CHAPTER IX
JACK DANBY'S GOOD NEWS
Hardly daring to breathe lest they be heard, the two Scouts waited whilethe 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 whenthe last stragglers had passed their hiding-place.
"Gee," cried Jack, "that's certainly a surprise to me! Say, Tom, do youknow what they've done? They've buffaloed General Bean, and fooled himcompletely--and our whole army! They've left not more than two regimentsthere. Of course, that was a stronger force than Abbey had, but theymanaged it so cleverly that they're holding up General Bean and hiswhole brigade."
"How can that be, Jack? I thought the umpires decided on the strengthand the probable result of any encounter between the armies--and theysurely couldn't decide that two regiments could beat a brigade?"
"No--but if the two regiments masked their real weakness so cleverlythat they weren't attacked by the brigade, there wouldn't be anythingfor the umpires to decide--and that's what I'm afraid of. That's clevertactics, you see, and they'd get the credit for it, of course--andthey'd deserve it, too. Well, here's where we stop loafing. We've got tocut a telegraph wire somewhere and get word of the true state of affairsto General Harkness. He can't wait until full daylight to move histroops now."
"What good will cutting a wire do, Jack?"
"Lots of good, Tom. This car has a regular apparatus for cutting in on awire, and a set of sending and receiving instruments. If we cut thewire, it goes dead until we connect it with our instruments. Then onlythe section beyond where we cut in is dead. There's a telegraph wiredirect from Hardport to Smithville. Cutting the wire is legitimate, evenin the war game, because it's necessary to do the actual cutting. Itisn't like the railroad, which can be destroyed theoretically, and leftactually ready for use."
Jack had started his car, still running through the fields when thetroops had passed, and now, looking carefully at the telegraph poles andwires, he dropped from his seat and, with wire cutters and repair tools,and his pocket set of instruments, he proceeded to put into practice thetheory that he had explained to Tom. He cut the wire neatly andcarefully. Then he connected the broken end with his instruments,completing the circuit again, and began calling for General Harkness'sheadquarters 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 youalways seem to know just how to do things like that and I never do."
"Got 'em!" cried Jack, enthusiastically, at that moment, and began atonce to send his important news.
"I want to get permission now to go on and tell General Bean what we'velearned," he explained to Tom as he still waited after sending hismessage. "Then, as soon as I get it, I'll splice this wire and fix it sothat the line will be open for regular service again. We don't want tointerrupt traffic by telegraph or telephone, if we can help it. But thiswon't make much difference at this hour of the night. I don't believethat 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 wastold to use his own best judgment, and that General Harkness would relyupon him to get the highly important information he had sent toheadquarters to General Bean.
"I thought we'd be allowed to do that," said Jack, after he had put thewire in order again. In the car there was plenty of telegraph wire forrepairing lines cut by the enemy, so the task was not at all a difficultone.
"Gee, Jack," said Tom, "I've certainly learned one thing lately, andthat is that there's nothing you know that isn't likely to come in handysometime or another. I didn't know you knew as much as this abouttelegraphy."
"I've always been interested in it, Tom. It's so fascinating. You canuse all sorts of knowledge if you're in the army, too. Think of theengineers. They have to be able to build bridges, and destroy them, anderect fortifications without the proper materials. Not in this war, ofcourse, but if there was real fighting. These maneuvers are differentfrom the ordinary sort. They're not so cut and dried, and there aren'tso many rules. I've read about maneuvers when there were rules to governevery sort of situation that came up--in fact, surprising situationscouldn't come up, because everything that was to happen had been workedout ahead of time."
"This is better for us, isn't it, Jack? I mean, we're really learninghow a war would actually be fought."
"We're getting a pretty good idea of it, anyhow. It isn't a bit the wayI thought it was going to be."
"Well, we ought to be getting in touch with General Bean pretty soon, Ishould think."
"We've got another ten or twelve miles to drive yet. I took a prettywide swing around, thinking we'd avoid the enemy altogether. Instead ofthat, we bumped right into them. It's surely a good thing we had thatlittle engine trouble. We'd be prisoners right now if we'd been able togo on at full speed, because I don't believe we'd have been able to seethem in time to turn around and get away. And we got a much betterchance to see what they were up to, too."
As they approached General Bean's brigade the firing in the direction ofBremerton, where Colonel Abbey had encountered the enemy, began to beaudible again. It had died away for a time, and Jack had wonderedwhether Abbey had retired. The sound of the heavy rifle fire, however,with an occasional explosion of a shell to make it louder, reassuredhim.
Newville was deserted when they entered it, and Jack laughed. Not a Bluesoldier was in sight--and yet General Bean was waiting for fulldaylight, convinced that the main body of the Blue army was there.
