"If he saw you leave, I shouldn't think he'd come here and ask for you." "He knowed I was gone," Brit stated briefly.
With a finger nail Lorraine traced the ugly, brown pattern on the oilcloth.

It was not easy to talk to this silent man who was her father, but she had done a great deal of thinking during that long, empty day, and she had reached the point where she was afraid not to speak.
"Dad!" "What do you want, Raine ?" "Dad, was--has any one around here died, lately ?" "Died?
Nobody but Fred Thurman, over here on Granite.

He was drug with a horse and killed." Lorraine caught her breath, saw Brit looking at her curiously and moved closer to him.

She wanted to be near somebody just then, and after all, Brit was her father, and his silence was not the inertia of a dull mind, she knew.

He seemed bottled-up, somehow, and bitter.