Billy waited until the car had started. He saw that the chauffeur was making a turn in the square, preparatory to taking the back track as he had been instructed.
The garage man stood gaping on the walk, and staring after the maroon car. Billy thrust out his hand and waved the paper in the air. The man’s jaws came together with a snap. The boy was almost certain that he had observed the waving paper.
Therefore Billy let it float back into the road. He even had the satisfaction of seeing the man step into the roadway to pick it up before the motor car struck a very swift pace. The next moment the shadow of the trees and houses shut out Billy Speedwell’s view of the spot.
CHAPTER X
JOSIAH SOMES ON THE WARPATH
Dan Speedwell had gone back to Riverdale with his young friends in a much disturbed state of mind. That anybody should be mean enough to have tried to utterly ruin the racing car which he and Billy had bought of Maxey Solomons, not only angered Dan, but hurt him. Like his brother he suspected who the person was who had chopped down the derrick, and sent it crashing over the edge of the cliff to the bank of the river.
It was eleven o’clock when he reached home. He and Billy were usually astir before three each morning, and with the younger boy absent Dan would have all the milking and other chores to do by himself. He did not propose to arouse his father until about time to start with the milk wagons for Riverdale.
He put away his motorcycle, took his axe and a lantern, and started for the small woodlot that was a part of the Speedwell farm. That day, when cutting the two timbers that had now fallen over the cliff beside the river road, Dan had marked several other oak trees of practical use in this emergency.
“We’ll not go to school in the morning,” decided the older brother; “but we’ll rig another derrick and get that car out upon the road before more harm is done.”
Dan went along the county road to the bars and climbed over them into the few acres of timber Mr. Speedwell owned. He had been hunting ’coons and ’possums on many a night and was not afraid to fell a tree by lamp-light. He cut away some of the brush, chose the direction in which he wished the tree to fall, and set to work with the axe.