"Yes, son?" the twenty-eight-year-old general asked. The general was about the same size as sixteen-year-old Lou and maybe even a little smaller. Lou's smeared, crusty and sweat-dried face had the appearance of a barn owl - white around the eyes with smudged brown everywhere else.
"Your mount, Sir - well, sir, she's got a ugly place on her left front leg, about mid-way between the knee and hoof."
"Bad, son?" the general asked, concerned.
"Well not yet, General. Must have pulled through some strong and rough brambles or skinned it somehow. It needs tending, though, before it sours," and then a belated, "Sir, might be best not to ride him the rest of the way. We've got two remounts, the bay and black."
"I'll take your guidance, Doc," the general said pleasantly. Then seriously, "Do what you can, farrier. You can patch her up?"
"Yes, Sir. I think so. I brought some of Mama Bear's good medicine and salve. That ought to do the trick."
"Well, seems we got a bear cub horse doctor here tending our fine war horses." Wheeler said without meanness.
===
General Wheeler had left his cavalry under the watch of General William T. Martin, one of his two brigade commanders. He and his escort got to Bragg's headquarters mid-afternoon the next day, November 24. It was a mess in the region.
Grant had thrust Thomas at the Confederates on Missionary Ridge, east of Chattanooga, which was Bragg's vital holding force for Chattanooga. Later, Sherman joined Thomas. Then Hooker pushed two divisions through the mist up Lookout Mountain. The battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge on November 23 - 25 were the beginning of Grant's successful brawl with a succession of Confederate commanders of the Army of Tennessee.
What had been Bragg's nail down of the Union force in Chattanooga became a Union break out all along the Union front and the southern edges of Chattanooga. The Union offensive put Bragg into a stumbling defensive posture. The Union forces were like a stunned fighter who had been hugging, protecting, his head with his fists. Then suddenly when it looked like he was ready to drop he had gotten heart, bowed his back, and punched away fiercely at his stunned opponent. The blows were left, right and then George Thomas' eleven brigades finished the attack up Bragg's center. Left shot, right shot and then a pounding of the mid-section. The Confederates, stunned and whipped, retreated to save their hides. Grant and the Union forces were on the move. All that Bragg could do was backstep south into north Georgia. Patrick Cleburne and Wheeler's soldiers and scraped up cavalry, were charged with slowing and, if possible, stopping the Union advance south after Bragg's army.