Her eyes looked beyond him for a few moments. “I met Jake during the terrible winter of 1910. It was in Leadville, Colorado, and I had just turned sixteen. My father was on a business trip to the mining fields to investigate possible investment in several claims, and since it was close to Christmas, and I had a few days vacation from school, he relented and took Mother and me along. The train barely made it into Leadville station when the worst blizzard in forty years struck the high country of Colorado. It lasted for two weeks, and believe me, it was no picnic, especially when you consider that the altitude of Leadville is over ten thousand feet.”

“It must have been quite an adventure for a sixteen-year-old girl.”

“It was. Dad paced the hotel lobby like a trapped bull while Mother just sat and worried, but I thought it was marvelous.”

“And Jake?”

“One day, Mother and I were struggling across the street to the general store-an ordeal when you are lashed by fifty-mile-an-hour winds at twenty degrees below zero when out of nowhere this giant brute of a man picks each of us up under one arm and carries us through the snowdrifts and deposits us on the doorstep of the store, just as sassy as you please.”

“It was Jake?”

“Yes,” she said distantly, “it was Jake.”

“What did he look like?”

“He was a large man, over six feet, barrel-chested. He’d worked in the mines in Wales when he was a boy. Anytime you saw a crowd of men a mile away, you could easily pick Jake out. He was the one with the bright red hair and heard who was always laughing.”

“Red hair and beard?”

“Yes, he was quite proud of the fact that he stood out from the rest.”

“All the world loves a man who laughs.”

She smiled broadly. “It certainly wasn’t love at first sight on my part, I can tell you. To me, Jake looked like a big uncouth bear. He was hardly the type to tickle a young girl’s fancy.”

“But you married him.”

She nodded. “He courted me all during the blizzard, and when the sun finally broke through the clouds on the fourteenth day, I accepted his proposal. Mother and Dad were distraught, of course, but Jake won them over, too.”

“You couldn’t have been married long?”

“I saw him for the last time a year later.”

“The day he and the others were lost in the Little Angel.” It was more statement than question.

“Yes,” she said wistfully. She avoided his stare and looked nervously toward the kitchen. “My goodness, I’d better fix us some lunch. You must be starving, Mr. Seagram.”

But Seagram’s businesslike expression faded and his eyes came alight with sudden excitement. “You heard from Jake after the Little Angel accident, didn’t you, Mrs. Austin?”