JACK DANBY'S GOOD NEWS
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."