That more than Joe's surliness stood between Isita and Harry, the latter was not long in discovering. She was not easily discouraged from attempting anything she had set her heart on, and at first she made all sorts of pretexts for going up to the Biane's. Sometimes it was to carry eggs or new pieplant or lettuce; "We have so much," she explained to the silent, haggard-faced woman who came to the door; or it was a bundle of illustrated papers that had been sent her from home, and she thought Isita might be interested in them. Once or twice she asked boldly if Isita might not come down and stay with her for a few days to help with the chores, while she was working outside with Rob. But Biane himself made it plain that Isita was expected to work for her own family, and Mrs. Biane avoided seeing or talking to their neighbor. To be sure, Isita came down to the Holliday's, but it was to "borrow" soap, salt, tools and various other small necessities of which the shiftless Biane family stood in need, and she was always in a nervous hurry to get back home and never accepted Harry's friendliest urging to stay awhile. Harry felt sure that the younger girl wanted to be friends, that in this lonely land of vast distances each of them needed the other. But she saw that Isita was very much afraid of her quiet, smiling tyrannical[Pg 156] father and, in spite of her unmistakable attachment to Harry, she was too shy to talk of home troubles.  
As the spring days lengthened there was, too, less time for visiting. To the sagebrush homesteader the sixty days of May and June are the heart of the year's labor and a man must keep things moving from dawn to dark, if he means to get ahead. No sooner is the frost out of the ground, no sooner have the break-up floods of snow water run off, the quaking morass of meadow-lands grown solid earth once more, than the plow must be started.
 
Harry had learned to handle the four-horse disk plow and the harrow as well, so, while Rob worked one team she handled the other. They now had four heavy work horses, besides three colts that could be used off and on, and quite a bunch of half-broke and young stuff belonging to Owens, which they worked as payment for their feed; thus there were few idle hours while the spring drive lasted.
 
To Harry each new morning was a fresh adventure and whenever Rob did not need her for an hour or so, she explored the steep sides of the rocky buttes, the narrow cañons separating them, and the tree-filled "draw" behind the house. Nor was it altogether careless amusement which led her to this. She had discovered that a good many other people went to and fro through the cañons and across the foothills near by: surveyors, sheepherders, looking for strayed stock, and men who were just "going through." Often these various wayfarers carried "guns" that were sometimes[Pg 157] rifles but oftener, especially late in summer, shotguns. And it had not taken Harry long to discover that the men with shot guns were after grouse and sage hen.
 
From the time of her arrival on the ranch she had been interested in the wild birds and had soon begun trying to protect them. Rob had hung "no shooting" signs along all the fences and already the birds seemed to know that they were protected in that spot and came fearlessly to feed in the alfalfa and close to the house.
 
But even signs and outspoken orders would not keep a certain class of game butchers away. They came even before the season opened, shooting early in the morning and trusting to the lack of settlers to escape arrest. Harry had several times driven off these poachers, but there was one who persisted in defying her. That was Joe Biane. He was so sly, so sharp, so indifferent to all remonstrance or warning that Harry realized it was useless to threaten with words only; if he would shoot on her land he should be punished.
 
She came to this decision one morning in May when she had run out to try and get a snapshot of a grouse cock strutting on the edge of the alfalfa. She had moved cautiously along behind the currant bushes until just within the right distance to get a good picture and was adjusting the camera when a shotgun cracked in the draw above her.
 
"After my birds again!" Harry exclaimed indignantly. "If it's Joe I declare I'll go straight to town and fetch the game warden up here to arrest him. Of[Pg 158] course he's spoiled my picture, too!" For the grouse had folded his wings and scuttled out of sight into the willows.
 
"I'll just go right along and see who that was," Harry decided, closing her camera and starting up the cow path through the glen.
 
At this time of the year the steep sides of the ravine were masked in the leafage of quaking asp, thorn apple, willow and choke cherry, and it was next to impossible to see whether the person shooting was there or not.
 
Harry did not stop to explore. She knew by experience that it was farther up in the high meadow, a favorite nesting place of grouse and sage hen that she was most likely to find the poachers. Now, in her excitement she had started running (Joe should not evade her!) but the path was steep, the sun ardent, and before she could reach the meadow she was out of breath, hot, and not any calmer. In a final, desperate effort to cut across Joe's path toward home she swerved through the trees and almost ran over Joe himself.
 
He was moving stealthily through the willows, but startled by Harry's unexpected appearance, he stopped short.
 
"Joe!" she exclaimed; "I thought so."
 
"You did!" He laughed mischievously. "I ain't the only fella that takes a short cut through here, am I?"
 
"You take it oftenest. Outsiders don't get here[Pg 159] quite so early in the morning, as a rule. I see I'm too late to save my birds, though."
 
She pointed indignantly to the grouse hen that hung from Joe's left hand.
 
Joe looked at it too. "Pretty nice one, ain't it," he observed. "Want I should get you one?"
 
"I should say not!" she exclaimed angrily. "And what's more, you may put that one down. I've told you not to shoot on my land, and I don't intend to have you carry off the birds under my nose, even though they are dead. Give that to me, please."
 
She reached out her hand, but Joe stepped alertly back. "This ain't yours," he said. He was no longer smiling; instead he eyed her sullenly, a cruel expression on his handsome face. Harry remembered that he had looked at her just so the day he had tried to pull her sweater from Isita. "Everybody's got a right to the wild critters," he added. "Besides," glancing covertly at Harry, "I was gettin' this because Isita likes 'em."
 
For a second Harry faltered. The picture of the younger girl, thin, tired-looking, unmistakably underfed came before her. But even as she started to yield, her indignation flamed again. "Oh, well, if it's for Isita," she answered with affected surprise, "give it to me. I'll take it home and cook it, and you tell your sister I've invited her down to dinner."
 
"Not much," Joe answered shortly. "We don't beg a meal off'n any one."
 
[Pg 160]
 
"An invitation isn't begging; but never mind. If you're as anxious as you say to please your sister, go put your time into plowing and planting; then you won't have to depend on a tough grouse hen for dinner."
 
Her eyes went again to the limp, feathered form, the bloodstained breast.
 
"Such stupid cruelty!" she exclaimed. "To shoot the hens at this season when it means a nestful of young ones left to starve."
 
"Aw!" Joe growled contemptuously and began to walk away. "What's that to you? You ain't running this country, so far's I know, and you ain't a goin' to stop me gettin' a sage hen. I'll shoot when I like."
 
"Not............