Joe's immediate reaction was a vast weakness, as though his body were no longer a solid thing but a liquid mass. He wilted like a melting candle, everything that had gone to make him suddenly dissolved, and only the feeble flame of a sputtering wick remained to prove that there ever had been anything else. Then he braced himself and fought back.
His whole life had been a struggle, with the odds tremendously against him. He'd been close to the breaking point only a month ago, when the desire to go west had swept around him like a flame, and he'd been forced to blot it out and forget it. Forgetting it had left him curiously empty and deflated. But he'd pulled himself together and knuckled down to the job of making this crop a good one. Now the crop lay before him, destroyed. A seething anger began slowly to gather in Joe's chest, and he held on to the doorframe to steady himself.
Emma appeared at his shoulder, and when he looked at her Joe saw that her face was pale. She said nothing but her comforting arm slipped about him. Joe said inanely,
He wheeled, went back into the bedroom, and took the rifle from the pegs where he had hung it. His brain was on fire, so that priming and loading the weapon were mechanical functions which he knew nothing about but which he did well because he had done them so often. Not seeing anything else, aware only that destroyers had come to take that which rightly belonged to Joe's family, he leaned against the door jamb and took careful aim at the black steer. His finger tightened on the trigger when Emma's voice cut through the red mists that seethed in his brain.
She looked almost ill, but there was desperation in her words that was far more effective than any physical barrier. She spoke again.
The red rage that flamed in his brain burned less hotly. He lowered the gun so that its stock rested on the floor, and looked from her to the destroying cattle. Then sanity reasserted itself. He put the rifle back on its pegs and said dully,
Joe strode toward the cattle with Tad's dog at his heels. He was well aware that it was futile to drive the raiders away for there was no more damage to be done. Yet he knew that the cattle did not belong where they were, and since there was no one else to chase them, he must.