In the gray of the morning the troops were landed, and the bank of the river presented a scene to which it was quite unaccustomed. Officers were hurrying about here and there; companies were endeavoring to assemble, as they had become a good deal scattered in the hurry of getting on shore; the artillery was dragged up the steep slope of the bank with a vast deal of shouting on the part of the drivers, including a liberal amount of language that is not usually found in theological works; the saddle-horses of the officers danced around in endeavoring to show their satisfaction at getting on land again, and some of them escaped from the orderlies who were holding them and were retaken with difficulty. Altogether it was a picture long to be remembered by those who saw it.
There was no cavalry in the expedition, with the exception of General Lyon's body-guard of eight or ten Germans who had been specially enlisted for this purpose. These men, previous to their enlistment, had been employed in a butchering establishment in St. Louis. The story got abroad that German butchers had been enlisted for the Union army, and, as usual, it was magnified with each repetition until it seemed that every man who wore the national uniform was a professional spiller of blood. Out of this circumstance grew the most terrific predictions as to what the butchers would do when they got possession of a place or marched through any part of the state, and it was for this reason, among others, that so many people fled in terror when they heard that the Union army was coming. General Lyon's butchers were as well behaved as the most fastidious commander could desire; they were good soldiers, obedient to their commander, and would not harm a fly except in the performance of their legitimate duty.
Before seven o'clock in the morning the column was in motion, the cavalry squad in advance and skirmishers thrown out for half a mile or soon either side. Very soon after leaving the landing-place the road ascended a series of undulating hills or ridges, and the advance had not gone far on this road before the pickets of the enemy were driven in. Then one of the cavalrymen rode hastily back and said that the whole force of the state troops were drawn up on one of the ridges only a few hundred yards away. The battle was about to begin!
The regular soldiers and the First Missouri were ordered forward, the rest of the volunteer regiments were held in reserve, and the battery commanded by Captain Totten took position in the middle of the road on one of the ridges in full view of the enemy on the other side of a wheat-field that filled the greater part of the hollow from ridge to ridge. On the ridge held by the enemy the road was filled with horsemen, while the men on foot were deployed to right and left, slightly protected by fences that divided the fields.
Captain Totten unlimbered a twelve-pounder gun and sent a shell right in the midst of the group of horsemen in the road.
To say that the shell kicked up a great dust is to describe the result very mildly. It not only kicked up a dust but it set all the horses to kicking up, and though it did not kill anybody, as far as was afterwards ascertained, it emptied a dozen saddles by the rearing and plunging of the steeds. None of them had ever seen anything of the kind before. It takes a hardened old horse to stand an exploding shell, and even then there's some doubt as to whether he will be quiet under such trying circumstances.
