As the sun burst above the hills, a circle of white smoke suddenly
curled away from a cannon's mouth above the Stone Bridge and slowly rose
in the still, clear morning air. Its sullen roar echoed over the valley.
The gray figures on the hill beyond leaped to their feet and looked.
Only the artillery was engaged and their shots were falling short.
The Confederates appeared indifferent. The action was too obviously a
feint. Colonel Evans was holding his regiment for a clearer plan of
battle to develop. From the hilltop on which his men lay he scanned with
increasing uneasiness the horizon toward the west. In the far distance
against the bright Southern sky loomed the dark outline of the Blue
Ridge. The heavy background brought out in vivid contrast the woods and
fields, hollows and hills of the great Manassas plain in the foreground.
Suddenly he saw it--a thin cloud of dust rising in the distance. As the
rushing wall of sixteen thousand men emerged from the "Big Forest,"
through which they had worked their way along the crooked track of a
rarely used road, the dust cloud flared in the sky with ominous menace.
Colonel Evans knew its meaning. Beauregard's army had been flanked and
the long thin lines of his left wing were caught in a trap.
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