There was not a sign of the enemy as they neared the bridge, one of those covered affairs so common a few years ago in country districts. The countryside was serene and undisturbed.
"This doesn't look much like war," said Jack. "But I guess Gettysburg itself looked just as peaceful a few days before the big battle in 1863. You can't always tell by appearances. We'll go pretty easy here, anyhow, until we're certain that it's all right."
But the most careful investigation failed to reveal a trace of hostile occupation or passage. At the end of the bridge Jack got out of the car, leaving Tom Binns at the wheel, and ready to start at an instant's notice should there be a sudden attack.
"The tracks here don't show anything much," he said, looking up to Tom with a puzzled face. "I don't believe anything but a couple of farm wagons have passed this way to-day. If General Bliss thought this was his only line of advance, he'd have been certain to have had a few pickets here—or at least one of his scout cars. And I'll swear that nothing of that sort has happened here to-day. They'd have been bound to leave all sorts of traces, that's certain!"
"What do you think it means, Jack?"
"That there's something cooking and on the stove that we don't know about or suspect, even," said Jack. "I guess that General Bliss gets as good information as we do, and he must have figured out that he wouldn't be able to get here in time. If he went this way, anyhow, he'd have to leave Hardport in our possession behind him. And somehow I don't believe he'd do that."
"Say, Jack," called Tom Binns, suddenly, "I just saw a flash over there behind you—upon that hillock."
Jack began whistling indifferently. He strolled around, as if he were interested only in the view. Gradually he worked over closer to Tom and the big car, and then, and only then, he turned so that he could follow Tom's eyes with his own.
"I don't want anyone that's around here to think I'm looking at them," he said in a low tone to Tom. "What does it seem like to you, Tom? Scouts?"
"I think so, Jack. I caught just a glimpse, after I called to you, of something that looked like a Scout uniform. I think that they're watching us."
"That's much better," said Jack, greatly relieved. "It didn't seem natural, somehow, to find this place so deserted. Say, Tom, you can run the car, can't you?"
"Yes, if I don't have to go too fast."
"All right. I'm going to climb in. Then pull the hood pretty well over and run her slowly through the bridge. It's covered, you see, and they can't see us after we're on it. Then, as soon as we're under cover, I'm going to drop out. They can't see how many of us there are in the car. I'll stay behind, and you run on around the bend, drop out of the car, quietly, and leave it at the side of the road."
"Will that be safe, Jack? Couldn't anyone who came along run off with it?"
"Not if you take the spark plug out and put it in your pocket. That cripples the car absolutely, and you ought always to do that, even if you just leave a car outside a store for a couple of minutes when you go in to buy something. This car is great, too, because you don't have to crank it. It has a self-starting device, so that you can start the motor automatically without leaving your seat."
"All right, Jack. What am I to do after I leave the car?"
"Work up quietly into the woods there. When you get up a way, scout down easily, and try to trail them. You'll find traces of them up there on the ridge, I'm sure, if they're really up there. I'll do the same thing from the other side here. I think we've got a good chance to break one of their signalling relays, don't you see?"
"I'll take my flags along, shall I, Jack?"
"Good idea! No telling what we'll be able to find out and do here. All right—I'm going to drop out now!"
The car slowed down and he dropped off silently, and laughed as he saw Tom Binns guide the big machine off into the light beyond the covered bridge again. Then, the laughter gone from his face, he slipped cautiously back in the opposite direction, and at the entrance to the bridge dropped down to the bed of the creek. The season had been dry, and the water in the creek was very shallow. His plan was definite in his own mind, and he had had enough experience in scouting to know that there was at least a good chance of success in his enterprise, although a difficult one.
His destination was the ridge where Tom Binns had seen the flashing of red and white signal flags. Step by step now, climbing slowly and carefully, he made his way up the bank, sure that even if whoever was on the ridge had guessed the ruse of the way in which he had left the automobile, they would not be looking for an attack from the direction in which he was making his stealthy, Indian-like advance. Another reason for slow and deliberate progress was to give Tom Binns time to reach the ridge, and take up a position favorable for the playing of his part in the scheme.
Before him now, as he moved on, he could hear sounds of quiet and stealthy movement, and at last, standing before him, as he peeped through a small opening in the thick undergrowth, he could see a Boy Scout, standing stiff and straight, and working his signal flags. He had to stand on a high spot and in a clearing to do this, as otherwise, of course, his flags could not have been seen at any distance. Jack measured the place with his eyes. His whole plan would collapse if the body of the signalling Scout were visible from the next relay stations, but he quickly decided that only the flags would show.
From behind the Scout with the flags now came the call of a crow—caw, caw, caw!
Jack grinned as he answered it. For a moment a look of suspicious alertness showed on the face of the Blue Scout. He whirled around to face the sound behind him, and in the moment that his back was turned Jack sprang on him.
The Blue Scout put up a fine struggle, but he was helpless against the combined attack of Jack Danby and Tom Binns, who sprang to his comrade's aid as soon as he saw what Jack had done.
"Two to one isn't fair," gasped Jack as he sat on his prisoner's chest, "but we had to do it. This is war, you see, and they say all's fair in love and war. Who are you?"
"Canfield, Tiger Patrol, Twenty-first Troop, Hampton's Scouts," said the prisoner. "Detailed for Scout service with the Blue army. You got me fair and square. We caught one of your fellows near Mardean, we heard, soon after the war began. Sorry—but it's all in the game.
"How on earth did you get to me so quietly? I was watching you in the road by the bridge, and I thought you'd gone off in your car. You certainly fooled me to the queen's taste."
"Fortune of war," said Jack. "The car gave us a big advantage. You're not to blame a bit. I guess you'll be exchanged pretty soon, too. We'll give you for Warner, you see. He's the one of our Troop who was caught. And a fair exchange isn't any robbery."
"Have we got to tie him up?" asked Tom Binns.
"Not if he'll give his parole not to escape or accept a rescue," said Jack. "How about that, Canfield? Will you give me your word of honor? I'm Jack Danby, Assistant Patrol Leader of the Crow Patrol of Durland's Troop, and ranking as a corporal for the maneuvers in the Red army."
"I'll give you my parole all right," said Canfield. He saluted stiffly. "Glad to meet you, Corporal Danby. Sorry the tables aren't turned, though. We've got a special dinner for our prisoners to-night—but we haven't caught many prisoners yet, worse luck!"
"All right! See if the flags are just the same, Tom."
Tom Binns compared the flags captured from Canfield with those he himself carried.
