The constant skirmishing with the enemy on all sides continued till the 10th of September, when General Rosecrans with his column reached Cross Lanes and had the action at Carnifex Ferry which I shall describe in the next chapter. I had sent forward half a regiment from my little command to open communication with him as soon as possible. On September 9th a party from this detachment had reached Cross Lanes and learned that Floyd was keeping close within his lines on the cliffs of Gauley above Carnifex Ferry. They, however, heard nothing of Rosecrans, and the principal body of their troops heard no sound of the engagement on the 10th, though within a very few miles. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. p. 478.] On the 12th communication was opened, and I learned of Floyd's retreat across the Gauley. I immediately moved forward the Eleventh and Twenty-sixth Ohio to attack Wise, who retreated from Hawk's Nest to the mouth of the Sunday Road, and upon my closer approach retired to Sewell Mountain. [Footnote: _Id_., pp. 479, 481.] At the Sunday Road I was stopped by orders from Rosecrans, who thought it unwise to advance further till he had made a ferry at the Gauley and succeeded in getting his command over; for Floyd had again sunk the flatboats within reach, and these had to be a second time raised and repaired. At his request I visited the General at Carnifex Ferry, and then got permission to move my column forward a few miles to Alderson's, or Camp Lookout as we dubbed it, where a commanding position controlled the country to the base of Sewell Mountain. [Footnote: _Id_., p. 482.] I was now able to concentrate the Seventh Ohio at Gauley Bridge, and ordered forward the Second Kentucky to join me in the new camp. The period of my separate responsibility and of struggle against great odds was not to close without a private grief which was the more poignant because the condition of the campaign forbade my leaving the post of duty. On the day I visited General Rosecrans at Carnifex Ferry I got news of the critical illness of my youngest child, a babe of eight months old, whom I had seen but a single day after his birth, for I had been ordered into camp from the legislature without time to make another visit to my family. The warning dispatch was quickly followed by another announcing the end, and I had to swallow my sorrows as well as I could and face the public enemy before us, leaving my wife uncomforted in her bereavement and all the more burdened with care because she knew we were resuming active operations in the field. CHAPTER VI CARNIFEX FERRY--TO SEWELL MOUNTAIN AND BACK