"I declare," Mrs. Robinson said suddenly, "you ain't eatin' a thing, girlie. You'd oughten't to of took that long ride this hot weather; and after workin' so hard yestiddy and all. You're clean drilled down. That's right, go along out on the porch and I'll bring your tea to you. It's hot enough in here to fry fat out of an iceberg." Stammering an excuse, Harry pushed away from the table, furious with herself for the tears that had suddenly blinded her. In another moment, she felt, she would have disgraced herself by sobbing aloud. Mrs. Robinson's sympathy was the one thing that her aching heart could not resist. Rob had an instinctive idea that under the pressure of kindly solicitude, Harry would relate the whole affair to their neighbor; and he knew that if she did she would get pungent advice and wholesome consolation from that sagacious friend. He rode home after supper, satisfied that Harry would be herself in another twenty-four hours. 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."