"They're exactly the same," he said. "We can use either his or ours. It doesn't make any difference."
"That's good. Stand up there now, Tom, and see what's coming. Can you see the next stations on both sides?"
"Sure I can, Jack. They're wig-wagging like the very dickens now, asking Canfield here why he doesn't answer."
"Signal that he was watching a grey scout car of the Red army, going north," said Jack, with a laugh.
Canfield heard the laugh with a rueful smile.
"You're certainly going to mess things up!" he said. "I ought to be court-martialled for letting you break up our signal chain this way."
Meanwhile Tom Binns was working his flags frantically.
"O. K.," he reported to Jack. "Message coming!"
Jack sprang to his side, and together the two Red Scouts watched the flags flashing in the distance. Jack showed a good deal of excitement.
"Gee," he said, "this is all to the good! That's a message from General Bliss himself, I'll bet! See, Tom? He's sending orders to General Brown, who commands his right wing. They're going to swing around back toward Hardport in a big half-circle, of which this place where we are now is pretty nearly the centre. And it's the Newville road that's the line of their march, and not this road over the creek at all. That's nerve for you, if you like, because the Newville pike is right in our lines, and if we move fast we can turn that right wing right in on their center."
For half an hour they stayed there, realizing more and more with every passing minute that the whole Blue army was developing a great and sweeping attack on Hardport, and in a direction entirely different from that being taken by General Bean. The information so far obtained by General Harkness obviously was entirely misleading, and in sending General Bean to Cripple Creek, as he had, he had simply deprived himself of a brigade, and, as he would learn in the morning, when the attack would most certainly begin, weakened a vital part of his lines. Bean was moving directly away from the spot where the attack would be concentrated, and the enemy would be able, unless something were quickly done, to strike at the unprotected center of the Red line, drive right through it, and throw the main portion of his army, like a great wedge, between the two sections of the Red forces.
Jack's face grew grave as message after message confirmed his fears. He looked at his watch.
"We've got to get word of this to General Harkness," he said. "Tom, I'm afraid you'll have to stay here and take chances on being caught. I've got to get back to headquarters and tell General Harkness what we've learned here. And if we both go, and leave the relay broken here, they'll smell a rat at once, and investigate. There's enough of a trail here to show a blind man, much less a bunch of Scouts who are just as good in their State as we're supposed to be in our own, just what's happened. So you stay here, and I'll take Canfield along with me in the car and make my way back to headquarters. You'll be able to leave pretty soon, anyhow, because it will be too dark for effective long-range signalling less than an hour from now. You can do it all right, can't you?"
"Yes," said Tom Binns, pluckily. It was plain that he didn't like the prospect of staying there alone, but he could see the necessity as easily as Jack himself, and that there was no other way of meeting the circumstance that had arisen.
"Do your best, of course, to avoid being captured," said Jack, as he turned to go, with Canfield at his side. "But it will be no reflection on you if you are made a prisoner, and we won't need to feel that they've put one over on us if they catch you. We've got more than a fair return for the loss of even a First Class Scout in the information that they've unknowingly given us. It may mean the difference between the success and failure of the whole campaign."
"You're a wonder, Danby," said Canfield, as they made their way down to the car. Being on parole, of course, and, as a Boy Scout should always be, honorable and incapable of breaking his given word, Canfield made no attempt to escape or hamper Jack in any way. "I've heard a lot about you, and I'm glad to see you at work, even if it does make it bad for me. You seem to be able to tell just about what's going on around here. I couldn't do that. I didn't think about the larger meaning of the orders I was passing on."
"I may be wrong, you know," said Jack, as he waited for Canfield to step into the car before climbing into the driver's seat. "I'm really only making a guess, but I think it's a pretty good one. And, anyhow, with the notes I've got for him, General Harkness ought to be able to get a pretty good line on what's doing."
"He ought to be," admitted Canfield, regretfully, but smiling at the same time. "You're certainly one jim-dandy as a Scout! I'd hate to be against you in a real war. If you can handle things always the way you've done this time, you'd be a pretty hard proposition in a real honest-to-goodness fight."
Jack debated the advisability of meeting General Bean and telling him what he had learned, but he decided that since that detour would take up nearly half an hour of time that was now most valuable, he had better hurry right through to headquarters, and carry his news direct to the commander-in-chief. He cared little now for the danger of meeting stray detachments of the enemy. He was not afraid of them, since he knew that they would not, in all probability, be keeping a particularly careful watch for him, and he was confident of the ability of his car to outdistance any pursuit that might be attempted.
Twice, indeed, as he raced for Hardport, he met patrols of the enemy's cavalry, but he was burning up the ground at such a rate that they probably were not able to distinguish the nature of his car, especially as it was nearly dark.
"Gee, Danby, you certainly make this old car go!" said Canfield, admiringly. "She's a daisy, too. I never was in a car before that rode as easily as this, and I think you're going twice as fast as I've ever ridden in my life before."
Going at such speed, it did not take long for Jack to reach headquarters. He rushed at once into the hotel, and his earnest, dust-streaked face so impressed the officer on duty outside the General's door that he took Jack in at once.
"I have the honor to report that I have carried out your instructions, General," said Jack. "I have used more than the two hours you allowed me, but I felt that that was necessary."
Then he explained the capture he and Tom Binns had effected, and how, by taking the place of their prisoner with the flags, they had been able to discover the enemy's real plans.
General Harkness wasted no words then for a few minutes. He pressed two or three buttons, and, as staff officers answered, his orders flew like hail.
"Telegraph General Bean to change his route at once," he ordered, "and make Newville his objective point, throwing out heavy skirmish lines and advance pickets to prevent a surprise. He will march all night, if necessary—but he must be at Newville before five o'clock."
The officer who took the order saluted, turned on his heel, and left the room.
"Direct Colonel Abbey to bring up his cavalry regiment at once from Bremerton," was the next order. "He will march across the line, and then follow it until he reaches the Newville pike. Thence he will turn to support any movement General Bean may find it necessary to make there. Colonel Abbey will not engage the enemy, however, even to the extent of feeling him out, without direct orders from either General Bean or myself. Repeat a copy of Colonel Abbey's orders to General Bean."
"That's good work, Danby, once more," he said, then, turning to Jack. "We'd have been in a nice mess if you hadn't discovered that. They masked their turning movement beautifully. If they had got hold of Newville and cut General Bean off from the main body of this army we would have had to abandon Hardport at once. General Bean would certainly have been captured, and we would have had to fall back on the capital, with an excellent prospect of being attacked and forced to fight at a great disadvantage on our retreat. As it is, even if General Bean is forced to circle around Newville, we can concentrate at Bremerton and fight on ground of our own choosing, though that would make this place untenable."
