He swung down before answering, and took a worn black Bible from one of his saddlebags, holding it close to his broad chest with a sort of easy affection. “Miss June-bug has never been better,” he said, in his usual grave fashion. “It’s you I’m concerned about, Miss. You and Scully.”

A twinge of dread struck Evangeline, somewhere near the heart, but she smiled and took the visitor’s arm. “Come in, Mr. McCaffrey. There’s a brisk wind blowing, and you must be chilled straight through.”

“I’d prefer you called me Jacob,” he said simply, as they made for the open ranch house door. Abigail was standing on the threshold, strangely reticent, given the rarity of company in that distant place.

Jacob patted the top of Abigail’s head when he reached her, and she smiled up at him at last, though a little uncertainly.

“Did somebody die?” she asked, while Evangeline was still shutting the door.

Another hint of a smile touched Jacob’s mouth. He was a good man, and intelligent, Evangeline knew, but his was a solemn nature, and she wouldn’t have changed him, even if that were possible. “No, ma’am,” he said to the little girl. “Nobody we know, leastways. What brings you to ask?”

Abigail did not hesitate to put her opinion forward. “You look like the man who came and took my papa away, when he passed on. And the preacher who said words over him, too. They wore clothes just like yours.”

Jacob removed his hat and coat, shifting the worn Bible from arm to arm as he did so, as though disinclined to let go of it, and Evangeline hung up his things. When she turned around again, meaning to intercede, she found Jacob crouching, the way Scully sometimes did, to address the child on her own level.

“I see,” he said. “Well, you needn’t fret, little one. I’m not here on that sort of business.”

Evangeline had an idea what sort of business he had come on—he’d covered a considerable distance at a time of the year when people simply didn’t travel if it wasn’t necessary—and she was unnerved, though she did her best to hide the fact. She busied herself brewing a pot of coffee, building up the fires to take the chill off Jacob’s aging bones.

He dragged a chair over to the hearth and sat down gratefully, Bible in hand, gazing into the flames as though he might find divine guidance there.

Evangeline’s own hasty prayer was answered when Scully returned barely half an hour later, grinning, sprinkled with snow, carrying a half dozen grouse in one hand and a pair of saddlebags in the other.

“Jacob,” he said, and there was a greeting, as well as a measure of surprise and a question, all crammed into that single word. “I put the mule away in the barn. What are you doing here?”

Evangeline took the grouse with only a slight grimace as Scully held them out to her, prior to shedding his coat. At least he’d cleaned the fowl and removed their heads, although the plucking and frying would be up to her.