Even a casual observer could have told that an auto had had some part in dragging the log to the place where it blockaded the road.  In the dust were many marks of the big rubber tires and even the imprint of a rope, which had been used to tow the tree trunk.

“What fo’ yo’ t’ink any one put dat log dere?” asked the colored man as he followed Tom.  Boomerang, the mule, so called because Eradicate said you never could tell what he was going to do, opened his eyes lazily and closed them again.  “I don’t know why, Rad, unless they wanted to wreck an automobile or a wagon.  Maybe tramps did it for spite.”

“Maybe some one done it to make yo’ hab trouble, Mistah Swift.”

“No, I hardly think so.  I don’t know of any one who would want to make trouble for me, and how would they know I was coming this way—­”

Tom suddenly checked himself.  The memory of the scene at the auction came back to him and he recalled what Andy Foger had said about “’getting even.”

“Which way did dat auto go?” resumed Eradicate.

“It came from down the road,” answered Tom, not completing the sentence he had left unfinished.  “They dragged the log up to the foot of the hill and left it.  Then the auto went down this way.”  It was comparatively easy, for a lad of such sharp observation as was Tom, to trace the movements of the vehicle.

“Den if it’s down heah, maybe we cotch ’em,” suggested the colored man.

The young inventor did not answer at once.  He was hurrying along, his eyes on the telltale marks.  He had proceeded some distance from the place where the log was when he uttered a cry.  At the same moment he hurried from the road toward a thick clump of bushes that were in the ditch alongside of the highway.  Reaching them, he parted the leaves and called: 

“Here’s the auto, Rad!”

The colored man ran up, his eyes wider open than ever.  There, hidden amid the bushes, was a large touring car.

“Whose am dat?” asked Eradicate.

Tom did not answer.  He penetrated the underbrush, noting where the broken branches had been bent upright after the forced entrance of the car, the better to hide it.  The young inventor was, seeking some clew to discover the owner of the machine.  To this end he climbed up in the tonneau and was looking about when some one burst in through the screen of bushes and a voice cried:  “Here, you get out of my car!”

“Oh, is it your car, Andy Foger?” asked Tom calmly as he recognized his squint-eyed rival.  “I was just beginning to think it was.  Allow me to return your wrench,” and he held out the one he had picked up near the log.  “The next time you drag trees across the road,” went on the lad in the tonneau, facing the angry and dismayed Andy, “I’d advise you to post a notice at the top of the hill, so persons riding down will not be injured.”  “Notice—­ road—­hill—­logs!” stammered Andy, turning red under his freckles.