Receiving no further orders, Jack remained to listen. He stood at attention, and he enjoyed the experience of being in the room of a general on active service, for the constant stream of orders General Harkness was giving was hardly checked at all by his pause to speak to Jack and thank him for the good work he had done.
"Instruct Colonel Henry to complete preparations for the theoretical destruction of the railroad station, the sidings, and all passenger and freight cars now here," he directed next. "If we are forced to abandon the place, we will leave plenty of evidence behind us that it is no longer of any use to the enemy. Rather a dog-in-the-manger policy, I suppose—" this to Jack, since the officer had gone to obey the order—"but that's war. If you can't make any use of a town or a lot of supplies yourself, remember always that that is no reason why the enemy should not find them of the utmost service, and see to it that he can get no benefit from them. That was General Sherman's way. He left a trail of desolation fifty miles wide wherever he marched with his army, and he was always sure that the enemy, even if he came along after him, would find no chance to live in that country."
Jack offered no comment at all. He knew his place, as a Boy Scout, and, while he realized that it was a great compliment for the General to talk to him in that fashion, he had no intention of presuming on the fact.
Just then an orderly entered.
"Scout Thomas Binns, of Durland's Troop, General," he said, saluting. "He says he has important information."
"Another of you?" asked the General, smiling as he faced Jack. "Send him in!"
"He was with me in the car, sir," said Jack. "I left him behind when I came to make my report."
"I have the honor to report, General," said little Tom Binns, standing at the salute when he appeared, "that the enemy now has reason to believe that General Bean is advancing for Cripple Creek and will camp there to-night."
"How do you know that, my boy?" said the General.
"The signal station next to me on the side nearest Hardport flashed the news that General Bean had changed his course, sir," replied Tom. "I didn't think they ought to hear that at General Bliss's headquarters, so I changed the message in relaying it, and said that it was now positively determined that General Bean was heading for Cripple Creek, and would proceed to occupy the bridge. In fact, I added that his pickets were already in sight."
"Excellent!" laughed the General. "But how did you get here, my boy? I don't see how you escaped falling into their hands."
"That was the last message we got before dark, sir," said Tom. "After that we all got orders to report at their Scout headquarters, and I decided to try to make my way back here. On the way I ran into one of their outposts, and a man with a motorcycle chased me. But he had a puncture—I think that was because I dropped my knife in the road—and he had to stop to repair that. While he was doing it, I worked up behind him, and I managed to get the motorcycle and came on. I knew he'd have a good chance to catch me, because I didn't know the roads very well."
"Ha, ha!" laughed General Harkness. The incident seemed to amuse him immensely, for he laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks. "I wish I had a whole army of you, my boy. We'd have little trouble with the enemy, then. Now you two can go back to Bremerton. That is likely to be nearer the scene of battle in the morning than this town, and you have both done a good day's work in any case. I am highly pleased with you. Carry my compliments to Captain Durland, and say to him that I shall be glad to see him in my headquarters in the morning. He will have to find out where they are, for I don't know myself at this moment. I shall probably be up most of the night myself, but do you be off now, and get a good night's rest. You have earned it."
So once more Jack drove the grey car to Bremerton. He was almost reeling with fatigue by this time, for it was nearly nine o'clock, and he had done enough since noon to tire out a full-grown man.
"That was mighty clever work of yours with the motorcycle," he said to Tom. "How did you ever think of it?"
"I didn't want to be caught, Jack, that's all. I guess you were right the other day when you said we never knew what we could do until we had to do it. It's certainly true with me, because if anyone had ever told me that I would do a thing like that, I'd have told them they were crazy."
"Well, whatever the reason was, it was good work. If they'd caught you with your signal flags, they might have smelled a rat, and the best part of our catching Canfield was that they didn't know anything about it. That's what made him such a very valuable prisoner for us to have."
Jack Danby was pretty tired after his exertions. Captain Durland, glad that his Troop, except for the one prisoner, poor Harry Warner, of the Raccoons, was still all together under his command in Bremerton, found quarters for them in the little village hotel.
"We'll turn in early," he said, "and get all the sleep we can. I think there'll be some hard fighting to-morrow, and we can't tell yet what part we'll be called on to play in it when it comes. So we'll get all the sleep we can. I shouldn't wonder if the battle to-morrow began long before dawn. If we can turn the right wing of the Blue army, which doesn't seem very likely now, we will want to start the action as soon as possible, because, when you have the enemy trapped, the thing to do is to strike at him just as quickly as you can. Every minute of delay you give him gives him just that much more of a chance to get out of the trap."
"That means if General Bean gets to Newville in time, doesn't it, sir?" asked Dick Crawford.
All the Scouts had listened with the greatest interest to what Jack had told them of his day's adventures. He had been at the very heart of things, and he was able, from the information that he and Tom Binns had intercepted, to get a complete view of the whole scene of the operations, far superior to that of any of the others, who knew, of course, only what was going on in their own immediate neighborhood.
"Yes—that's what I mean, of course," said Durland. "But it's a forlorn hope. There's a limit to human endurance. Even regular troops would call what Bean's brigade did before sunset a hard day's work. Just think of it—they were in motion before daybreak this morning, ready for their dash across the line. Then they marched several miles toward Hardport, turned aside for a big flanking movement, and had hardly occupied the city when they were started off for the Cripple Creek Bridge. Then they were turned off again from that, and sent to march another twenty miles to Newville. That was necessary, of course—they'd have been cut off and captured, to a man, if they'd kept on for the bridge, without even the fun of putting up a fight for their colors. But that doesn't make it any easier work. I know Bean—he won't ask his men to do the impossible. And that means that he'll be five miles from Newville when morning comes."
"Then nothing is likely to be decided to-morrow?" said Bob Hart.
"I don't see how it can be. The two armies are playing at cross purposes to-night, you see. Unless the Blues have corrected their mistake, they will be working on the assumption that Bean's brigade is out of it entirely, and that they can eat up the main body of our army, and then turn around and capture Bean when they like. While they're working on that idea, General Harkness is making a desperate effort to turn the tables on them, and lead them into just the same sort of a trap that Jack Danby has enabled him to escape. His strategy is perfectly sound, and he can't lose seriously, even if his plan fails. But I think the umpires will call the fight to-morrow a drawn battle."
