After her breakfast she walked down to the corral to talk to Bradley about the saddle horses. Not that she had anything to suggest, but because she was nervous. Laramie was intruding more and more into her mind; every time she banished him he returned, frequently bringing someone else with him. Between the perplexities and the men that beset her, Kate was not happy. And when, after a ramble along the creek, she returned to the house, she was not surprised to find that her father, coming from the breakfast table, hardly responded to her greeting. He was much engrossed in cutting off the end of a cigar as he passed her and in walking to the fireplace to find a match. But the matches were not on the mantelpiece, where they belonged, and this annoyed him. If he said nothing, it did not deceive Kate as to his feelings. She hastened to hand him the matchbox from the table. He took it without saying a word, but he slammed it back to its accustomed place with a silent and ominous emphasis. She knew it was coming. What surprised her was that she felt no further inclination to shrink from the moment of reckoning she dreaded. Doubleday, his cigar lighted, seated himself in his heavy chair beside the fireplace. "What kind of a trip had you, father?" Kate, as she asked, made a pretense of arranging the papers and magazines on the table. There was little promise of amiability in her father's answer; "What d'y' mean," he asked. "Did you get your notes extended?" "Yes." His heavy jaw and teeth, after the word, snapped like a steel trap. "Did you go to Abe Hawk's funeral?" He flung the question at her like a hammer. "Were you told I did?" Kate asked. "Rode to the graveyard with him, didn't you?" Kate saw there was no use softening her words: "Father," she said instantly and firmly, "the night I came out from town in the storm I got lost. I got on the wrong side of the creek. My horse gave out; I was dead with the cold." Her father flung his cigar into the fire: "What's that got to do with it?" he broke in harshly. "Just wait a moment." "I don't want any long-winded story." "I won't tell any." "I won't listen to you," he shouted. "Answer my question." Her eyes kindled: "You may call it whatever you like, but you will listen to my answer in the way I make it. When I'd given up hope of saving my life, and my horse was drifting, he fell into a dugout. And in the dugout were two men--Abe Hawk and Jim Laramie. They thought there was a party of men with me. They seized me. They got ready to fight. I was at their mercy." "What dugout?" demanded Doubleday. His husky tone seemed to indicate he was cooling a little; the question took her off her guard. "At the old mine bridge."