talked about girls. If it
hadn't been that I was makin' the trip for your father I'd 'a' licked
him on the road, sure. He's a city chap, an' wears a white collar, but
he ain't fit to speak your name. Another minute an' I'd 'a' had 'im by
the neck." He seized a spruce limb that stuck across their path. It
was the size of a stout stick but he snapped it with a turn of his
wrist. It was very tough; it oozed sticky stuff where he broke it.
"His neck," he said, between his teeth. "Jus' like that."

They reached an open space. Something black--or was it red?--lay on
the ground. Dave bent over it a moment, then looked up to her white,
clear face, whiter and clearer than ever since witnessing the strength
of his hate.

"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.

"I guess I was like that, some," he went on. "I've been caught. I
guess a baby ain't responsible for anything, is it? I didn't pick my
father or my mother, did I? But I got to bear it."

There was something ne