The Confederate army was there, and they would merely walk directly into its arms.
They returned with even greater caution than they had come, but the next day the whole division crossed the creek at another point, and as it cautiously felt its way forward it encountered another formidable body of Southern pickets hidden in the woods.

There was sharp firing for a quarter of an hour, and many of the Ohio men fell, but the pickets were finally swept back, and at sunset the half circle that Rosecrans had intended to form for the attack upon the Southern army was complete.
All the movements and delays brought them up to the night before the last day in the year.

The Winchester regiment with the Ohio division lay in a region of little hills and rocks, covered with forest, with which its officers and men were not familiar.

On the other hand the Southern army would know every inch of it, and the inhabitants were ready and eager to give it information.
Dick could not keep from regarding the dark forests with apprehension.
He had seen the Northern generals lose so much through ignorance of the ground and uncertain movements that he feared for them again.

He soon learned that Rosecrans himself shared this fear.