"Danby," said Durland, "I'm going to entrust you with a piece of work that is so important that the whole result of the maneuvers may depend upon it. Do you think you can run that car?"

Jack, who had a positive genius for mechanical matters of all sorts, looked the strange looking car over carefully before he answered.

"It looks straight enough, sir," he said. "Self starter, I guess. And you ought to be able to go anywhere you like with those wheels. What is it that I am to do, sir?"

"I can explain better with these maps," said Durland. "Come close here, and I will show you what I mean."

Jack bent over the maps with the Scout-Master, and Durland began tracing a line with a sharp pencil.

"Here we are, in Bremerton," he said. "Now, about four miles across the State line is Hardport. You can see the smoke from its factories, and the railroad yards there, because it's quite an important little city.

Now, there is a straight road from here that leads there--the continuation of this very road we are on now. What I want you to do is to circle around"--he pointed on the map--"and strike into Hardport from the other side. Find out, if possible, what troops of the Blue army are in the neighborhood, and particularly along this main road. If they occupy it in force, report as quickly as possible. If they advance immediately after war is declared, return, but try to see if there is not some way in which our own troops can get behind them."

"Am I to go into Hardport itself, sir?"

"Yes. And you need not stop, if challenged. Your car is regarded as bullet proof, and the only way in which they can legitimately capture you is by stretching a rope or providing some sort of an obstruction that enables two of them to get a foot on your running board. Remember your rights, and don't surrender to a mere challenge from a sentry. And keep your hood well down, so that they won't recognize you."

"I understand, sir. What time am I to start from here?"

"Start as soon as you like. You'd better get off and circle pretty widely, so as to get used to the car. But don't cross the State line, whatever you do, before twelve o'clock. That is strictly against orders."

There was a lot of good-natured talk among the Scouts when they heard of the great chance to distinguish himself that had come to the a.s.sistant Patrol Leader of the Crows.

"Gee, Jack's lucky!" said one member of the Whip-poor-will Patrol.

"He is not!" defended Pete Stubbs, loyally. "He's a hard worker. He's spent a lot of his own time in the last year learnin' all about an automobile. He knows how to run one, and he knows how to fix it, too, if it goes wrong on a trip. That isn't luck, and don't you call it luck!"

"I didn't mean anything against Jack when I said he was lucky, Pete. No call to get so mad about it!"

"I'm not so mad, but it does get my goat to hear people say that everything that happens to Jack Danby that's good comes because he's lucky. I guess he isn't any luckier than any of the rest of us, but he sticks to the job harder."

No amount of coaxing, of course, would have induced Jack to tell what his orders were; and as a matter of fact, only one or two of the Scouts tried to find out. Durland had not even thought it necessary to warn Jack to be quiet, for he knew that Jack was on his honor as a Scout, and that nothing more was necessary to lead him to maintain a resolute silence on the subject of the strange scouting trip into the enemy's country which he was soon to begin.

"Good luck," cried the Scout-Master, finally, as Jack started off. "You know your orders--now make good!"

CHAPTER IV

IN THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY

Almost at the last moment Scout-Master Durland, or Captain Durland, as he was again for this week, had decided not to send Jack Danby on his trip into the enemy's country alone. Seated beside Jack, therefore, under the protective hood of the scout car, was little Tom Binns.

"Keep your eye on your watch, Tom," said Jack. "We don't want to make any mistake and cross the line too soon--but we don't want to be late, either. This job is too important to run any risks of bungling it. I'd hate to think that I'd been trusted with something really big for the first time and then fallen down on it."

"Where will you cross the line, Jack?" asked Tom. "I should think it would be pretty hard to tell just where the boundary was."

Jack pointed to a road map, on a slightly smaller scale than the one from which Captain Durland had given him his course, which was pasted right before his eyes on the metal dashboard of the car.

"I can't lose my way with that, Tom," he said. "See, there's a road that we're getting pretty near to now. It crosses the State line about six miles east of Bremerton, if you'll notice the map, at a little village called Mardean. That's all on this side of the line. They may be watching the road there, so what we want to do is to get where we can't be seen, and then, about a minute before noon, go ahead as fast as the car will carry us. That ought to take us through all right, even if they've got a guard on duty. Then we can circle around in a big sweep and come down to Hardport from behind. The country people ought to be able to tell us part of what we want to know, and we can confirm what they tell us by what we can see ourselves."

