Nicole pulled open the drawstring of a bag of cartridges, bit off the end of a paper cartridge and poured the black powder down the muzzle of her rifle. She detached the ramrod from the stock of the rifle and wrapped a bullet in greased cloth, ramming it into place down the tight, rifled barrel. She thanked Heaven she hadn't forgotten how to do this.
She dropped the fine grains of priming powder from the horn into the powder pan, pointed her rifle at the red-crested brave and sighted down the black barrel at the center of his chest.
Her finger quivered on the trigger. She couldn't kill a man. Her eyes blurred.
If she didn't kill him, he might kill Frank. Or Tom or Ben. Or Papa. She remembered Burke Russell's smashed, bloody skull.
She had to do it. Her vision cleared.
She took deep breaths, steadying herself.
She heard the click of the hammer as she pulled back the trigger. The hammer snapped forward, the flint hit the fizzen, the spark struck the powder pan. The rifle went off with a thunderclap that made her ears ring, and her target was obscured by cream-colored smoke in front of the rifle port.
When the smoke cleared, the brave was still standing on the catwalk.
She clenched her fist and whispered, "Damn!"
The red-crested Indian glanced down to his right, as if he had heard a bullet strike the palisade wall there, then looked straight at her. She knew he couldn't really see her. She was hidden behind a log wall, and a hundred feet or more separated them. Even so, it seemed to her that his malevolent stare met her eyes.
She handed her rifle back to Bernadette Bosquet, a cook from the château, who gave her a loaded one.
Down in the yard, the Indians were charging the fur shop and the inn. The white men, retreating, were converging on the front door of the blockhouse.
She saw Elysée and Guichard emerge from behind the inn. The two old men moved slowly, Elysée limping heavily, both walking backward. Guichard fired a shot at the six or more crouching Indians coming at them. Elysée, his walking stick in his left hand,raised his pistol. Guichard worked quickly with powder horn and ramrod to load his rifle. Elysée fired, bringing down one of the Indians. Both men took a few steps backward as powder smoke enveloped their attackers. The Indians darted forward, and Guichard raised his rifle. The Indians hesitated. Elysée stepped behind Guichard and tucked his stick under one arm to reload his pistol. At a word from Elysée, Guichard fired, and a red man with a rifle crumpled. Guichard, reaching for his powder horn, stepped backward behind Elysée, who now kept the Indians covered.
Nicole felt her legs tremble and a lump form in her throat as she watched the fearless precision with which her father and his lifelong servant carried out their retreat. Those two old men shouldn't have to fight at all, but today every man was needed.
She saw Frank and her two oldest sons, Tom and Ben, running across the yard to the front door. They vanished under the overhang of the blockhouse's second story, made of logs. Thank God they'd made it to safety! She felt faint and took a deep breath.
She handed her rifle to Bernadette. "Here, you shoot. I've got to see my husband and sons."
"Merci, madame. I thought you'd never give me a turn."
By the time Nicole got downstairs, Frank and the other men had crowded into the hall. The heavy front door of the blockhouse was shut and barred, throwing the stone-walled lower floor into near-darkness. Two men were shooting through the rifle ports on either side of the door. Women were lighting oil lamps and candles and setting them on shelves around the edges of the room.
Women whose men were here were holding them tight. Nicole threw her arms around Frank, then opened them wider to take in Tom and Ben as they ran to join their mother and father.
She eyed the boys. Their faces were rosy and their eyes bright with excitement. They'd be men in another year or two. And after today, she thought, Frank would have a hard time keeping them away from rifles.
If we live through this day.
As she felt Frank strong and alive against her, a sudden intense desire to make love to him came over her. She was shocked at herself.
But she'd seen one man struck down already and knew that beforesundown she or Frank might be dead. The realization of how precious Frank was to her had brought her body to passionate life.
She heard the shrieks and yips of the Indians in the yard of the trading post.
