"It suits me well enough to have the boy throw away his money," Wolverton said to himself. "It will only draw nearer the time when he will have to sue me for a favor."
That day Wolverton read in a St. Louis paper that wheat was steadily rising, and had already reached two dollars and six cents per bushel.
"I could make a fine thing of it if I had only received the Barton wheat at a dollar and a half a bushel," he reflected, regretfully. "If I had only the widow to deal with, I might have succeeded, for she knows nothing of business. But that confounded boy is always putting a spoke in my wheel. If he carries out his plan, and markets the wheat, it will set him on his feet for the year to come."
This reflection made Wolverton feel gloomy. There are some men who are cheered by the prosperity of their neighbors, but he was not one of them. He began to speculate as to whether there was any way of interfering with Bob's schemes. Generally when a man is seeking a way of injuring his neighbor he succeeds in finding one. This was the plan that suggested itself to Wolverton: If he could set the ferry-boat adrift when the grain was all stored it would float down stream, and the chances were against its being recovered. It would be mean, and even criminal, to be sure. For the first, Wolverton did not care; for the second, he would take care that no one caught him at it. He did not think of employing any one else in the matter, for he knew of no one he could trust; and he felt that he could do it more effectually than any agent, however trustworthy.
Wolverton was so full of the plan, which commended itself to him as both simple and effective, that he took a walk late in the evening from his house to the point on the creek where the boat was tethered.
Now, it so happened that Dan Woods, who had been employed all day, had occasion to go to the village in the evening to procure a few groceries from the village store. He delayed for a time, having met an old acquaintance, and it was half-past nine when he set out on his return homeward.
His way led him not only by the Burton homestead, but by the river bend where Bob kept his rowboat—the same point also where the ferry-boat was tied.
As he approached, he caught sight of a man's figure standing on the bank. Who it was he could not immediately distinguish on account of the darkness.
"It may be some one bent on mischief," he thought to himself. "I will watch him and find out, if I can, who it is."
He kept on his way stealthily till he was within a dozen feet, when he slipped behind a tree. Then it dawned upon him who it was.