Otherwise all his
plans might be useless and his seeds of destruction fall on barren soil.
He was intensely afraid of that, anyway. His hope was to draw the boy and
the sheriff together on the birthday and guide the two explosives until
they met on the subject of the death of Black Jack. Either Terry would
kill the sheriff, or the sheriff would kill Terry. Vance hoped for the
latter, but rather expected the former to be the outcome, and if it were,
he was inclined to think that Elizabeth would sooner or later make
excuses for Terry and take him back into the fold of her affections.
Accordingly, his work was, in the few days that intervened, to plant all
the seeds of suspicion that he could. Then, when the denouement came,
those seeds might blossom overnight into poison flowers.
In the late afternoon he took up his position in an easy chair on the big
veranda. The mail was delivered, as a rule, just before dusk, one of the
cow-punchers riding down for it. Grave fears about the loss of that all-
important missive to Terry haunted him, for the postmaster was a
doddering old fellow who was quite apt to forget his head.
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