No amount of preparation could possibly have equipped Cordia Pike for what she saw as she neared the hospital outside of Wilson's Creek. Though she had been warned by telegraph, and by Cal Markson, that this was not a pleasant place, until her eyes actually took in the sights, until her nose actually whiffed the stench, she could not have comprehended the horrors that were war and the catastrophic wake it left behind.
She had been surprised at the few number of Confederate troops there were patrolling the area. She assumed that was because most of them had fallen back to Springfield, which was still about ten miles ahead of them. One of the young men had come close enough to the wagon that she had asked him for directions to the hospital. He had simply pointed in a general direction. She