"What will happen then?"
"Now you're asking a question I can't answer. We've got to wait more or less on the movements of the Blue army, you see. After all, we're on the defensive. Of course, we've taken the offensive to-day, and on the showing that's been made so far the Blues are very much out of it. On the single day the umpires would have to give the decision to General Harkness. He's in a better position right now to prevent an attack on the capital itself than he was before the war began."
Then Durland called the order to sound taps, and in a few minutes the Troop was sound asleep.
Bremerton that night was peaceful and quiet. Over in the telegraph office watchful soldier operators were at work, but the clicking of their keys did not disturb the Scouts in their well-earned rest. For miles all about them there was bustle and activity. Troops, exhausted after a day of work that was very real indeed for a good many of the militiamen, clerks and office workers, camped along the roads and took such rest as they could get. This game was proving as much of an imitation of war as many of them wanted to see.
They had come out expecting a restful, pleasant vacation, with the thrill of a war game as an additional incentive for them to turn out, but they were finding that it closely resembled hard work—the sort of work they got too little of in their crowded days of office routine. Later they would enjoy the recollection of it, but while they were doing it there was a good deal of roughing that wasn't so pleasant.
A late moon made the countryside brilliant, and easy to cover with the eye, and when, a couple of hours after midnight, the roll of rifle firing in the distance, coming like light thunder, awoke the Scouts, who were sleeping three in a room, many of them rushed to their windows.
Jack Danby shared a room with Pete Stubbs and Tom Binns, his particular chums, and he laughed at them.
"What are you looking for, powder smoke?" he asked them. "Don't you remember that they're using smokeless powder in this war? You couldn't see that firing if it were within a hundred yards."
The firing soon became general and Jack himself grew interested.
"That doesn't sound just like outposts coming together," he said. "It seems to me that it's pretty general firing, as if considerable bodies of men were getting engaged. I'd like to be out there and see what's going on."
The distant din increased, and there was no longer a chance for the Scouts to sleep. In real warfare tired men, it is said, can sleep with a battle raging all about them, but the Scouts weren't inured to such heavy firing yet, and it disturbed and excited them. Durland himself wasn't bothered, but he sensed the restlessness of his Troop, and he rose and dressed. One by one, too, the Scouts followed his example, and gathered on the big veranda of the village inn.
"Come on over to the telegraph office, Dick," said Durland. "Let's see if we can't find out who's kicking up all this fuss and what it's about."
The telegraph wires, which never slept, were clicking busily when the Scout-Master and his assistant entered the office.
"Abbey's cavalry running into the enemy on the Newville pike," said a tired operator, flicking a cigarette from his mouth as Durland spoke to him. "Funny, too! We thought he'd join General Bean before he saw a sign of the enemy."
Durland felt himself growing anxious; then laughed at himself for his own anxiety. He turned to find Dick Crawford at his elbow.
"I'm taking this thing too seriously, Dick," he said, with a smile. "After all, it's only a game. But I'd certainly like to know the inner meaning of that firing. Unless we've been grossly deceived, Abbey had no business to bump into any considerable force of the Blue army to-night."
"I guess we're all taking it pretty seriously, sir," said Dick. "Isn't that the right way, too? Of course, it's only a game—but we might be playing it seriously some time."
"You're right, Dick," said the Scout-Master. "We can't take this too seriously. I'm going to horn in here and see if there isn't something we can do."
He walked over to the key.
"See if you can report my Troop to General Harkness as ready for any service required," he said.
It took some little time for the operator to get the message through. Then, however, he sat back with a smile.
"I guess they'll be able to use you, all right, Captain," he said. "They seem to be a mile up in the air about what Colonel Abbey's doing. All the Colonel can report himself is that he's run into a considerable force, and he's engaging him tentatively. He seems to be afraid of being cut off if he goes on without feeling his way."
Then followed another delay.
"Here you are, Captain," said the operator, at last. "Coming, now!"
"Take it," said Durland. "I can read it as it comes."
Out of the chatter of the sounding key both Durland and Dick Crawford could make sense.
"Take your Troop up to Colonel Abbey," came the order. "Report to him for any service possible. But detail two Scouts, with automobile, to make an attempt to discover the nature of the enemy's operations on the Newville road beyond the point where Colonel Abbey's command has engaged the enemy. General Bean is within three miles of Newville, waiting for daylight, owing to the firing in that direction. It is most important to apprise him of the actual conditions."
"Report that orders are received and will be obeyed at once," Durland flung back to the operator, and he and Crawford hurried from the building to rejoin the Scouts, who were waiting eagerly on the porch of the hotel for any news that might come.
"Get ready to hike," ordered Dick Crawford, as he reached the Scouts. "Danby, report to Captain Durland at once."
Jack listened to his instructions carefully.
"This is a harder job than any you've had yet, Jack," said his commander. "But it counts for more, too. Are you sure you're not too tired to handle your car?"
"Not a bit of it, sir!" protested Jack. "I've had all the sleep I need. What the General wants to know chiefly is whether there are enough troops of the enemy between Colonel Abbey and Newville to prevent a junction between the cavalry and General Bean's brigade, isn't it?"
"Right! I can't give you any special orders. You'll have to use your own judgment, and do whatever seems best when the time comes. This is the sort of a situation that changes literally from minute to minute, and if I gave you special orders before you started they would probably hamper you more than they helped you."
"Can I have Tom Binns again, sir?"
"Certainly! I'll have Crawford tell him to report to you at the garage. Overhaul your car carefully—you don't want any little mechanical trouble to come along and spoil your work just as you are on the verge of success."
"The car's all right, sir. I went over every bit of it before I turned in. I had an idea I might be called for some sort of emergency work when every minute would count, and she's ready for any sort of a run right now."
"Good enough! That's the way to be. 'Be prepared'—that's a pretty good motto. It has certainly been proved abundantly in the last few hours."
It would take the Scouts a good three hours to come up with Colonel Abbey's regiment of cavalry, but Jack and Tom Binns, in the big grey car that moved silently, like a grey ghost, in the moonlight, were well ahead of them as the column swung out of the little town.
"Well, we're off again!" said Jack. "No telling what's going to come up before the night's over, either, Tom. We've got a roving commission, with no orders to hold us down, and I'm out to see just as much as the road will show us."
"Are you going to stick to the main road, Jack?"
"No. There's a cross road a little way beyond here. If they've blocked Colonel Abbey's advance on this road, we couldn't get beyond his position, anyhow, and it won't do us any good to get as far as that and no further. It's what they're doing beyond there that General Harkness wants to know."
