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 ca