Then the horses acted up, and I couldn't see him after Yellowjacket jumped off the road." Brit lay staring up at the ceiling, apparently unheeding her explanation.

Lorraine watched him for a minute and returned to the kitchen door, peering out and listening for Frank to come from Echo with supplies and the mail and, more important just now, fresh fruit for her father.
"I think he's coming, dad," she called in to her father.

"I just heard something down by the gate." She could save a few minutes, she thought, by running down to the corral where Frank would probably stop and unload the few sacks of grain he was bringing, before he drove up to the house.

Frank was very methodical in a fussy, purposeless way, she had observed.

Twice he had driven to Echo since her father had been hurt, and each time he had stopped at the corral on his way to the house.