"Where is the main body of our army now, Jack?"
"Right around Hardport. The only troops that are moving to-night are Abbey's cavalry regiment, and General Bean's brigade. General Bean, with the rest of the army closing toward him, is to hold the enemy in check if they occupy Newville before we get to the place ourselves. The rest of the army, at Hardport, can move to his support, or it can develop a big flanking movement that will bring Bremerton into the centre of our line, with the forces toward Newville making a sort of a triangular wedge stuck out in front. That wedge, you see, will have the whole army as a reserve. It isn't as favorable a situation as if they had made for Cripple Creek, for there we would have been in a position to force them back on Smithville, where they mobilized."
"They'd have gone right into a trap if they had kept on for Newville, wouldn't they?"
"Yes; but that was too much for us to hope for, really. It's good enough as it is. It was General Harkness's plan from the first to make a stand at Bremerton, unless they gave him the chance to make it an offensive campaign. The mistake we made in sending a brigade to Cripple Creek more than made up for the capture of Hardport, however, and so we lost that chance. If we could have made sure of Newville to-night, nothing could have saved the Blue army."
"Who's to blame for that, Jack?"
"No one. You can't expect the enemy to tell you what he's going to do, and even Napoleon couldn't always guess right. I think we'll beat them all right—that is, I don't think they'll get within twenty miles of the capital in the time they've got, even if we get badly beaten in this battle that's starting now."
"Here we are at the cross roads, Jack. Which way are you going now?"
"Toward Mardean, at first. I'm going to swing in a great big circle around Hardport, and way beyond it. I want to come down on them from behind and see just as much as I can."
"If you swing very far around that way it'll take you pretty near Smithville, won't it?"
"That's just where I want to get, Tom. The place to find out what the enemy is going to do is the place where he is doing it, it seems to me."
Hardport, a patch of light against the sky, held little interest for Jack. The road he took swung back toward the State line, so that he passed very near Hardport before he reached the road that he and Tom had first traveled when they crossed the line at full speed after war had been declared. But Mardean wasn't held by the enemy now. The troops that had crossed there had been recalled after the capture of Hardport and the wreck of the early Blue plans, and some of them probably were in Hardport now as prisoners of war, but with none of the rigors commonly attaching to imprisonment to distress them.
"This road is safer than it was when we took it before," said Jack. "Remember how we had to take to the fields a little way along here? That was pretty exciting."
"You bet it was, Jack! I'm glad we can stick to the roads here."
"Don't be too glad yet, Tom. No telling what we may have to do before the night's over, you know. It's early yet—or late, as you happen to look at it."
Mile after mile of road, looking like a silver streak in the moonlight, dropped beneath the wheels of the big grey car. They sped around and beyond Hardport, and Jack, studying his road map, lighted now by a little electric light, began to slow down, since they were in country where it was possible, though not probable, that the enemy's outposts might be encountered.
"I've got an idea that they're marching hard and fast to-night," said Jack. "Somehow, I'm not easy in my mind. I'm afraid they may have had some way of finding out what our army was doing. You know that we're not the only people who can detect concealed and covered movements. And they may be setting a trap for us again, just as they were doing when General Bean was drawn off toward Cripple Creek."
"I've lost track of where we're going, Jack. Where does this road we're on now come from?"
"Practically straight from Mardean. You see, Mardean will be about the right of our army to-morrow. A brigade will drop back that way from Hardport, if we give up that town in the morning, and the main force will move for Bremerton."
"Then if the enemy should happen to get around this way and break over the State line near Mardean, they'd be in a good position to meet us to-morrow, wouldn't they?"
"First rate! But that's not the idea, at all. They're all over in the other direction, nearer Bremerton, and east of Hardport. The trouble Colonel Abbey encountered seems to indicate that it's their plan to cross in force near Bremerton. That's why holding Newville would be so important to them."
Now Jack threw in the high speed again. And at once, almost, as the car sped on, something about the song of the throbbing engine bothered Jack. In a moment he had shifted his gears, and in another, the car, coughing and rattling, came to a sudden stop.
"Good thing I heard that," said Jack, a few moments later, "or we'd have been stuck properly a few miles further on. Won't take me five minutes to fix it now."
As he tinkered on the machine, his ears were busy, and he and Tom heard the sound of approaching horses in the same instant. At once Jack leaped to his driver's seat, and ran the car through an open fence into a field beside the road.
"I want to see what's doing here," he said. "That doesn't sound very good to me."
The trouble with his engine had been providential, for ten minutes later he realized that had he gone on at full speed he would have encountered the advance guard of at least a full division of the enemy.
Quietly and steadily the Blue troops were marching on. There was purpose in the look of them, and a grim earnestness that made Jack whistle.
"Tom," he whispered, "you certainly hit it! They're setting a trap all right. They're going to cross at Mardean and swing around to cut off our troops from Bremerton. They've got a nice plan—just to steal our position, and make us fight on our ground—but with positions reversed."
Hardly daring to breathe lest they be heard, the two Scouts waited while the Blue troops passed. It took more than two hours for the regiments, marching in close order, to get by them, and it was nearly light when the last stragglers had passed their hiding-place.
"Gee," cried Jack, "that's certainly a surprise to me! Say, Tom, do you know what they've done? They've buffaloed General Bean, and fooled him completely—and our whole army! They've left not more than two regiments there. Of course, that was a stronger force than Abbey had, but they managed it so cleverly that they're holding up General Bean and his whole brigade."
"How can that be, Jack? I thought the umpires decided on the strength and the probable result of any encounter between the armies—and they surely couldn't decide that two regiments could beat a brigade?"
"No—but if the two regiments masked their real weakness so cleverly that they weren't attacked by the brigade, there wouldn't be anything for the umpires to decide—and that's what I'm afraid of. That's clever tactics, you see, and they'd get the credit for it, of course—and they'd deserve it, too. Well, here's where we stop loafing. We've got to cut a telegraph wire somewhere and get word of the true state of affairs to General Harkness. He can't wait until full daylight to move his troops now."
"What good will cutting a wire do, Jack?"
"Lots of good, Tom. This car has a regular apparatus for cutting in on a wire, and a set of sending and receiving instruments. If we cut the wire, it goes dead until we connect it with our instruments. Then only the section beyond where we cut in is dead. There's a telegraph wire direct from Hardport to Smithville. Cutting the wire is legitimate, even in the war game, because it's necessary to do the actual cutting. It isn't like the railroad, which can be destroyed theoretically, and left actually ready for use."