Hard-eyed David Cooper said, "We can't hold 'em off just shooting from the ground floor. We need shooters at every rifle port upstairs."
He nodded approvingly when he saw Elfrida Wegner and three other women molding bullets by the fire they had just kindled.
He called, "All right, four men and four of you women take rifle ports down here. The rest of you come up to the second story."
Gathering up extra rifles, five men and thirty or more women followed Cooper upstairs, where he organized them to shoot, each shooter to have someone to reload and carry ammunition.
Nicole might herself have volunteered to shoot through one of the upstairs rifle ports, but she chose to load for Frank. She felt it might be important to Frank that he be the one to shoot and she stand by, helping him. She would rather be at his side, anyway, than across the room somewhere shooting.
Frank pushed his octagonal rifle barrel out through his port. The port was only about six inches wide and three inches high, and the log wall was a foot thick or more, but Nicole still trembled at the thought that an Indian might manage to hit Frank with an arrow or a bullet. Working to load his second rifle, she tried not to think about that.
Thank God they had David Cooper here, someone who seemed to know what to do. She remembered how Cooper had spoken up the day Raoul had forced Auguste out of the château—Is this how you do things in Smith County?It was Cooper who had thrown open the trading post to the first refugees from the Indian raid, people from Victoire, shortly after dawn. He and Burke Russell. Burke. Her heart sank.
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 château 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 assigned 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 God 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 grass 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, God, 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 cutlass. 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 cutlass. 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 TippecanoeVillage, 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.
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, God!
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 alsowith the hymn singers, tears running down her face. As Nicole went over to the fireplace to join the women molding bullets, she heard:
"My God, how many are my fears,How fast my foes increase!Their number how it multiplies!How fatal to my peace."
"My God, 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 timethosewalls 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 assault, 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. Ashe reached the top of the stairs Frank took his arm and helped him over to sit on a wooden box near the rifle port.
Elysée 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?" Elysée 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."
Elysée 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 Elysée 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 hit. 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 space 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 hell."
Nicole said, "I'd rather that than face whatever hell 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 reassured 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 balls, and he poured them into the cannon's throat and pushed them down with the ramrod.
"I don't want to use up all our rifle shot, but seems to me there's room inside this thing for a lot more." He turned to the onlookers. "Everybody spread out and bring me anything made of metal that'll fit in here."
Into the cannon's maw went two chains, a padlock, a handful of knives and forks. And a dozen lead soldiers, sent to war by the small boys who owned them.
"Here, Mr. Cooper, use these." Pamela Russell pushed her way through the crowd holding out a canvas bag. Her eyes were bloodshot, the lids swollen and red.
Cooper frowned. "What's that?"
"A bag of pieces of eight from Raoul de Marion's safe. When Burke knew he was going to be in the fighting, he gave me the trading post keys to hold for him." She stopped, red-faced and choking, then continued. "Burke didn't know anything about fighting Indians. My husband is dead because de Marion left us almost defenseless. He doesn't deserve to have this silver."
Feeling Pamela's agony, Nicole went over to her and put an arm around her back and hugged her. Pamela's body was stiff, unresponsive.
Cooper's gaze traveled over the people gathered around the cannon. "Any of you folks see anything wrong with us doing this?"
"We always use Spanish dollars out here on the frontier," said Elysée with a smile. "The U.S. Government simply didn't mint enough coins. I'm sure the Indians will accept them."
"Well, that defense will do for now," said Cooper, grinning as he slit the bag with his hunting knife and poured the glittering silver disks into the cannon. "Going to make some Indians rich today," he said. "Now, we need something to touch it off with. I don't see any linstock around here."
"A candle?" Frank found a long white candle that would burn for about an hour and lit it from another one mounted on a wall.
"Should work," said Cooper. "Keep a lighted candle by the cannon at all times. We have no way of knowing when they'll decide to make their big attack."
Pamela Russell pulled free of Nicole and gripped Cooper's arm.
