"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