When Nora came out with the lantern, Lafe Corder was lying on his back in the frosty dirt beside the woodpile with his left leg twisted under him and his own horse standing ten feet off with its reins dragging and a long bloody crease across its rump. Corder's face was white as paper and slick with sweat. He looked up into the lantern light and saw her, and shut his eyes.
"Leg's broke," he said. "Lord God, ma'am, my leg's broke."
"Who was with you?"
He said nothing.
Nora knelt down beside him in the dirt. The coal-oil can lay on its side by her knee, glugging slowly into the ground. She set the lantern down where he could see her face.
"Mr. Corder," she said. "You told me you liked him. You told me he was the only one of the bunch who ever gave you the time of day. Was that true, or was that something you said through a door?"
He opened his eyes. They were young eyes, younger than she had thought, washed out and wet.
"It was true."
"Then who was with you?"
He swallowed. "Harlan," he said. "Dell Harlan. From the bank." He started to cry, shamefully, the way a boy cries. "He said the old man wanted it all burned, you and the house and whatever was in it. He said there'd be two hundred dollars in it for me Saturday after the band played. I didn't want to. I swear before God I didn't want to."
Tomás squatted down on Corder's other side and looked at him with something that was very nearly pity.