"Let me touch off the cannon," she said.
There was something frightening, Nicole thought, in the avid light in her eyes.
Is that how I'd be if Frank were killed?Nicole wondered.So utterly vengeful?
Cooper said, "Sure you can do it?"
Pamela whispered through tight lips, "Oh, yes. Yes, I am!"
"All right," said Cooper. "You can touch it off. But look out the Indians don't shoot you when we swing the door open."
Frank, Cooper and two more men kicked the chocks out from under the cannon's four wooden wheels. The men strained against the gun, and for a moment Nicole was afraid they wouldn't be able to move it. Then, grudgingly, it rumbled over the puncheon floor until Cooper set the four chocks back under the wheels. The cannon rested just a few feet back from the front door.
Looking through a port on the west side of the hall, Nicole saw the sun still high in the west. This was the month when days were longest.
And this has been the longest day of my life, she thought.
As the afternoon passed with agonizing slowness, Pamela Russell had to light yet a second candle, and then a third. She sat rigid in a chair beside the cannon, holding her candle upright, saying nothing, staring fixedly at the blockhouse door.
Nicole noticed a beam of sunlight from a west-facing rifle port lighting up the smoke and dust that drifted through the main hall of the blockhouse. The shaft of light looked like a solid bar of gold. She looked through the rifle port and was almost blinded by the sun just above the humped silhouettes of hills across the Mississippi.
She heard the Indians screaming, and her stomach turned over.
"Fire arrows!" someone yelled.
Nicole's heart stopped. If the Indians managed to set fire to the blockhouse, the hundreds of people who had taken shelter here would be driven out to be slaughtered.
She ran to the slot in the stone wall where Tom was standingwith his rifle ready. Looking past her son's head, she saw an arrow with a cloth-wrapped, burning tip arc up from the courtyard. It disappeared, and she thought it must have hit the second-story log wall somewhere above her.
"Upstairs!" Cooper shouted. "Fill your buckets from the water barrels and come on." His sweeping finger included a bunch of excited smaller boys, who followed him up the stairs. Nicole hurried after them.
Cooper and the other men boosted boys with buckets to the top of the log walls. The boys pulled themselves up to the open space Nicole had noticed before under the overhang of the roof. Leaning out, sheltered, the boys were able to see where the fire arrows had stuck, and dumped water on them.
Cooper grinned. "De Marion built well. The ground floor's stone and the roof is covered with sheet lead. Injuns'll soon tire of this game."
The fire arrows became fewer. They stopped coming, and there was a breathless silence in which time did not seem to pass. Then Cooper led the way back down to the ground floor.
High-pitched Indians whoops sent a new chill through Nicole.
A rifle went off—Tom, at the gunport to the left of the front door.
"Hold your fire, boy!" Cooper called, watching from the other side of the doorway. "Let them come."
Nicole went to stand beside her oldest son again and look out. The front gate of the palisade was open and Indians were streaming in. Brown bodies painted with yellow and red and black slashes, arms waving knives, clubs, tomahawks, bows and arrows, rifles. More were tumbling out the front door of the inn. A flicker of red light caught her eye. Flames shot out the open front door of the fur shop. They were burning all those valuable pelts. Raoul would lose a lot today.
And not just money, she thought, recalling burning Victoire. Money would be the least of Raoul's loss. To her surprise she felt a moment's sorrow for the brother she had come to despise.
Twenty or more Indians came through the gate carrying a huge black log, its front end afire. The rest of the Indians gathered around them. All together they ran at the blockhouse door, the glowing, smoking tip of the log in the forefront.
"Everybody get as far away from this damned cannon as you can!" Frank shouted. People scrambled away, leaving an empty space around the six-pounder in the center of the floor. Some ran into the strong room and some scurried upstairs. Only Cooper, Frank and Pamela Russell stood by the cannon. Nicole stayed where she was, moving her body so that she was between Tom and the cannon.
Whatever happens will be what God wants to happen.
