From Opelousas Bean, with the 4th Wisconsin, a section of Duryea's battery, and a squadron of the 2d Rhode Island cavalry, went a day's march toward the southwest, to the crossing of the Plaquemine Brulé, and discovered that Mouton was retreating beyond the Mermentau. From Washington, Dwight moved out twenty miles along the Bayou Boeuf to Satcham's plantation without finding the enemy in force. After learning these things, on the 25th of April, Banks turned over the command of the forces to Emory and went to New Orleans to give his attention to affairs of urgency, chiefly affecting the civil administration of the department. He returned to headquarters in the field on the evening of the 1st of May. Meanwhile Emory sent Paine, who, when crossing the Carencro, had seen the last of the Confederates disappearing in the distance, with his brigade and a section of Duryea's battery far out on the Plaquemine Brulé road, in order to find and disperse some cavalry, vaguely reported to be moving about somewhere in that quarter, a constant menace to the long trains from New Iberia. In fact Mouton, with the Texans, was now on the prairie, beyond the Calcasieu eighty miles away, in good position to retreat to Texas or to hang on the flank and rear of the Union army, as circumstances might suggest. On the 26th of April Paine marched sixteen miles to the Plaquemine Brulé, and on the following day sent four companies on horseback twenty miles farther toward the southwest across Bayou Queue de Tortue, and another detachment to Bayou Mallet to reconnoitre. Seeing nothing of the enemy, on the 28th Paine rejoined his division and resumed the command of it at Opelousas. Some time before this orders had been given to mount the 4th Wisconsin, and when the army finally marched from Opelousas this capital regiment made its appearance in the new rôle of mounted infantry. To say nothing of the equipments, a wide divergence in the size, color, and quality of the horses, hastily gathered from the four quarters of the prairie, gave to these improvised dragoons rather a ludicrous appearance it must be confessed; yet marching afoot or standing to horse, the 4th Wisconsin was always ready and equal to the work cut out for it. From his advanced camp, on Shields's plantation, twenty-three miles beyond Washington and twenty-nine from Opelousas, Dwight fell back on the 28th of April to his bivouac at Washington and waited for the movement of the army to begin.