That was too much. Harry raised the rifle and fired six deliberate shots. She aimed high over the heads and well to either side of the trespassers, so that there was no chance of hitting them. Nevertheless, when an automobile rolled out from the willows and she saw how easily she might have hit the driver, she felt a thrill of horror. She stood watching while, the men made a run for the car, scrambled aboard and went swinging out of sight up the road. Then slowly she turned back home. Her knees felt shaky; she drew a long, unsteady breath and, to her surprise, had to sit down on the ground for a moment. When Rob got home with the mower he brought a general acceptance of the invitation to the Fourth of July dinner. "They fell for it as if they'd been expecting it any time in the last three years," he reported. "It's just as well, then, that I planned to have Isita come down and help me," Harry answered. She had decided to say nothing about shooting at the hunters. She had realized by this time what a terrible risk she had taken, and she knew it would worry Rob to think that she had been so reckless. "What on earth do you want Biane's girl here for?" he asked. "I should think Mrs. Robinson could help you out." "She would, of course; but I want an excuse to talk with Isita and persuade her to go to school this winter." "But if we're feeding cattle here this winter, you won't be teaching down on the flat." "Isita can go to school just the same, can't she? Besides, I want to advise her to find a place where she can work for her board while she's going to school. Her mother would send her if she weren't afraid of old Biane." "Better go slow. If you're too friendly, we'll have their hogs down here in the wheat every day instead of twice a week." But Harry insisted on having Isita. The one drawback to her life on the ranch had been the lack of girl friends, and her interest in Isita had taken the place of other interests. As she rode over to the Bianes' two days before the dinner party, she tried to frame a tactful speech in which to offer the other girl a dress to wear; for probably she had nothing suitable, and Harry did not want her to refuse to come, merely because she lacked a dress. The Biane cabin was still not much more than the "prove-up shack" that the original owner had quitted. It was of unpainted boards with only two half windows to break its blank walls, and seemed scarcely to deserve the name of "home." And still, some one had tried to improve the place. A woven-wire fence enclosed a small garden patch in which, among the cabbages, Harry recognized bachelor's-buttons and poppies grown from seed she had given Isita. Some packing boxes had been fitted together for a chicken house, and an attempt had even been made to fence in a few acres of wheat; but the live stock--Joe's hogs, half a dozen sheep and several thin cows--wandered loose, rather to the detriment of the crops of neighboring ranchers.