"Open the door!" Cooper ordered.
Tom Slattery, the blacksmith, swung the door open, and Nicole saw some of the Indians hesitate, then rush forward. She wondered if they could see the cannon in the shadowy interior of the blockhouse.
"Shoot!" yelled Cooper.
Carefully, deliberately, Pamela Russell lowered her candle to the cannon's touchhole.
"Fire in the hole!" Cooper called out.
Nicole heard the sizzle of gunpowder from where she stood.
The boom of the cannon hit Nicole's skull like a mallet. A huge white cloud belched out through the open door, and the sharp reek of burnt powder filled the air. The gun jumped right over the chocks set behind its wheels and flew back about six feet.
In the aftermath of the cannon's roar came whoops of delight from nearly a hundred small boys in the blockhouse.
Then Nicole heard the Indians screaming again, but now they were screams of agony, not war cries. A fierce joy rose in her as she stood in the open doorway and saw the yard of the trading post transformed into a vision of Hell. Through the haze she saw dark bodies sprawling on the ground. Some of the Indians writhed in the dust of the yard, some were motionless. Others were frantically pulling the fallen back, dragging them by the arms or legs. The log they were going to use to batter down the door lay smouldering, abandoned in the yard of the trading post.
As she took in more of the sight of blood and torn bodies and severed limbs, Nicole felt ashamed that she had rejoiced at first. Sickened, she turned away.
"Fire your rifles!" David Cooper yelled. "Shoot, shoot, shoot! Keep them on the run. And shut that damned door."
"Let me at the port, Maw," Tom demanded.
The rifles banged away, sounding puny in Nicole's ears after the roar of the cannon. Finally Cooper ordered an end to the shooting.
"If we let 'em drag their dead out of here, they may be in a mood to leave."
Nicole waited in dread, wondering whether the Indians would come again. The sunset rays pouring through the ports on the west side of the blockhouse slowly faded, leaving the main room dark. People lit more candles. David Cooper directed the reloading of the cannon.
The group in Raoul's office were singing hymns again, and many people sitting around the hall joined them. Nicole sat beside Pamela Russell on a bench and took her hand, and soon Pamela began to talk quietly. She told Nicole things about Burke, the books he enjoyed reading, his favorite dishes, jokes he used to tell her.
"I always envied you, Nicole, with so many children. We wanted children so much, and we never got any. And now we'll never—"
Nicole tried to think of something to say, but everything that came to her sounded foolish to her mind's ear. Looking at Frank standing by a port, she thought,I have been blessed, and Pamela hasn't been. But why?That had to mean something. She couldn't think what.
"It helps me, when life is hard, to believe that God has a plan," she said, patting Pamela's hand. "His plan is like a painting that's so big we can only see dark spots or bright spots without knowing what it all means. But I think one day he'll take us up with him, where we can see the whole picture and understand it."
"Nicole," Frank called. She gave Pamela's hand a squeeze and went to see what Frank was looking at through the rifle port.
Even at this distance she could hear the roaring of the flames. Sparks shot up past the palisade, and a red glow filled the sky.
"They're burning the town," he said. "Our home is gone. Our shop."
She turned back to see Pamela, sitting on the bench, a lost look on her pale face. She thought of the people who had not managed to reach the shelter of the trading post. She put her arm around Frank's waist and pressed herself against him.
"You and I are alive and all of our children are alive," she said. "God has blessed us."
"Wolf Paw has come back!"
White Bear felt a hollow in his stomach as the cry ran through the camp. Wolf Paw had vowed to bring death and destruction to the pale eyes such as they had never known before.
Before he left, Wolf Paw had held a ritual dog feast to insure success. He had hung one of his own dogs from a painted pole by its hind legs and disemboweled it alive, asking Earthmaker's blessing on the war party. Then his wives, Running Deer and Burning Pine, had cooked the dog and served bits of the meat to the braves and warriors who would follow Wolf Paw on this raid. If he would choose one of his cherished dogs to be sacrificed, what would he do to the people of Victor?
