itself and Joe beneath the car behind the rented jeep. An instant later Frank heard the first of the enormous logs crash onto the ground where he'd been standing. He glanced to his right in time to spot a pair of hobnailed boots land in the street and sprint away.
''Joe, are you okay?'' Frank shouted as two more logs rolled off the truck, causing a noise like thunder. The door of the pool hall had swung open and half a dozen customers came out.
Joe's answer was a long time coming. When the logs finally stopped rolling, Frank heard him say shakily, 'That was no accident. Let's get that guy!"
Joe must have seen him, too, Frank realized,
Deadfall
rolling out from under the truck and rising to a crouch as he inspected the storefronts along Main Street.
There were a lot of people on the street now, and it would be impossible to identify their attacker. ''Forget it, Joe," Frank said, his voice thick with disappointment.
''I guess you're right," Joe said, joining him. "But we can look in the truck. The creep split so fast he might have left something behind to identify him."
''You check the flatbed," Frank agreed, "ril explain to the people on the street what happened."
Five minutes later, after Frank asked someone to call the sheriff about the fallen logs, he returned to the truck and called to Joe. "Find anything yet?" he asked.
"You bet." Joe emerged from the cab holding a large set of bolt cutters and a pair of work gloves. "These were on the flatbed," Joe explained. "They're probably what he used to break the chain. I guess the gloves mean there won't be any fingerprints. There's an open toolbox in the back of the cab, so I guess he stole them from there."
"Unless the guy was a Horizon employee and the toolbox was his," Frank pointed out grimly.
"But why go after us?" Joe protested. "Did someone see us hanging around Buster's truck? Are they trying to keep us from investigating Buster's murder?"
THE HAI^DY BOYS CA5EFILES
Frank shook his head, watching Sheriff Ferris stride angrily toward them from his offices up the street. ''Who knows?" Frank said. "For now, let's just concentrate on getting through Ferris's interrogation. Then we can go home and sleep on it. Unbelievably, the logs just dented the jeep a little bit."
'4 doubt if the rental company will see it that way," Joe pointed out. ''It's a good thing we signed up for extra insurance."
Callie Shaw's cry of "Come and get it!" was the first thing Frank heard the next morning when he awoke. He sat up in bed and glanced out the window at the light rainfall, all the time inhaling the wonderful odor of raspberry pancakes.
At first Frank thought Stan must be cooking breakfast again. Then he remembered that Stan had spent the night in jail. He sat up in bed, rubbed his eyes, and looked at Joe asleep in the other twin bed. "Rise and shine," he grumbled good-naturedly. "Today's the day we figure out our case."
"Right." Joe sat up abruptly. "I dreamed we'd solved it already. Easy come, easy go."
When Frank and Joe entered the big, well-equipped kitchen in Stan's cozy cottage, they found Callie and Edgar Morrison, the representative from Save the Redwoods headquarters, just sitting down to breakfast.
Deadfall
"About time you guys wandered in," Callie scolded. "Edgar's been up since six o'clock."
"We had a hard day at the office yesterday," Joe kidded Callie. "Thanks for letting us get our beauty sleep."
"Hurry up and eat." Callie loaded pancakes onto their plates. "Stan wiU be here in about fifteen minutes."
"What? He's out of jail?" Joe asked through a mouthful of pancake.
"I got him out," Edgar said. "It wasn't all that easy. But working last night and this morning, I finally wore down the sheriff by pointing out that he didn't really have enough evidence to hold Stan. FinaUy the sheriff agreed to let him go if I stayed out of his face. All Stan had to do was promise to stay in town until the investigation's over."
"Wow." Joe took a more careful look at