"Hardport—across the line," the staff man replied, as he paused a moment. A wide grin illuminated his features. "That's nerve for you, eh? The old man's pretty foxy. He's going to start us moving so that we'll begin crossing the State line on the stroke of twelve, and he'll fling a brigade into Hardport before two o'clock."
Durland whistled.
"That's fine, if it works," he remarked to Dick Crawford, later. "But Hardport practically is the key to the railroad situation, and it isn't conceivable that the Blues will leave it unguarded. I'm inclined to be a wee bit dubious about that."
However, as he reflected, it was really none of his business. He was responsible for his own Troop, not for the conduct of the campaign, and that let him out.
It was a hot, hazy day, when the sun was fully up, and the Scouts marched into Bremerton, to find it a sleepy, lazy, old-fashioned little town. Above a building in the center the national flag was floating, and next to it a Red standard. Durland turned the Troop over to Dick Crawford, with instructions to make a bivouac near the centre of the little place, and then walked over to the building where the flag was flying.
As he surmised, it had become unexpectedly brigade headquarters for the fourth brigade of the Red army, which had left Guernsey before the breakfast call had been sounded for most of the army, and had arrived too soon.
"Where is your brigade, Tomlinson?" he asked a young officer, who almost ran into him as he came out.
"Oh, hello, Durland!" said the officer, wheeling briskly to shake hands with the Scout-Master. "Why, we're hidden in the woods. Old Beansy's fuming and fretting because he's here too soon. The men are lying back there, but he's moved up here for brigade headquarters because it's a field telegraph station and he can talk as much as he likes with General Harkness."
"Your brigade commander is Beansy, I take it?" said Durland, with a grin.
"You're right, he is! General Beverly Bean, bless him! He'll want to see you, too, now that you've blundered into his territory. Go on up—third door to the left!"