For days White Bear had held himself rigid, hardly able to eat, lying awake at night, waiting for Wolf Paw's war party to come back. What horrors would he have to face now?
Women and children ran to surround the returning braves and warriors. White Bear saw Iron Knife on horseback towering above the crowd, his huge arms lifted triumphantly. From each fist dangled a scalp. Beside him was Wolf Paw, a blue cloth, stained red with blood, wrapped around his left shoulder. Wolf Paw's right hand was raised high, gripping three long hanks of hair with disks of white flesh hanging from them. More braves rode behind them, also holding up scalps. Scalps, scalps, scalps.
White Bear staggered. He could not take his eyes from them. The hair was of many different colors—light brown, gray, darkbrown, black. Some of the locks were very long, and must have been taken from women's heads.
Could Wolf Paw be holding Nicole's hair, or Frank's? Could it be Grandpapa's?
Heart pounding, White Bear forced himself to push through the crowd. He heard cattle lowing and horses neighing in the distance. Questioning shouts and cries of greeting.
A scream of agony froze him. A woman's voice. And then another, from another part of the crowd, piercing his eardrums. And still more screams. He realized what was happening. Women were learning that their men had not come back.
Scalps and screams. Wolf Paw's gifts to the British Band. White Bear worked his way past women calling out anxious questions.
He suddenly came upon his mother leading a wailing pregnant woman out of the crowd.
"She heard that her husband was killed, and she has gone into labor," Sun Woman said, her face hollow with her own pain. White Bear squeezed her arm briefly as she passed him.
When he got close to Wolf Paw he saw a bound woman's body draped face down across the back of the brave's gray pony.
She wore a ragged blue dress. Her feet were bare, dirty and covered with scratches. She did not stir. From this side of the pony White Bear could not see her face. A sickening suspicion gripped him, and he hesitated, not wanting his fear confirmed.
Wolf Paw, frowning down at him angrily, was still wearing his yellow and red war paint, faded by the ride of several days.
"I raided the town where you lived, White Bear. I took forty head of cattle and twenty horses from your pale eyes relatives."
"I am glad to hear of the cattle," said White Bear. "Our people are starving."
Wanting, and not wanting, to know who Wolf Paw's captive was, he walked around the brave's horse for a better look at the bound woman.
"We killed many pale eyes," Wolf Paw said. "They will never forget Wolf Paw's raid. Tonight we will have a scalp dance for the warriors who have become braves."
White Bear stopped walking. People he knew and loved on both sides had died; he had to learn which ones.
After a moment he collected himself. "And will you dance forthe braves and warriors you did not bring back?" It was a cruel thing to say, but Wolf Paw deserved it. Wolf Paw did not answer.
White Bear had to fight himself to keep from crying aloud in anguish. He no longer had any doubt who the captive woman was who hung head down over the spotted pony.
One yellow braid was still tied with a blue bow. The other had come undone, and loose locks of blond hair hung down, almost brushing the ground.
He bent to see Nancy's unconscious face.
Coming up beside him Redbird asked quietly, "Do you know this woman?"
"Yes," he said. It all came back to him—last summer at Victoire, the meetings on the prairie, that night in the cornfield beside her father's house when she had begged him to "know" her. Had he missed her? Yes; he had to admit that. Did he love her? He was not sure, but, happy as he had been with Redbird, he often thought of Nancy and wondered if she still longed for him as she had when he left her.
How, without hurting Redbird, who stood next to him watching as he stared down at Nancy, could he explain what this white woman meant to him?
He reached out to untie the rope looped around Nancy's back that held her to Wolf Paw's horse.
"Do not touch her," Wolf Paw growled. "She is for me, and only for me."
No, White Bear thought, he could not let Nancy be kidnapped and raped by this man. Whatever bloody things had been done at Victor, this he must prevent. He readied himself to fight Wolf Paw if he had to.
