Within minutes, Tom and Frank arrived with six riders between them, all armed, all ready for a fight that was already over. "What happened?" Tom demanded, swinging down from his horse. Silas started to answer, but his voice wouldn't work. The adrenaline was draining now, leaving him shaky and sick.
He'd shot a man. He'd actually pulled the trigger, hit his target, protected his home. After 6 years of believing himself a coward, he'd acted. "Rustlers," Norah said calmly, filling the silence. "Five of them.
They tried to take our cattle. We convinced them to leave." "You two?" Tom looked between them incredulously. "Alone?"
"We weren't alone," Norah corrected. We had each other and Silas shot one before I'd even finished signaling for help. They left after that. Tom turned to Silas with an expression that might have been respect. "You hit him shoulder," Silas managed.
"Saw the blood." "Damn," Tom said. Then, surprisingly, "Good shooting, Boon. That took nerve." It was the first time since James's death that anyone had acknowledged Silas as something other than the coward who froze.
The words hit him harder than he expected, and suddenly he couldn't hold it together anymore. His hands started shaking violently, the rifle nearly slipping from nerveless fingers. "Norah took it from him gently. "He needs to sit down," she told Tom. "The danger's passed, but the cost is just hitting him now."
They got Silas to the porch, got him sitting with his head between his knees while Tom and Frank's men swept the property and confirmed the rustlers were gone. Norah sat beside him, her hand on his back, steady and present while he shook apart and tried to piece himself back together. I did it, he whispered finally. I didn't freeze. I acted.
I shot him. You protected us, Norah corrected gently. You faced your worst fear and you didn't let it control you. I was so scared. I'm still scared.
Of course you are. Fear isn't the enemy, Silas. Letting it stop you is. And you didn't let it stop you. She tilted his chin up so he had to look at her.