The next morning, before traintime, Vance went to
the post office and left the article on Black Jack
addressed to Terence Colby at the Cornish ranch.
The addressing was done on a typewriter, which completely
removed any means of identifying the sender.
Vance played with Providence in only one way.
He was so eager to strike his blow at the last possible
moment that he asked the postmaster to hold the letter
for three days, which would land it at the ranch on
the morning of the birthday. Then he went to
the train.
His self-respect was increasing by leaps and bounds.
The game was still not won, but, starring with absolutely
nothing, in six days he had planted a charge which
might send Elizabeth’s twenty-four years of labor
up in smoke.
He got off the train at Preston, the station nearest
the ranch, and took a hired team up the road along
Bear Creek Gorge. They debouched out of the Blue
Mountains into the valley of the ranch in the early
evening, and Vance found himself looking with new
eyes on the little kingdom. He felt the happiness,
indeed, of one who has lost a great prize and then
put himself in a fair way of winning it back.
They dipped into the valley road. Over the tops
of the big silver spruces he traced the outline of
Sleep Mountain against the southern sky. Who but
Vance, or the dwellers in the valley, would be able
to duly appreciate such beauty? If there were
any wrong in what he had done, this thought consoled
him: the ends justified the means.
Now, as they drew closer, through the branches he
made out glimpses of the dim, white front of the big
house on the hill. That big, cool house with
the kingdom spilled out at its feet, the farming lands,
the pastures of the hills, and the rich forest of
the upper mountains. Certainty came to Vance
Cornish. He wanted the ranch so profoundly that
the thought of losing it became impossible.
But while he had been working at a distance, things
had been going on apace at the ranch, a progress which
had now gathered such impetus that he found himself
incapable of checking it. The blow fell immediately
after dinner that same evening. Terence excused
himself early to retire to the mysteries of a new
pump-gun. Elizabeth and Vance took their coffee
into the library.
The night had turned cool, with a sharp wind driving
the chill through every crack; so a few sticks were
sending their flames crumbling against the big back
log. The lamp glowing in the corner was the only
other light, and when they drew their chairs close
to the hearth, great tongues of shadows leaped and
fell on the wall behind them. Vance looked at
his sister with concern. There was a certain
complacency about her this evening that told him in
advance that she had formed a new plan with which
she was well pleased. And he had come to dread
her plans.
She always filled him with awe—and never
more so than tonight, with her thin, homely face illuminated
irregularly and by flashes. He kept watching
her from the side, with glances.
