“So did I. He was creeping on me when I woke. Is—is he dead?” she asked, awed.
“No such luck. I tapped his bean with my gun.” He stooped over the prostrate man and turned him on his back. “Hello! Here’s a wound in his shoulder. You must have hit him.”
“Oh, I hope not,” Vicky cried.
She looked at the big revolver with a face of horror and threw it on the shelf where she had found it some hours earlier.
“Probably saved my life,” Hugh told her quietly. “And you haven’t killed him. He’ll be all right in a week or two. Good work, Vicky.”
“I—didn’t know what I was doing,” she sobbed. “My fingers just pressed.”
Dutch groaned.
“Best thing could have happened,” Hugh said cheerfully. “He’ll not trouble us any more. Have to dress the wound, though. If it makes you sick to——”
“It won’t,” she cried eagerly. “Let me help. What can I do?” Her reaction was toward activity. If she could help to look after the man she might forget the awful thing she had by chance escaped doing.
“Rummage through that drawer. Find clean shirts or rags. Tear one into strips,” Hugh told her.