Shaman Part 72

Again and again Nicole heard the rapping of bullets into the log wall near Frank's head as he fired steadily at Indians charging from the trading post buildings they had captured.

Frank turned from the rifle port to hand Nicole an empty rifle and take a loaded one. An arrow flashed through the narrow opening, missing his head by inches.

_Thank you, G.o.d!_

The defenders kept up a steady fire until the Indians withdrew again into the captured buildings. Nicole and Frank took turns watching through the rifle port. What was happening to their home at this moment?

The lull stretched on. Nicole went downstairs to look for her children, began picking her way through the crowd sitting on the floor of the blockhouse hall.

Stretched out on a bench was a woman whose name she didn't know, a newcomer to the settlement. The right side of her checkered dress was soaked with blood from shoulder to waist. Moaning faintly, the woman seemed half conscious.

"Arrow," said Ellen Slattery, who was pressing a folded cloth against the woman's shoulder.

Nicole shuddered and patted Ellen's back and went on. She saw Tom and Ben manning ground-floor gunports. Abigail, Martha and John were playing around the cannon, pretending to shoot it at the Indians. The three youngest, Rachel, Betsy and Patrick, were with a group gathered in the stone-walled rear room Raoul used as his office. They were singing hymns. Pamela Russell, she saw, was also with the hymn singers, tears running down her face. As Nicole went over to the fireplace to join the women molding bullets, she heard:

"My G.o.d, how many are my fears, How fast my foes increase!

Their number how it multiplies!

How fatal to my peace."

_That must be the first time_ those _walls have ever heard a hymn._

Nicole took a turn at bullet making, ladling the silvery molten lead from a kettle over the fire into the tiny hole in the hollowed-out mold, opening the mold with its scissor handles and dropping the still-warm ball into a big basket. Another woman took each ball and filed away the bit of waste metal formed in the hole through which the lead was poured.

"Injuns!" a man yelled. The women and children crouched down on the floor, and Nicole hurried upstairs to help Frank.

After rifle fire from both levels drove back the latest a.s.sault, Frank said, "We get a few each time they attack, but it's not enough. I'm sure I saw over a hundred of them when I was on the parapet."

"We've no food and very little water," said Nicole. "They could just wait us out and we wouldn't last very long." The only water they had was in buckets the townspeople had brought into the blockhouse with them.

David Cooper said, "We've got to be ready for them to make one big rush for the blockhouse. They'll try to set the place on fire, so we better save as much water as we can. Ration it out."

Nicole's body broke out in a cold sweat at the thought of fire; she remembered all the gunpowder they'd relayed into the blockhouse.

_Enough to blow us all up._

And then she remembered too, what had happened to Helene twenty years ago at Fort Dearborn.

_Maybe being blown to bits would be a better way to go._

"And here's just the man to take charge of rationing the water," said Cooper.

Nicole turned to see her father climbing up the stairs, pulling himself along on the banister and leaning on his walking stick. As he reached the top of the stairs Frank took his arm and helped him over to sit on a wooden box near the rifle port.

Elysee said, "One of the women, Mrs. Russell, insisted on taking my rifle and standing guard in my place. I will be just as happy not to have to fire at any red men for a while. I keep thinking I might shoot Auguste."

Nicole gasped. "Auguste! Papa, he would never be out there."

"Perhaps not. Have you spoken to anyone who had news of my grandchildren?" Elysee asked her.

Nicole was about to say "They're all here" when she realized whom he meant.

"Raoul and Clarissa's children?" She shook her head sadly. "No, Papa.

Anyone from Victoire who isn't here--we don't know what happened to them."

Elysee sighed. "Poor little things. In all the years since they were born, I got to speak to them only once or twice."

The cry of "Here the Injuns come!" broke in on them again.

David Cooper gave Elysee brief instructions on rationing water, and the old man limped downstairs as the firing began again.

Nicole, loading and reloading Frank's rifles with numb arms and mind, heard firing from all around her. The Indians were coming from every direction. Arrows and an occasional bullet whistled in through the ports, but no one was. .h.i.t. Smoke drifted through the second story of the blockhouse, making her eyes water.

The Indians withdrew again. As the firing died down, Nicole was thankful to see that the powder smoke that had filled the second floor blew up toward the roof and vanished. Looking up, she saw that there was a s.p.a.ce nearly a foot high between the top of the log wall and the roof. The roof rested on big vertical timbers, its overhang covering the opening.

Men could climb up there, she supposed, and shoot down; the attackers would have to be standing directly below them to shoot back.

There was a heap she didn't know about this fort. In the years since Raoul had built it she'd hardly ever had reason to set foot inside--the last time was when she and Frank had appealed to him to leave men behind to protect the town. Now her life depended on how well Raoul had built it, and it was bitter medicine to swallow.

David Cooper left his rifle port to talk to Frank.

"It's only a few hours till sunset," Cooper said in a low voice, "and I have a hunch they'll try one big attack to take this place before dark.

If they come all at once, we don't have enough rifles to stop them."

His tone was matter-of-fact, but his words struck terror into Nicole's heart. She took Frank's hand and squeezed it. It felt cold as a dead man's.

Cooper went on. "I keep thinking about that cannon downstairs. You know, whatever we might say about Raoul de Marion, he did set this place up to be defended. I figure that cannon must be in working order."

"Do you know how to fire a cannon?" Frank asked.

Cooper shrugged. "I've stood near the artillerymen a time or two and watched them, but never thought to memorize what I saw. I couldn't even say how much gunpowder to use. If we put in too little, we'll waste our chance. If we put in too much, we could blow ourselves all to h.e.l.l."

Nicole said, "I'd rather that than face whatever h.e.l.l the Indians have in store for us."

Cooper looked at her with his hard eyes and nodded. "Indians won't get you, Miz Hopkins. I promise you that. Let's go take a look at that thing."

Frank, Cooper and Nicole, chilled but grimly rea.s.sured by Cooper's remark, cleared away the children who were straddling the cannon's four-foot-long black barrel, and the women who were sitting against its wooden carriage. Cooper stood frowning at the gun.

He sighed, and it sounded to Nicole like the sigh of a man about to step off a high cliff.

"Well, let's load 'er up."

He went over to the side of the room where the flannel bags of gunpowder were piled up, and he picked one up, holding it at arm's length as if it were a rattlesnake. He carried it back to the cannon and slid it into the muzzle. From the carriage he unstrapped the ramrod, a pole with a wad of cloth wrapped around its end, and used that to push the gunpowder down.

"Let's add another bag of powder," he said to Frank.

Women and children formed a circle to watch. Nicole pictured what the cannon would do to all the people in this room if it blew up, and shut her eyes.

After pushing a second bag of gunpowder down the muzzle, Cooper said, "What we need now is canister shot that'd spread all over the place and puncture a lot of Indians. I remember there was canister shot in the powder magazine, but it didn't seem all that important this morning, and we didn't have time to move it over here. Now we'll have to make do with what we've got. Give me a load of rifle bullets."

Someone handed him a basket full of lead b.a.l.l.s, and he poured them into the cannon's throat and pushed them down with the ramrod.