Harlan was not more than a hundred feet distant, and the glare of the moonlight shining full on the man as he paused before the door into which Barbara Morgan had gone, revealed him plainly to Harlan.
The man was Meeder Lawson. Harlan’s lips wreathed into a grin of cold contempt. He stepped quickly to Purgatory, drew his rifle from its saddle sheath and returned to the doorway. And there, standing in the shadows, he watched Lawson as the latter tried the door and, failing to open it, left it and crept along the wall of the building, going toward a window.
The window also was fastened, it seemed, for Lawson stole away from it after a time and continued along the wall of the house until he reached the southeast corner. Around that, after a fleeting glance about him, Lawson vanished.
Still grinning—though there was now a quality in the grin that might have warned Lawson, had he seen it—Harlan stepped down from the doorway, slipped into the shadow of the corral fence, and made his way toward the corner where Lawson had disappeared.
CHAPTER XI
THE INTRUDER
After closing the door through which she had entered, Barbara Morgan slipped the fastenings into place and stood, an ear pressed against the door, listening for sounds that would tell her Harlan had followed her. But beyond the door all was silence.
Breathing fast, yielding to the panic of fear that had seized her, over the odd light she had seen in Harlan’s eyes—a gleam, that to her, seemed to have been a reflection of some evil passion in the man’s heart—she ran through the dark room she had entered, opened a door that led to the patio, and peered fearfully outward, as though she half expected to see Harlan there.