The Boy Scout Automobilists Part 8

The telegraph wires, which never slept, were clicking busily when the Scout-Master and his a.s.sistant 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 d.i.c.k Crawford at his elbow.

"I'm taking this thing too seriously, d.i.c.k," 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 b.u.mp into any considerable force of the Blue army to-night."

"I guess we're all taking it pretty seriously, sir," said d.i.c.k. "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, d.i.c.k," 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sed 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."