns they could hear it go 'pin-g' and
in a few minutes 'pan-g' would go another bullet through one of them.
"A new picket was just coming' on, and I had picked up my blanket and
haversack, and was about ready to start back to camp, when, thinks I,
'I'll just go out there and see about them horns.' I told the boys what
I was going to do. They all seemed to think it was safe enough, so out I
started. I had not gone more than a hundred yards, I should think, when
here I found the horns all hanging around on the trees just as the boys
had des
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