"They certainly did make a clever shift," he said to Tom. "General Blisshas a reputation for moving quickly, and striking like a snake. Hecovers his movements well, and I'll bet that if we ever do have anotherwar, he'll cut a pretty big figure. Captain Durland says he's a realfighter, of the sort that was developed in the Civil War. Some of thebest fighters on both sides in that war, you know, were men who neverwent 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 WestPointers, 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'sperfectly true that Grant and Sherman had been in the regular army, butthey had resigned before the war, and they hadn't made good particularlybefore that, either in the army or afterward, when they went intobusiness. 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'swaiting brigade, eagerly looking for the enemy, were in sight. Timeafter time they were challenged and stopped, but Jack, despite questionsfrom officers and men, all eager for the news they were sure he wasbringing, since his exploits had already won him a considerablereputation in the Red army, refused to tell what he knew to anyone saveGeneral Bean himself. They did not have to go all the way to the rear ofthe army. General Bean himself, small, wiry, active and peppery, metthem soon after they had come into the midst of his lines. He was ridinghis big, black horse, and, although he had had no sleep that night, helooked fresh and ready for another day in the saddle.
"Hum," he said, pulling his moustache, as he listened to them, "theyfooled us, didn't they? Captain Jenks, you will give my compliments toColonel Jones, and instruct him to put his regiment in motion at once.We will occupy Newville, and then close in on the enemy, supportingColonel Abbey by an attack on the enemy's rear."
He rubbed his hands together delightedly as the officer rode off to givethe 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 thesecond time within twenty-four hours that the information you haveobtained has rescued us from a situation of a good deal of danger. Didyou learn what General Harkness's plans were?"
"He intends moving at once to Bremerton, sir," said Jack. "The enemy, asnearly as I could gu
ess, was heading for that place, planning to crossthe line by the Mardean road, and then swing cast to Bremerton."
"Right! That's what they must intend to do. Well, I reckon they willfind we're ready for them, and that we'll hold a position that theumpires will have to give us credit for."
The brigade was already in motion while they spoke. The men hadbivouacked in their lines, as they had marched, and the whole section ofcountry was lighted with their fires. In the faint light of dawn,growing stronger every minute now, the twinkling fires had a strange andghost-like effect.
"Looks like the real thing, doesn't it?" asked General Bean. "I wish I'dhad such a chance when I was a boy as you have now. We don't ever wantanother war--but there's no use acting as if it was beyond the range ofpossibility, and the next best thing to not fighting at all is knowinghow 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 differentparts of the country every year. It isn't asking much to ask the militiato turn out for one week of the fifty-two, and a week of this sort ofthing is worth a year of ordinary drill and theory work in armories. Idon'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 constantpractice at the ranges is what makes soldiers. These fellows, if theyever go to a real war, won't have to work any harder than my brigade hashad to work in the last few hours. They're so tired now that theyhaven't got enough energy to know they are tired. They'd just as soonmarch 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 thenturned down the pike. The firing in front was very sharp now. And soonit was redoubled, as the advance of the main body of General Bean'sbrigade came into touch with the Blue troops who had so decidedlyworried 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," hesaid. "There's nothing else for us to do now--we might as well take alook 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 ofbattle they could see the horses of his regiment, hobbled, and underguard. Before them, lower down, was the enemy, doing little of thefiring, and with his real strength pretty well masked. And, as theyknew, Bean's troops were advancing slowly, ready to take them in therear, and cut them off.
"Where are the umpires?" asked Tom.
"They're somewhere around--trust them for that!" said Jack. "They're notonly supposed to umpire, but they've got to make a detailed report ofall the operations to the War Department, and criticize everything thatboth armies do, too. The firing brought them up as soon as it began, youmay be sure."
Slowly but steadily and surely the drama unfolded itself before theirfascinated eyes. They could see the slow advance of Abbey's dismountedtroopers as soon as the firing in the enemy's rear convinced them thatthe support they had been awaiting had come at last. And before long theenemy was completely surrounded by a chain of Red troops, firingsteadily. It lasted for nearly twenty minutes and then a bugle blew,over to their right, and in another moment the "Cease Firing" call hadpassed from regiment to regiment. The appeal to the umpires had beenmade, and now the troops that had been seeking all possible cover showedthemselves, that the umpires might inspect the position and see whetherthere was any possible chance for the entrapped regiments of the Bluearmy to extricate themselves.
"They hung on too long," said Jack. "They ought to have begun theirretreat before daylight. Then they might have been able to fall back andslip away and around to join the main Blue army at Mardean. I'm afraidthey'll all be written down as captured now."
Jack was right in his idea, too. The umpires, after a careful inspectionof the situation, decided that General Bean's tactics had beensuccessful.
"You are to be congratulated, General," said a Brigadier General of theregular army, the chief umpire, riding up to the militia commander. "Avery neat evolution, carefully planned and worked out. We were inclinedto think that they had fooled you. Abbey was in a bad way until you cameup. But you came out very well."