“How did I get here, Lizzie?”
“I don’t know, Luther,” she replied. “I heard you fall on the doorstep. I never was so surprised. How did you come to be out—and without mittens too?”
She removed the wet towel from one of his hands, and he drew it away with a groan.
“I expect, Lizzie, it’s frozen. You better rub it with snow.”
The question of how he reached her house puzzled Luther throughout the long afternoon and evening, while they listened to the roar of the wind and talked of the unsheltered cattle in the many Kansas stalkfields.
“The only thing that kept our cattle from being out of doors was the fact that Jake had to go to Iowa and John had to take him to town,” Elizabeth had said at one point.
“Has Jake left for good?” Luther asked hesitatingly. He knew John’s unpopularity with the men who worked for him and was a little afraid to ask Elizabeth, who might be sensitive about it.
“No. Jake has lost his mother, but he’ll come back for the spring seeding. Jake’s a good man; he and John seem to get along pretty well.” It was Elizabeth’s turn to speak hesitatingly. She did not know how much Luther knew of John’s affairs with his men, nor what opinion Jake might have expressed to Luther.
“Jake’s a curious cub! He’s been your dog, Lizzie, ever since that school business. I’ve heard ’im tell it over twenty times.”
“I wish we could find another like him,” Elizabeth said wistfully. “John isn’t able to take care of all this stock unless he gets a man in Colebyville to-day, and—and if he did, the man, as likely as not, wouldn’t stay more than a week or two.”