Eleven men from First Battalion were sent back in the direction of Wildcat to make a report to General Zollicoffer and get orders. They had gone only about one mile when they met the advance of the brigade on the retreat.
Zollicoffer had decided that if the Federal position at Wildcat could have been taken at all by storm, it would have been at a cost of too great a sacrifice of his men, and as he had declined the idea of going back by the way of Mill Springs or Burkesville, as he had intimated to Colonel Murray on the 16th,* he was now on his way back to Camp Buckner.
Passing back through London, the brigade bivouacked six miles from that place, on the Barboursville road.
Twenty-five of Allison's company and about the same number
from Harris' First Battallion, went back to within two miles and a half of
London to picket that road for the night.
* On October 28th, at Camp Buckner, Zollicoffer wrote to Murray as follows: “Learning that the enemy had retired from Albany, and desiring to see that the guns were all in position at the gap, I determined to return this way.” Rebellion Records, Vol. IV, p. 483.
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