"You're wanted for duty again, Jack," said Captain Durland, when he returned from the council of war in General Harkness's tent.
"I'm all ready, sir," said Jack. "Gee, I think I've had it easy, riding around in an automobile, when all the rest of the fellows were scouting on foot."
"You'll make up for it, if you have been having it any easier," said the Scout-Master, with a smile. "This job that you've got on your hands now means a whole lot of work. You're to go to Fessenden Junction first, and make a detail map of the tracks about the depot there. I don't know just why it's wanted, or why it wasn't done before, but that's none of our business. Then when that's done, you're to bring it back here. After that I guess you'll have plenty more to do. But I won't tell you about the rest of it until you've finished that."
"Am I to go alone?" asked Jack.
"No. I want it done as quickly as possible, so you'd better take Peter Stubbs and Tom Binns along with you. Divide the work up and it won't take you very long. That's the easy part of it."
The Boy Scouts had studied map-making from a practical, working point of view, and it was no sort of a job for the three of them to make the required map.
"I see why they need this map, all right," said Jack. "There are a whole lot of new tracks in here, and the whole yard has been changed around within the last few weeks. That explains it. The old maps wouldn't be of much use for anyone who was depending on them for quick understanding of the railroad situation here."
"Now," said Durland, when they returned, "I've got the most difficult task that's been assigned to you yet, Jack. You've got only about one chance in a thousand of succeeding in it, but it's my own plan, and I'll be very pleased and proud if you do accomplish it. I want two of you to take the car, get inside the enemy's lines, with or without the car, as far as you can, and then get yourselves taken prisoners. What we want is for you to be near enough to General Bliss's headquarters to get some sort of an inkling of the nature of the attack that will be made.
"There is a dangerous weakness of the position here, which could hardly have been foreseen when the campaign was laid out in advance. That is, anyone getting control of Tryon Creek, which is practically dry in the summer, is in a position to dominate one side of the prospective battlefield. There are two lines of attack open to General Bliss. If he chooses Tryon Creek we must keep him from occupying it at all costs. To do that we would have to uncover the other side—the road from Mardean."
"I'm to try to find out which line of attack they will follow, then, sir? Is that it?" asked Jack.