Jack had started his car, still running through the fields when the troops had passed, and now, looking carefully at the telegraph poles and wires, he dropped from his seat and, with wire cutters and repair tools, and his pocket set of instruments, he proceeded to put into practice the theory that he had explained to Tom. He cut the wire neatly and carefully. Then he connected the broken end with his instruments, completing the circuit again, and began calling for General Harkness's headquarters in Hardport.
"See how it's done, Tom?" he asked. "Easy when you know how, you see."
"Yes; it's like lots of other things that way, Jack. The trouble is you always seem to know just how to do things like that and I never do."
"Got 'em!" cried Jack, enthusiastically, at that moment, and began at once to send his important news.
"I want to get permission now to go on and tell General Bean what we've learned," he explained to Tom as he still waited after sending his message. "Then, as soon as I get it, I'll splice this wire and fix it so that the line will be open for regular service again. We don't want to interrupt traffic by telegraph or telephone, if we can help it. But this won't make much difference at this hour of the night. I don't believe that many messages are sent over this wire after midnight as a rule."
They had to wait twenty minutes for the reply, but when it came Jack was told to use his own best judgment, and that General Harkness would rely upon him to get the highly important information he had sent to headquarters to General Bean.
"I thought we'd be allowed to do that," said Jack, after he had put the wire in order again. In the car there was plenty of telegraph wire for repairing lines cut by the enemy, so the task was not at all a difficult one.
"Gee, Jack," said Tom, "I've certainly learned one thing lately, and that is that there's nothing you know that isn't likely to come in handy sometime or another. I didn't know you knew as much as this about telegraphy."
"I've always been interested in it, Tom. It's so fascinating. You can use all sorts of knowledge if you're in the army, too. Think of the engineers. They have to be able to build bridges, and destroy them, and erect fortifications without the proper materials. Not in this war, of course, but if there was real fighting. These maneuvers are different from the ordinary sort. They're not so cut and dried, and there aren't so many rules. I've read about maneuvers when there were rules to govern every sort of situation that came up—in fact, surprising situations couldn't come up, because everything that was to happen had been worked out ahead of time."
"This is better for us, isn't it, Jack? I mean, we're really learning how a war would actually be fought."
"We're getting a pretty good idea of it, anyhow. It isn't a bit the way I thought it was going to be."
"Well, we ought to be getting in touch with General Bean pretty soon, I should think."
"We've got another ten or twelve miles to drive yet. I took a pretty wide swing around, thinking we'd avoid the enemy altogether. Instead of that, we bumped right into them. It's surely a good thing we had that little engine trouble. We'd be prisoners right now if we'd been able to go on at full speed, because I don't believe we'd have been able to see them in time to turn around and get away. And we got a much better chance to see what they were up to, too."
As they approached General Bean's brigade the firing in the direction of Bremerton, where Colonel Abbey had encountered the enemy, began to be audible again. It had died away for a time, and Jack had wondered whether Abbey had retired. The sound of the heavy rifle fire, however, with an occasional explosion of a shell to make it louder, reassured him.
Newville was deserted when they entered it, and Jack laughed. Not a Blue soldier was in sight—and yet General Bean was waiting for full daylight, convinced that the main body of the Blue army was there.
"They certainly did make a clever shift," he said to Tom. "General Bliss has a reputation for moving quickly, and striking like a snake. He covers his movements well, and I'll bet that if we ever do have another war, he'll cut a pretty big figure. Captain Durland says he's a real fighter, of the sort that was developed in the Civil War. Some of the best fighters on both sides in that war, you know, were men who never went to West Point at all."
"The great generals were regulars, though, weren't they?"
"Most of them, yes. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Lee—they were all West Pointers, and a lot more of them, too. But there were others. They say, in the histories, that a great crisis brings up the men to meet it. It's perfectly true that Grant and Sherman had been in the regular army, but they had resigned before the war, and they hadn't made good particularly before that, either in the army or afterward, when they went into business. It was the war that made them famous, and a good many others, too."
They had turned now toward Hardport, and the pickets of General Bean's waiting brigade, eagerly looking for the enemy, were in sight. Time after time they were challenged and stopped, but Jack, despite questions from officers and men, all eager for the news they were sure he was bringing, since his exploits had already won him a considerable reputation in the Red army, refused to tell what he knew to anyone save General Bean himself. They did not have to go all the way to the rear of the army. General Bean himself, small, wiry, active and peppery, met them soon after they had come into the midst of his lines. He was riding his big, black horse, and, although he had had no sleep that night, he looked fresh and ready for another day in the saddle.
"Hum," he said, pulling his moustache, as he listened to them, "they fooled us, didn't they? Captain Jenks, you will give my compliments to Colonel Jones, and instruct him to put his regiment in motion at once. We will occupy Newville, and then close in on the enemy, supporting Colonel Abbey by an attack on the enemy's rear."
He rubbed his hands together delightedly as the officer rode off to give the order.
"Do you know the enemy's position now?" he asked Jack. "He's the nut, and Abbey and I are the crackers. You've done good work. This is the second time within twenty-four hours that the information you have obtained has rescued us from a situation of a good deal of danger. Did you learn what General Harkness's plans were?"
"He intends moving at once to Bremerton, sir," said Jack. "The enemy, as nearly as I could guess, was heading for that place, planning to cross the line by the Mardean road, and then swing cast to Bremerton."
"Right! That's what they must intend to do. Well, I reckon they will find we're ready for them, and that we'll hold a position that the umpires will have to give us credit for."
The brigade was already in motion while they spoke. The men had bivouacked in their lines, as they had marched, and the whole section of country was lighted with their fires. In the faint light of dawn, growing stronger every minute now, the twinkling fires had a strange and ghost-like effect.
"Looks like the real thing, doesn't it?" asked General Bean. "I wish I'd had such a chance when I was a boy as you have now. We don't ever want another war—but there's no use acting as if it was beyond the range of possibility, and the next best thing to not fighting at all is knowing how to do it and getting it over quickly when it does become inevitable. If I had my way these maneuvers would take place in a score of different parts of the country every year. It isn't asking much to ask the militia to turn out for one week of the fifty-two, and a week of this sort of thing is worth a year of ordinary drill and theory work in armories. I don't mean that the drill isn't useful; it is. But it isn't everything, as we've seemed inclined to think. This sort of work, and constant practice at the ranges is what makes soldiers. These fellows, if they ever go to a real war, won't have to work any harder than my brigade has had to work in the last few hours. They're so tired now that they haven't got enough energy to know they are tired. They'd just as soon march as rest—and that's the way they ought to be. Do 'em good!"
