She watched the door. A shadow fell across the crack beneath the door. Someone was on the porch. Clara pulled the trigger. The heavy recoil bruised her shoulder, but the buckshot blew a hole through the door panel at knee height.
A scream of pain erupted from the other side, followed by the sound of a body tumbling down the steps. They are flanking, Eli shouted, moving to the side window. Watch the back. Clara scrambled to the bedroom door. She pressed herself against the frame, pistol raised.
The back window was boarded, but she saw the wood bowing inward. Someone was using a sledgehammer. "Eli, the bedroom," she screamed. Eli spun, firing blindly through the wall where the hammering was coming from. The hammering stopped, but the front was overwhelmed.
Bullets shattered the oil lamp on the shelf, spraying glass. A slug tore through the sleeve of Eli's shirt, leaving a line of red. He hissed but did not stop firing. There are too many. Eli yelled.
He was reloading, his fingers fumbling for a second. In that second, Silas Vance appeared at the gap in the front window, leveling a pistol at Eli's exposed back. Clara saw him. She did not think. She did not calculate.
She moved. She lunged across the room, grabbing Eli's belt and yanking him backward with all her strength. Down. She shrieked. Eli fell back just as Vance fired.
The bullet buried itself in the log wall exactly where Eli's heart had been a second before. From the floor, Clara raised her pistol. She braced her wrist on her knee. She aimed at the gap where Vance's face was. She fired.
Vance grunted and disappeared from the window, clutching his shoulder. "You hit him," Eli gasped, staring at her. "I aim for the shoulder," Clara said, her voice trembling now. Survival, Eli, not murder. The firing outside suddenly intensified, but it was different.
It wasn't directed at the house. It was directed away from it. Shouts of confusion erupted from the yard. Hold fire. Pike's voice screamed, cracking with panic.
Hold fire. Eli and Clara froze. They looked at each other. The silence that followed was heavier than the gunfire. What is happening?
Clara whispered. Eli crawled to the window. He peered out through the shattered boards. "My God," he breathed. A new group of riders had entered the yard.