“I’ll say we did!” ruefully murmured Ned, rubbing his head that had come in contact with one of the upright supports of the windshield.
By this time the three boys were out in the rain, standing on the muddy road and looking at the tree they had struck. It lay almost squarely across the highway—a dead sapling which had broken in two at the crash of the front wheels of the car.
“Um! Not as bad as I thought,” murmured Jerry when, in the light of a powerful searchlight he carried, he had seen that neither front wheel was damaged. “Not even a puncture.”
“The tree was rotten, or it might have been worse,” said Bob.
Ned had gone forward to walk around the obstruction and what he discovered caused him to exclaim:
“That tree was brought here and left across the road on purpose. Some one tried to wreck us!”
“Then it was Nixon’s crowd!” asserted Bob. “They knew we would have to come this way to get to Newton, and they put this tree here. There’s where they dragged it from!” he added.
He pointed to a place alongside the highway from which, it was evident, the dead sapling had been brought.
“A dirty trick!” murmured Bill Cromley. “Wait until I get my hands on that Noddy Nixon!”
“He’s far enough off by now,” said Jerry. “Well, fellows, if we can get the tree out of the way we can go on, I guess. We don’t seem to be damaged any.”