Jack led the way of Colonel Jones's regiment into Newville, and then turned down the pike. The firing in front was very sharp now. And soon it was redoubled, as the advance of the main body of General Bean's brigade came into touch with the Blue troops who had so decidedly worried Abbey during the night.
Finally, on the crest of a hill which overlooked the valley beneath, Jack stopped the car.
"This is a splendid chance to see a battle on a small scale, Tom," he said. "There's nothing else for us to do now—we might as well take a look at things."
There was light enough now to make it worth while to stop and look on. Abbey's men were dismounted. In a field a mile or so back of the line of battle they could see the horses of his regiment, hobbled, and under guard. Before them, lower down, was the enemy, doing little of the firing, and with his real strength pretty well masked. And, as they knew, Bean's troops were advancing slowly, ready to take them in the rear, and cut them off.
"Where are the umpires?" asked Tom.
"They're somewhere around—trust them for that!" said Jack. "They're not only supposed to umpire, but they've got to make a detailed report of all the operations to the War Department, and criticize everything that both armies do, too. The firing brought them up as soon as it began, you may be sure."
Slowly but steadily and surely the drama unfolded itself before their fascinated eyes. They could see the slow advance of Abbey's dismounted troopers as soon as the firing in the enemy's rear convinced them that the support they had been awaiting had come at last. And before long the enemy was completely surrounded by a chain of Red troops, firing steadily. It lasted for nearly twenty minutes and then a bugle blew, over to their right, and in another moment the "Cease Firing" call had passed from regiment to regiment. The appeal to the umpires had been made, and now the troops that had been seeking all possible cover showed themselves, that the umpires might inspect the position and see whether there was any possible chance for the entrapped regiments of the Blue army to extricate themselves.
"They hung on too long," said Jack. "They ought to have begun their retreat before daylight. Then they might have been able to fall back and slip away and around to join the main Blue army at Mardean. I'm afraid they'll all be written down as captured now."
Jack was right in his idea, too. The umpires, after a careful inspection of the situation, decided that General Bean's tactics had been successful.
"You are to be congratulated, General," said a Brigadier General of the regular army, the chief umpire, riding up to the militia commander. "A very neat evolution, carefully planned and worked out. We were inclined to think that they had fooled you. Abbey was in a bad way until you came up. But you came out very well."
Jack Danby's clever scouting had changed the entire situation. The capture of his two regiments made General Bliss's situation decidedly precarious. His case was not hopeless yet, by any means, since, as the attacking force, the Blue army had been the stronger to begin with, because the War Department had so arranged matters that the advantage of position favored the Red forces sufficiently to make up for the superior force of General Bliss. General Bean's quick following up of the information Jack had given, however, had enabled the Red army to equalize the forces of the contending armies, and General Harkness, who threw a cavalry brigade into Bremerton within three hours of the timely warning Jack sent him, was now in no danger of being forced to fight on ground where his original advantage of position would be transferred to the enemy.
Now the position was one of open tactics. The lines were drawn, and some sort of a battle would have to be fought, theoretically, before further movements were in order. With Bremerton as his centre, General Harkness and his army lay directly across the line of the Blue advance, already across the border at Mardean, and seeking, or intending, rather, to seek the control of the railroad at Fessenden Junction, a dozen miles back of Bremerton.
The Junction was the key to the situation now, so far as the hopes of the invading forces were concerned. Its possession would, theoretically, cut the defenders off from their base of supplies, and, once it was captured, General Bliss would force the Red army immediately to fall back and occupy the defenses of the capital city itself, since the railroad would enable him to cut off its supplies and advance his troops against it with great speed. That would mean the immediate abandonment of any offensive tactics on the part of General Harkness, and would make up for the capture of the two regiments that General Bean had sent into Bremerton as prisoners of war.
But there seemed little chance of an engagement on Tuesday. Ever since noon the day before, when hostilities had begun, both armies had been constantly on the march. There had been severe fighting, and the plans of the commanders had involved the rapid movement of considerable bodies of troops. As a result, the troops on both sides were nearly exhausted. In the first place, they did not have the stamina that is the portion of regular troops. They were, in the main, militiamen, clerks, lawyers, brokers, and men of that sort, who do not have the chance of regular exercise, and who do not keep such strict hours as do trained soldiers.
"There'll be no fighting until to-morrow, in my opinion," said Durland, when Jack and Tom reported to him; "it's a pretty situation as it stands now, but these fellows can't do any more. Bean's brigade in particular must be about ready to drop. I never saw troops worked harder. They've done mighty well, and, while there won't be any formal arrangement to that effect, I suppose, I guess that both generals will understand that they can't accomplish any more without some rest. They'd have to recognize that in a war, for the wise general never requires his men to fight when exhausted, except in the case of attack."
The Scouts retained their headquarters in Bremerton, which was now, after the abandonment of Hardport, headquarters for the Red army, also. But General Harkness had his headquarters in tents, despising the chance to use the small hotel of the town. He was exceedingly busy with his plans. General Bean had come in from the lines facing the enemy, who had been forced, reluctantly enough, to shift their base of attack, so that Newville was the focus of their semi-circular advance. Other brigade commanders and other high officers with them had also come in, and for the first time since hostilities had begun, General Harkness was able to consult with his subordinate officers.
"I guess the strategy of the campaign for the next two days will be pretty well worked out about now," said Durland, glancing over toward the tent of General Harkness, from which the smoke of the cigars and pipes of the officers was curling.
Before General Harkness's tent two orderlies were waiting. Now, suddenly, one of them, evidently hearing a call inside, answered it, and a few seconds later went off. He returned presently with a young officer of militia, and a few minutes later that officer came over to the Scout headquarters.
"Captain Durland?" he began, then broke off. "Great Scott!" he cried, "it's my old friend the Scout-Master, isn't it? I had no idea it was your Troop that was doing so well here."
"Jim Burroughs! Is that really you? I'm glad to see you!" exclaimed Durland.
Jack Danby, Tom Binns, Pete Stubbs and the rest of the Scouts, with happy memories of their days at Eagle Lake, and of the time when they had turned out in the woods at night to search for Burroughs and Bess Benton, crowded around to greet the young militia officer.
"I'm a lieutenant in the Sixteenth Regiment," said Burroughs. "Captain Durland, you're wanted in the General's tent. I went there to make a report, and he asked me to tell you to come to him at once."
