THE ENEMY'S TRICK
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."