Shaman Part 71

Nicole's fears turned to Victoire and to the outlying farms. The Indians had attacked so suddenly, whooping on horseback across the prairie, that there was just time for the people in Victor and some from the chateau to crowd into the trading post. Many of the children and some of the women gathered into the main room were still in their nightgowns. But missing from the crowd downstairs were people Nicole knew. Reverend Philip Hale and Nancy Hale, Clarissa Greenglove and her two sons by Raoul, Marchette Perrault, many others. Fear twisted her belly as she thought of what the Indians might have done to them.

Cooper had a.s.signed himself to a gunport in the east wall of the blockhouse. Nicole went to him.

"Mr. Cooper, could I have a look out there?"

"Certainly, ma'am." He sighed. "That used to be your home, that mansion on the hill, didn't it?"

Poor Burke Russell, she saw, was still lying on the eastern catwalk.

Three dead Indians were sprawled there now to keep him company, though.

She was a bit more hardened to such sights than she had been just a short time ago. But what she saw in the cheerful June sky beyond the palisade made her body go clammy-cold with horror.

A rope of thick, black smoke coiled upward, twisting this way and that, spreading till it seemed to stain the entire eastern quarter of the sky.

The palisade was too high for her to see the fire itself, though red tongues of flame shot up now and again in the midst of the smoke. But she had no doubt at all about where the fire was.

"They're burning Victoire!" She started to cry.

She felt Frank's hand patting her shoulder, and turned.

"I was hoping the people of Victoire might be able to hold out," she said.

Frank put his arm around her. "Nicole, I'm sorry, it's pretty likely the only people left alive from Victoire are already here. Lucky most of them could outrun the Indians and get here."

"But, Frank, what's happened to the rest of them--Marchette, Clarissa--are they all dead?"

Frank didn't answer. He just stood there holding her.

Grief weighed on her like a cloak of iron. If she hadn't had Frank to lean against, she would surely have fallen to the floor. She looked out again and saw other, more distant columns of smoke. The Indians must have come from the east and struck every farmhouse they came across.

They had surely destroyed Philip Hale's church. Poor Nancy!

David Cooper said, "Sometimes people manage to hide. The Indians can't look everywhere."

The weight on her back and shoulders seemed to lighten with that thought.

"Yes, the lead mine, for instance," Frank said. "A perfect place."

"Oh, they can't have killed all those people," Nicole said.

_Please, let Marchette and Clarissa and Nancy and Reverend Hale be alive._

She desperately wanted to pray. She wanted to believe that a loving G.o.d was looking down on Victoire and Victor, protecting her friends and the people she had grown up with.

For the next hour or more Nicole thought of nothing and did nothing but bite cartridges and dump powder, ram home bullets, put one rifle into Frank's ink-stained hands, take the other rifle and load it. Her mouth was sore from biting the heavy paper. Her arms and hands ached from making the same movements over and over. The incessant shooting all around her deafened her, the stink--and, worse, the taste--of gunpowder turned her stomach, and her hands were blacker with the stuff than Frank's ever were from his printing press.

Frank was firing less and less often. He leaned against the log wall, wiping his arm across his forehead.

"We've kept pouring lead into the courtyard. That's driven them under cover. But they broke holes in the corner tower walls, and they're shooting back at us from there." An Indian yelp caught his attention, and he peered out again.

"Now, would you look at that!" he said. Nicole put her head next to his at the rifle port.

A blizzard in the trading post courtyard. Flecks of white filled the air between the inn and the blockhouse. She saw brown arms shaking slashed mattresses and pillows out the windows. Feathers floated up to the gunport. More feathers slowly drifted down to dot the fresh June gra.s.s with white. She heard yells and laughter from the inn.

_They'd cut me open as soon as they'd cut open a pillow, and think that was just as funny._

"They're getting drunk," Frank said. "On all the liquor in Raoul's tavern. Must be looting the town too."

_They'll burn our home. Everything will be gone, the beds and the dishes, the mirrors, the bureaus, the spinning wheel, the clock, the plates and silverware, our clothes, our books and old letters, children's toys, the spices, the cradle I rocked all our babies in. The machines and carpentry tools, and, oh, please, G.o.d, not Frank's printing press!_

_Stop it, Nicole. You're blessed! Blessed that they attacked at dawn when all the children were in the house and not scattered all over the countryside, and now they're safely in here. Blessed that your husband is standing here beside you and not dead on the palisade parapet like Burke Russell._

But even as she thought of things to be thankful for, she remembered what might happen to them in the next few hours.

An Indian charged out of the front door of the inn. He was waving a curving Navy cutla.s.s. He ran at the blockhouse, screaming. His steps wavered, though, and Nicole guessed he must be full of whiskey.

Still she was terrified. What if everyone missed him and he somehow got in and others followed?

"Look out," Frank said, and gently nudged her away from the port. He pushed his rifle out and fired.

"I hit him, but he isn't falling."

Getting back into the routine, Nicole took Frank's rifle and loaded it.

Rifles were booming all along the front of the blockhouse as men tried to stop the Indian with the cutla.s.s. Frank's second rifle went off.

"He doesn't want to die," said Frank. "He's full of bullets." She heard pain in his voice, and as she handed him his freshly loaded rifle, Nicole saw that his upper lip was beaded with sweat. She hurt for him.

He hated killing, and now he was forced to try again and again to kill this man.

Frank aimed and fired again. "There. I got him. He's down."

Frank pulled his rifle in and handed it to Nicole. As she started to reload it, he leaned against the wall. Slowly his knees bent and he slid down till he was sitting on the floor. She put the rifle down and crouched beside him, stroking his arm, her heart aching.

He covered his mouth with his hand. His body jerked, but he managed to hold in the vomit. After a moment, breathing heavily, he took his hand away from his mouth.

"Oh, Jesus! What am I doing?"

Nicole put her arms around him, and his head fell against her breast.

"Excuse me, Miz Hopkins," said a voice above her. She let go of Frank as David Cooper squatted down beside them and laid his hand on Frank's knee.

"Hopkins, you're all right. I was with Harrison at Tippecanoe Village, and when the Indians came at us out of the woods, I don't believe more than half the men fired their rifles. There's really few men find it easy to kill. There's times we got to."

Frank wiped his eyes and laid a hand on top of Cooper's. "Thanks."

Cooper said, "If you still feel bad, just think about what they'd do to your wife and kids if they got in here."

Frank put a hand on the floor and pushed himself to his feet. "Yes, as long as I think about my family I'll be able to shoot." There was a bitterness in his voice, and Nicole felt she knew what he was thinking.

How cruel the irony, that love for his family could make him into a killer.

"Here they come again!" a woman down the line shouted.