And how would he explainthatto Redbird?
Wolf Paw slid down from his horse and, one-handed, untied Nancy. Fresh blood was soaking through the cloth around his shoulder—a strip of blue gingham torn from Nancy's dress, White Bear now saw.
Weak from his wound, Wolf Paw could not lift Nancy and carry her. Regardless of Wolf Paw's warning, White Bear would not let her fall. He took her from Wolf Paw and eased her to the ground. Her eyelids were fluttering. Redbird, bending awkwardly with her swollen belly, helped him. Their eyes met, and she looked searchingly into his.
A woman's voice cried, "The pale eyes squaw isnotfor you, Wolf Paw. I will not have her in my wickiup." Running Deer, the older of Wolf Paw's two wives, strode up to Wolf Paw, thrusting her face into his. Behind her came Burning Pine, the younger wife, a papoose strapped to her back, looking equally determined.
"My wives will do as I say," Wolf Paw grumbled, but there was no strength in his voice.
Burning Pine said, "Your wives and children are hungry. We are eating roots and bark. We have no food for any pale eyes."
For now, Black Hawk's band was hidden away on an island of dry ground in the heart of a great marsh north of the headwaters of the Rock River, well into the Michigan Territory. But there was scarcely any game or fish here, and they could not stay in this place much longer.
Wolf Paw said, "I have brought cattle."
"Then the people will eat well because of my husband," Running Deer said. "But the pale eyes woman will not need to eat." Running Deer turned to the crowd. "Many women lost their husbands in Wolf Paw's raid. It is right that the women avenge themselves on this pale eyes."
White Bear's back crawled with gooseflesh. Running Deer meant for the women of the band to torture Nancy to death.
For as long as they could make her pain last, it would take their minds off their hunger and sickness and sorrow. And their own fear of death.
It must not happen. But how could he prevent it?
Feeling like a drowning man being swept away on rapids, White Bear watched Running Deer and Burning Pine lift Nancy from the ground and carry her off, with her feet dragging. Wolf Paw and most of the braves who had returned with him followed.
Wolf Paw's wives pulled Nancy through the band's collection of hastily built wickiups and lean-tos. They brought her to a tall elm tree growing up in the center of the camp. The tree was dying. Its bark had been stripped to cover a wickiup.
By the time White Bear caught up with the crowd around Nancy, her eyes were wide open, but unfocused. Running Deer pushed her against the trunk of the elm tree and drew a knife. With swift, angry slashes, Wolf Paw's senior wife stripped away Nancy's dress and the chemise under it. Nancy stood naked before the tribe. Her eyes werestill open and unseeing. She made no attempt to cover herself. She did not seem to know what was happening to her. White Bear's skin crawled with shame at the sight of her degradation.
Women laughed. "Her skin is like a frog's belly!"
Men stared greedily.
Running Deer took a coil of rawhide rope and lashed Nancy to the tree, and White Bear felt the muscles of his neck and shoulders knotting till they ached. He could scarcely bear to look at Nancy, who hung in her bonds, her eyes closed again.
He did not care if they killed him. He would not let them do this. He would not allow it to go on a moment longer.
He put his hand over the five claw scars on his chest and spoke to his spirit self.O Bear spirit, give me the power to move the people to mercy.
He felt strength surge into his chest and arms, and raising his medicine stick, he strode forward.
When he was only a foot away from Nancy, her eyes opened suddenly, huge and turquoise, staring into his.
"Auguste!" Her voice and face were full of terror.
It came to him with a shock that he must look frightful to her. The man she had loved was transformed into a vision of savagery—painted face, a shoulder-length mane of hair, silver earrings, shell necklace, his scarred chest bare, holding high a painted stick adorned with feathers and beads. And what would she make of his right ear, torn in two by Eli Greenglove's rifle ball? After what she had already gone through, the sight of him must be yet another impossible shock.
