noon
Rosencrans had stretched out a long thin wing through the cedars to the right of the pike . At the pike it was very strong , but two miles away it degenerated into scattered regiments , unskilfully disposed . Bragg threw against these three or four to one , with all the fury of the Southern soldier in the onset . The line was crumbled , and before noon crushed back to the pike . Rachel disengaged herself from her fallen steed , and leaning against a sapling , watched the awful collision . She forgot the great danger in the fascination of the terrible spectacle . She thought she had seen men scale the whole gamut of passion , but their wildest excesses were tame and frothy beside this ecstacy of rage in the fury of battle .