Gen. Price was strenuous in his insistence upon attack, and finally McCulloch consented to meet all the general officers at his headquarters. In the council McCulloch was plain in his unwillingness to engage Lyon or to enter on any aggressive campaign, but Price, seconded by Gens. Parsons, Bains, Slack and McBride, were most determined that Lyon should be attacked at once, and declared that if McCulloch would not do it he would resume command and fight the battle himself. McCulloch finally yielded, and ordered a forward movement, and on the morning of Aug. 6 the entire force was in camp along the bank of Wilson's Creek, about six miles south of Springfield. This position was taken largely because of its proximity to immense cornfields, which would supply the troops and animals with food. Wilson's Creek, rising in the neighborhood of Springfield, flows west some five miles, and then runs south nine or 10 miles in order to empty into the James River, a tributary of White River. Tyrel's Creek and Skegg's Branch, which have considerable valleys, are tributaries of Wilson's Creek. Above Skegg's Branch rises a hill, since known as Bloody Hill, nearly 100 feet high. Its sides are scored with ravines, the rock comes to the surface in many places, and the hight was thickly covered with an overgrowth of scrub-oak. There are other eminences and ravines, generally covered with scrub-oak and undergrowth, and the Confederates were camped in an irregular line along these for a distance of about three miles up and down Wilson's Creek, from the extreme right to the extreme left. Here they remained three days, with the much-disturbed McCulloch riding out every day with his Maynard rifle slung over his shoulder for a personal reconnoissance, which, as far as could be judged from his conversation on his return, was quite unsatisfactory. 155 He had little stomach for the attack, and naturally found reasons against it. Price and his Generals, on the other hand, were fretting over the delay. Price's accurate information of Lyon's condition made him sure that Lyon would do the obvious thing--retreat. It was the warlike thing to do to attack at once, which had every chance of success. Success meant as telling a stroke for Secession in the West as Bull Run had been in the East It would be quite as sensational, for there was no refuge or rallying point for the beaten Union army short of Rolla, 120 miles away, and the rough country, cut by innumerable valleys, gorges and streams, would enable the swarming mounted force to get in its wild work, and not permit the escape of a man, a gun or a wagon.