rged from the narrow gorge,
his eyes turned in the direction of the house. But where the house
should be he saw above the green field, only a black spot with little
patches of white smoke drifting lazily up from it into the still
sunshine.

CHAPTER XXXI

AN ENCOUNTER

Kate awoke the morning after Hawk's funeral with a confused sense of
having consorted with her father's enemies; and of trying to justify
herself for having done what she had felt compelled to do to answer her
sense of self-respect.

And all this before anyone had accused her. But being extremely
dubious as to how her father would take her conduct, she was not only
ill at ease until she should meet him, but glad he had been away. And
it was something of a shock to her that morning to find his bedroom
door closed; it meant that during the night he had unexpectedly come
home.

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