Then the Scouts and Burroughs, who had nothing else to do for the time, began to exchange reminiscences and talk over old times.
"I've been hearing a lot about the good work a Scout called Danby was doing in one of the new scouting autos," said Jim Burroughs, "but somehow I didn't have any idea that it was a Boy Scout they were talking of. But I might have guessed it! If it hadn't been for you when we had the forest fires up at the lake, Camp Benton would have been wiped out."
"Oh, I guess you'd have managed all right with the guides," said Jack. "You always try to make out that I do more than I do, Jim. You must be trying to give me a swelled head."
"No danger of that, I guess," said Burroughs, laughing. "You're pretty level-headed, young man. By the way, I heard you had some trouble lately with a man called Broom. Anything in that?"
Jack's face darkened. Jim was bringing up a painful subject. But Pete Stubbs spoke up for him.
"Trouble?" he said. "Well, I guess yes, Mr. Burroughs! You heard about how Jack broke up the plot to wreck the train and rob it when he and Tom Binns were on a hike together?"
Jim nodded.
"Well, Broom was mixed up with that gang in some fashion. Then, afterward, we found that he was really after Jack. You know all about Jack's queer life up at Woodleigh—about Old Dan and all that?"
"I know that Jack never knew much about himself—his real name and who his mother and father were. You're still trying to find out about all that, aren't you, Jack?"
"You bet I am!" said Jack, his face lighting up at the thought. "And I'm going to do it, too!"
"Well, this Broom," Pete Stubbs went on, "was trying to find out where Jack had gone from Woodleigh. He didn't know that our Jack was the one he was looking for, or we don't know what he'd have done. So he had a double reason to be after him, though all he knew was that Jack might give dangerous evidence against those pals of his who were mixed up with the train business."
"I see! He was really playing against himself, without knowing it, wasn't he?"
"Yes. That was the funny part of it. Well, Broom and some other crooked people got an old gentleman and his daughter to trust them. The old gentleman, whose name was Burton, was looking for a boy, his brother's son, who was kidnaped when he was a baby. We think it may be Jack, and we're going to try to find out. Broom made the Burtons think that he could find the boy they were looking for, and he got a lot of money out of them."
"Gee, Pete, that sounds pretty interesting! Was that how the trouble came with Broom?"
"One of the ways, yes. When we were down at the shore a little while ago they tried to get hold of Jack. One night there was a pretty bad storm, and that was the night they picked out. Jack and I, with Mr. Durland and Dick Crawford, went out to rescue the Burtons, who had been left on their yacht, and when we got back some of us caught Broom and a friend of his. But they were rescued afterward by the sailors who had quit the yacht, and Jack raced into Wellbourne, and got most of them arrested. But Broom got away, in some fashion, after they had taken him to jail. So we don't know what's become of him."
"How about the Burtons, Pete? Have you found out yet whether they're really Jack's long-lost relatives or not?"
"No, not yet. Mr. Burton was terribly ill after the wreck of his yacht. He was exposed to the sea and the wind for a long time that night, you see, and as soon as he could be moved, he was sent to Europe by his doctor. Until they get back we sha'n't be able to tell for certain."
"I'm glad they're over there, anyhow," said Jack, breaking in. "I think they're safe from Broom over there."
"I'll tell you someone that isn't glad, though," said red-headed Pete Stubbs, mischievously. "That's Dick Crawford!"
The Assistant Scout-Master, who hadn't heard the conversation that had preceded Pete's mischievous remark, came up just then.
"What is it that doesn't make me glad like everyone else?" asked Dick, unsuspiciously, and everyone laughed.
"Discovered, Dick!" cried Jim Burroughs, laughing. "I hear that a certain beautiful young lady has charmed you—the one man I knew that I thought was proof against the ladies!"
Dick flushed furiously, but he saw that there was no use in attempting to deny the charge. He seized Pete Stubbs, jestingly, by the neck, however, and shook him hard.
"I've a good mind to give you the licking of your young life, you red-headed rascal!" he cried, but there was no malice in his tone, and Pete knew that the threat would never be carried out.
"I didn't do anything but tell the truth," protested Pete. "Let go of me, Dick! If it wasn't true, you wouldn't be so mad!"
"He's right, Dick, my boy," said Burroughs, much amused. "We've caught you with the goods. It's nothing to be ashamed of—we all do it, sooner or later, you know. You've done well to escape the charms of the other sex so long, it seems to me."
Then the Scouts began to drift away, and Dick and Jim Burroughs were left alone.
"Did they tell you of the way Jack's been pursued by this fellow Broom?" asked Dick.
"They told me enough to worry me, Dick. We mustn't let anything happen to that boy."
"I'd a good deal rather have something happen to me, Jim. But he's shown that he's pretty well able to take care of himself. Down at the beach there we all helped, but he was the one who really beat them, after all, when it came to the point. They were mighty determined. I think myself that they know who he is, although Jack himself and some of the others don't. But my idea is that there is a very queer secret about him, that they know all about it, and that they think it is to their advantage to keep Jack from learning the truth and also to keep those who may be looking for him from finding him."
"How about these Burtons, Dick? Do you really think that Jack is the boy they're looking for, or is that just one of Pete's wild guesses?"
"Miss Burton and I have talked that over two or three times, and while we're not sure, owing to Mr. Burton's illness, which made it impossible for us to discover certain things which would probably have made matters clear, we both agree that it looks very much as if Jack were the one. She thinks so, anyway, and she's quite prepared to acknowledge him as her cousin."
"Is she pretty, Dick, you sly old fox?"
"She certainly is, Jim! You can't tease me about her. I'm crazy about her, and I don't care who knows it. But she'd never look at me, I know that!"
"You can't tell, Dick. They're funny that way. You'd never think that Bess Benton would have any use for me, but we're engaged, and we're going to be married in a few months. Never give up hope, old chap! You've got as good a chance as anyone else. What more do you want?"
"Well, I'm not going to worry about that now, anyhow, Jim. She'll be away for some time yet, I'm afraid. And I've got to wait until I'm doing better than I am now before I can even think about getting engaged, much less married."
"You can think about it as much as you like, Dick, and it will do you good. The more you think about it, the harder you'll work and the better you'll get on. I've found that out, and I guess it's true with most of us."
"I guess the council's over, Jim. Here comes Captain Durland, and the other officers seem to be leaving, too. I wonder what's doing."
"Nothing much, probably. But I'll leave you to find out and get back to my regiment."