In the meantime, full of anxiety, we at St. Louis waited for tidings from General Ewing. Hours seemed to be days, and days weeks. At last the thrilling news came. Ewing, after using part of his troops to guard a portion of the Iron Mountain Railroad, with a thousand men took his stand at Fort Davidson, a small field work in a valley surrounded by hills. It commanded the opening between the mountains through which Price had determined to pass. Throughout the whole of September 27th, he was terrifically assaulted by the invaders. While half of his thousand troops were undisciplined volunteers, he pluckily held his ground, repulsing the attacking army and killing and wounding fifteen hundred of them; while his own loss in killed, wounded and missing was only two hundred and fifty. A part of this number in the desperate fighting of the day had been taken prisoners and soon after were paroled. The general had triumphantly accomplished his object. He had developed the fact that the whole of Price’s army was in the State, and for a whole day he had confronted and fought all of it except Shelby’s division. The enemy, towards evening, had gained the slopes of the adjacent mountains and were planting batteries there which would command the fort that Ewing had so tenaciously and gallantly held. Fully eight thousand five hundred men with ten pieces of artillery were prepared to attack him in the morning. His position was no longer tenable. He therefore spiked his big guns, blew up his magazine, destroyed as far as he was able the supplies that he could not carry away, and with his field battery and what remained of his command retreated under the cover of darkness toward the Meramec valley. When his absence was discovered, the enemy pursued and greatly harassed him and his small intrepid army. The only wonder is that his whole command was not captured or destroyed; but he got upon a ridge of land between two creeks, and so was able, as he marched rapidly on, to repulse again and again the pursuing forces. He reached at last Harrison Station, a little more than a day’s march from our city. Here he hastily occupied and extended some earthworks that had been thrown up by a regiment of militia, and with his raw troops, now become a Spartan band, withstood the assaulting army for thirty-six hours, when he was re-enforced by a detachment of cavalry. The enemy now withdrew. Ewing and his brave men escaped to Rolla.