In general, Tom found the tramp willing enough to answer his questions, though some were sullen, and returned only surly growls to his inquiries.
"I guess I'll have to give it up and go back home," he decided one night. But there was a small town, not many miles from Shopton, which he had not yet visited, and he resolved to try there before returning. Accordingly, the next morning found him inquiring of the police authorities in Meadton. But no tramps had been arrested in the last month, and no one had seen anything of a tramp like Happy Harry or three mysterious men in an automobile.
Tom was beginning to despair. Riding along a silent road, that passed through a strip of woods, he was trying to think of some new line of procedure, when the silence of the highway, that, hitherto, had resounded only with the muffled explosions of his machine, was broken by several exclamations.
"Now, Boomerang, yo' might jest as well start now as later," Tom heard a voice saying--a voice he recognized well. "Yo' hab got t' do dis yeah wuk, an' dere ain't no gittin' out ob it. Dis yeah wood am got to be sawed, an' yo' hab got to saw it. But it am jest laik yo' to go back on yo' ole friend Eradicate in dis yeah fashion. I neber could tell what yo' were gwine t' do next, an' I cain't now. G'lang, now, won't yo'? Let's git dis yeah sawmill started."
Tom shut off the power and leaped from his wheel. From the woods at his left came the protesting "hee-haw" of a mule.
"Boomerang and Eradicate Sampson!" exclaimed the young inventor. "What can they be doing here?"
He leaned his motor-cycle against the fence and advanced toward where he had heard the voice of the colored man. In a little clearing he saw him. Eradicate was presiding over a portable sawmill, worked by a treadmill, on the incline of which was the mule, its ears laid back, and an unmistakable expression of anger on its face.
"Why, Rad, what are you doing?" cried Tom.
"Good land o' massy! Ef it ain't young Mistah Swift!" cried the darky. "Howdy, Mistah Swift! Howdy! I'm jest tryin' t' saw some wood, t' make a livin', but Boomerang he doan't seem t' want t' lib," and with that Eradicate looked reproachfully at the animal.
"What seems to be the trouble, and how did you come to own this sawmill?" asked Tom.