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."