"It's Brownie," he said, as calmly as he could. "Half et up. Wolves, I guess."
He saw her eyes grow slowly larger in the moonlight. Without a word she sank to her knees. He saw her fingers about her head, burrowing in her hair. Then she looked up, over the black trees, to the sky with its white moon and its few great stars.
"The poor, poor thing," she breathed. "The poor, innocent thing. Why did it have to die?"
"It's always the innocent things 'at suffers," he answered.
"Always the innocent things," she repeated mechanically. "Always—"
She sprang to her feet and faced him. "Then what about the justice of God?" she demanded.
"I don' know nothin' about the justice of God," he answered, bitterly. "All I know is the crittur 't can't run gets caught."
There was a long pause. "It doesn't seem right," she said at length.
"It ain't right," he agreed. "But I guess it's life. I see it here on the prairies with every living thing. Everything is a victim, some way or other. Even the wolves 'at tore this little beast 'll go down to some rancher's rifle, maybe, although they were only doing what nature said … I guess it's the same way in the cities; the innocent bein' hunted, an' the innocenter they are the easier they're caught. An' then the wolves beggin' off, an' sayin' it was only nature."
The girl had no answer. No one had ever talked to her like this. What did this country boy know? And yet it was plain he did know. He had lived among the fundamentals.