"They wouldn't lie to us, would they, Jack?"

"You couldn't call it regular lying if they gave us false information about their own army, Tom. Remember that this is supposed to be like a real war, and in a war the invading army wouldn't expect to get correct information from the people along the roads. On the contrary, they'd do their best to delay the enemy, and make all the trouble they could, and they'd be patriotic. So we've got to be mighty careful this next week about how we take any information we pick up in that fashion. If the people on the farms take the game seriously, and enter into the spirit of it, they'll do all they can to hara.s.s us and bother us."

Jack drove his car well and carefully, but made no great attempt to get high speed out of it, though it was, as he knew, capable of going three or four times as fast as he was driving it. But there is always a certain danger in driving an automobile at high speed, and Jack saw no use in taking any risk that was not necessary.

"You can go a lot faster than this, can't you, Jack?" asked Tom, as they bowled along easily, at little more than fifteen miles an hour.

"What's the use, Tom? We'll get to Mardean before we can cross the line, anyhow. I'll go fast enough then for a spell, if you're anxious for speed. Don't be impatient! We'll get all the speed you want before very long."

Jack was a true prophet, as one ought to be when he has the means of fulfilling the prophecy in his own hands. At Mardean, just out of sight of the line, they waited while the minutes dragged slowly by.

"One minute more!" cried Tom Binns, breathless with excitement and suspense.

"All right," said Jack, quietly. "Hold tight now, Tom! I'm going to let her out a bit."

Swiftly the grey car gathered speed. In a rush of dust, with horn blowing and exhaust sputtering behind them, the car shot over the line, and, just as a whistle boomed out the twelve o'clock dinner signal, Jack was in hostile territory. The war was on!

Behind them there was a confused shouting. The car was built so that it was easy to look behind.

"There was an outpost there," said Tom, as he looked back. "They're kicking up a tremendous fuss, Jack. I guess we rather put one over on them that time."

"We've got to put another one over on them in a hurry, then," said Jack, "or they'll put one over on us. Let me know as soon as that outpost is well out of sight, Tom. And keep your eyes skinned for any sign that they're after us with a motorcycle or anything like that, will you?"

"They're out of sight now--and there's nothing on the road. Hey, Jack, where are you going?"

For Jack, after a swift glance at his map, had run deliberately off the road, reducing speed considerably as he did so, but not so much that the car did not rattle around considerably as it left the smooth roadbed and plunged into a field that had not long since been ploughed.

"They'll telephone ahead of us, and they'll be waiting," Jack explained.

"I've got to cut through the fields here, so that we can get on another road where they won't be looking for us. Otherwise I'm afraid we wouldn't get very far before we ran into a trap that all our armor and all our speed wouldn't get us out of without capture. You don't want to lose this car on its first trip, do you, Tom?"

"Not by a good deal!" yelled Tom, who was beginning to feel the exhilaration of the wild, b.u.mping ride over the furrows of the field.

"It was sort of sudden, that's all, Jack; I wasn't expecting it, you see."

"I meant to tell you we'd do that, but I forgot. I had it all doped out.

See, we're coming to another road, now. This is a pretty big field, and it was marked accurately on that map. This whole section was surveyed and mapped especially for this war game."

"Say, if they do many things like that, it must cost something," said Tom.

"War's the most expensive thing in the world, Tom, and the next most expensive, I guess, is getting ready for it, and having such a strong army and navy that no one will want to fight you. But it pays to be ready for war, no matter how much it costs, for the country that isn't ready is always the one that has to fight when it least expects it. And fighting when you're not ready is the most expensive of all. It costs money and lives."

Then, with a sickening b.u.mp, the car took the road again, and Jack was heading straight for Hardport.

"Those wheels worked splendidly," he said. "And the car, too. An ordinary car would have b.u.mped itself to pieces a mile or so back, and this one is running just as easily as when we started. I suppose it cost a lot, but it was certainly worth it."

"Every time we hit a new furrow I thought we were going to break down,"

confessed Tom. "I was scared at first. But I soon decided that we were all right. But I don't believe, even if I knew how to drive a car, that I'd have the nerve to take it through a ploughed field that way."