There was much to depress Curtis's men in their tireless bivouac south of Elkhorn Tavern. Dodge's and Vandever's Brigades had been very roughly handled in the long struggle. Rebel bullets had made sad havoc in their ranks. They had lost two guns and over a quarter of their force in killed and wounded. Osterhaus's and Davis's Divisions, in the center, had had costly encounters with the enemy, and had lost five pieces of artillery. They did not then know that in reality the victory was theirs, but believed that most of the enemy had merely left their front to augment the mass which was formed across their line of retreat They therefore looked forward to the morrow with well-grounded apprehension. They had no rations in their haversacks, and their animals had been without forage for two or three days. Unless the enemy could be driven from their "cracker line" the very next day, starvation for man and beast stared them in the face. 332 CHAPTER XIX. THE VICTORY IS WON. Gen. Curtis's army was far from realizing as the night closed down on that exciting March 7 how completely it had whipped the overwhelming numbers of Van Dorn, Price, McCulloch, Mcintosh and Pike. Those of Jeff C. Davis's and Osterhaus's Divisions, who had done the heavy fighting on the Leetown front, knew that they had driven away the mass of the enemy in their front until there was no longer any show of opposition. They of Carr's Division, on the extreme right, the brigades of Dodge and Vandever, realized that they had had a terrible fight, in which they had generally defeated the enemy, inflicting great slaughter, though they had suffered heavily themselves. Still, the enemy had gained a little ground. The men of Carr's Division felt that now, since the rest of the army was coming to their help, they would undoubtedly win a victory in the morning, and clear the rebels from the road leading back to Springfield. This confidence was shared by the men of Jeff C. Davis's and Osterhaus's Divisions, who had come to their assistance, and they all felt more hopeful than did Sigel and Asboth's Division, which had taken little or no part in the fighting. The following remarkable letter from Gen. Asboth to Gen. Curtis, written at 2 o'clock in the morning of March 8, reveals the general belief of that portion of the army that the condition was desperate and it would require extraordinary efforts to release the army from a very hazardous situation: 333 Headquarters Second Division, Camp Near Sugar Creek, Ark.,