"Come up here," he called. "There ain't no rebels up here. They've all gone off down into the valley." From their tense hearts the boys sent up a cheer, which drew all attention to them. The news quickly spread along the line, and was received with cheers. "Go down that way about 100 yards," Pete called down, "and you'll find a tall pine blowed down agin the cliff. You kin climb that, and git up to where its top lays right agin a bunch of bushes. Shorty rolled on my leg this morning, and waked me up before daylight. I then thought I'd git up and take a look, and see how things appeared before they got to shooting. I found the pine tree, and dumb it mighty quiet, intending to sneak up close to the rebels. But I couldn't find none. They was all gone." CHAPTER XVI. THE 200TH IND. ASSAULTS THE REBEL WORKS AT DAYBREAK THERE were the same perplexing sounds of battle in many places and directions when the 200th Ind. went into line as there had been around Buzzard Roost. 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."