It turned out as he hoped. Mrs. Robinson had divined that something more than fatigue had affected the girl. As she was showing Harry to her room she put her hand on the girl's shoulder and said gently, "Yestiddy was just one lick too much for you, wa'n't it, child?"
"It wasn't that. Oh, it wasn't!" Harry began: and then, dropping her face on her hands, she sobbed miserably.
But oh, the relief of having it out! Of telling some one who could and would say exactly what she thought of it all—why Harry's firing a rifle merely in warning had been so reprehensible. That was exactly what Mrs. Robinson did tell her.
"It took the Almighty consid'able time to make dirt enough out of these lava buttes to grow crops on, and you'll learn, if you live in this country, that you've got to have some of the Almighty's patience to wear down these here varmints that call themselves men into the dust ordinary humans are made of. I know how you feel about your sage hens gettin' shot out. Didn't I ride clear to Shoshone once behind a wagonload of them 'sportsmen,' a gun in my fist ready to drop the first guy that lifted his eyebrow? I did.
"They'd cut our fence and druv in onto the wheat and was wadin' round in it like it was wash water. They laughed at me when I ordered 'em out—that is, until they seen I had the drop on 'em. I run 'em all into court in Shoshone and seen 'em pay their fines good and proper. Wasn't that all right, you'll say? Looks so. But them four men has spent their lives, you may say, gettin' even with us. Nothin' you could catch 'em in, just sneaky things; like stealin' our range, cuttin' our fences, runnin' off our stock with theirs in the round-up, scatterin' dope with the salt where our stock would get it. I wisht I had two bits right now for every dollar they lost us. I tell you, you never get nowhere in this country tryin' to bust up a lava butte with a sulphur match."
"But surely we should do something to protect the birds—and ourselves!" Harry protested. "I think it's our duty to fight the poachers. Indeed, I do!"
The old spirit rang in her voice, shone in her eyes, still dim from crying. The comers of Mrs. Robinson's mouth twitched in fellow feeling. She saw that Harry had come to the place every one comes to in the splendid morning ride of youth; the place where the fight is waging between right and wrong, and into which every one in his turn wants to plunge with a shout and a hailstorm of blows.
"You can't never save the birds with bullets," she said, "not if you was to plug every game hog in the land full of lead."
"But what are we to do?" cried Harry. "They laugh at mere words."
"There's one they won't laugh at more than twice: law."