He interrupted her, drawling his words a little:
“The guy you shot was Lawson. You bored him a heap. I’ve toted him downstairs. He’s plenty dead. It was plumb good shootin’—for a woman.”
His words shocked her to action, and she got up and walked around the foot of the bed, from where she could see the spot where the intruder must have fallen after she had shot him. A dark stain showed on the floor where the man had lain, and the sight of it sent her a step backward, so that she struck the foot of the bed. She caught at the bed and grasped one of the posts, holding tightly to it while she looked Harlan over with dreading, incredulous eyes.
“It—it wasn’t you!” she demanded. “Are you sure?”
He smiled and said, slowly and consolingly: “I reckon if you’d shot me I’d be knowin’ it. Don’t take it so hard, ma’am. Why, if a man goes to breakin’ into a woman’s room that way he sure ain’t fit to go on livin’ in a world where there is a woman.”
“It was Lawson—you say? Meeder Lawson—the Rancho Seco foreman? I thought—why, I thought it was you!”
“I’m thankin’ you, ma’am,” he said, ironically. “But if you’ll just stick your head out of that window, you’ll see it was Lawson, right enough. He’s layin’ right below the window.”
She did as bidden, and she saw Lawson lying on the ground beneath the window, flat on his back, his face turned upward with the radiant moonlight shining full upon his wide-open, staring eyes.
Barbara glanced swiftly, and then drew back into the room, shuddering.
Harlan stood, silently regarding her, while she walked again to the bed and sat upon it, staring out into the flood of moonlight, her face ghastly, her hands hanging limply at her sides.