"I'm going to help you," he said in English. "Try not to show that you're frightened." Useless advice, he thought. Still, it would be better for them both if the people respected her. There was nothing a Sauk despised more than a show of fear.
He pointed his medicine stick at Running Deer and said sternly, "Stand aside." She glowered at him but stepped back.
Last winter Wolf Paw had snatched this stick from his hand. But that was before White Bear had nearly been killed carrying Black Hawk's message of peace to the pale eyes. That was before they had begun to see for themselves that White Bear had spoken truly when he warned that Black Hawk's hope of a great alliance to defeat the long knives was an illusion. And that was before many of the peoplehad felt his healing touch. He knew how to do things, because of his training with pale eyes doctors, that Owl Carver and Sun Woman did not.
Now White Bear's medicine stick had much more power than a few moons ago. Even at this moment when anxiety for Nancy gnawed at him, he felt pride in his power.
He turned to face the crowd, standing protectively in front of Nancy.
The braves and warriors stared at him, puzzled and angry.
"Is this how you show your strength and courage, by torturing a helpless woman?" he demanded.
Wolf Paw said, "She is a trophy honorably taken in battle."
White Bear pointed to Running Deer. "Wolf Paw meant to take the pale eyes woman into his wickiup for his pleasure. But his wife will not let him. So he pretends that it is his pleasure to let the women torture her."
Feeling stronger than ever, White Bear watched Wolf Paw's face darken. He might be able to outfight any man in the tribe barehanded or with weapons, but not with words. This moment, thought White Bear, began to repay Wolf Paw for shaming him last winter before the council.
And he will have to let me tend his wound. That, too, will repay him.
Wolf Paw stood glowering at White Bear, his eyes glazing, his breath coming in gasps. He must be on the verge of fainting from the pain, White Bear thought.
"I captured the pale eyes woman," Wolf Paw said. "I give her to the tribe."
"Are we fighting the pale eyes so we can steal their women?" White Bear demanded. "As long as we torture and kill their people, the long knives will think of us as wild animals that must be destroyed. I have lived among the pale eyes, and I tell you that we must show them that we are worthy of their respect."
Wolf Paw grumbled, "We will win their respect by killing them. I have killed many."
Many at Victor, no doubt, White Bear thought, feeling as sick as Wolf Paw looked, hating him for his ignorance.
He addressed the whole gathering. "Since Wolf Paw has given this woman to the tribe, let the tribe treat her honorably," WhiteBear said. "The day will come when we will have to sit down with the long knives and talk."
"Not if we win!" cried Wolf Paw.
"Win?" White Bear laughed scornfully. "Does Wolf Paw still imagine that thousands of long knives are going to surrender to our few hundred Sauk and Fox warriors? We can win only if they decide to stop fighting us. If we make them hate us, they will never stop fighting until all of us are dead."
It is probably already too late for talking with the long knives, but if I hold out the hope of peace, it may save Nancy's life.
He let his gaze travel over the people who stood in a ring around him. The dark eyes looking at him were mostly sullen and suspicious, because their shaman was telling them what they did not want to hear. No one seemed ready to challenge him, but he knew that if three or four braves were to overpower him and kill Nancy, the crowd would let it happen. His belly muscles knotted with tension.
But, as Wolf Paw had said, they needed all their luck, and it would be best not to tempt the wrath of the spirits by defying their shaman.
Redbird, you must not fail me.He gave his wife a look of appeal before he spoke further. Behind Redbird Iron Knife stood like a great oak tree. At least there was no threat to him in Iron Knife's face.
White Bear took a deep breath and his heart fluttered. His life and Nancy's depended on what happened next.
"I take the pale eyes woman under my protection," he said. "Redbird, untie her."
Redbird hesitated for just a moment, her eyes wide, and White Bear held his breath. If, moved by jealousy, she refused to obey him and sided with Running Deer, there was no hope for Nancy.
At that thought a resolve arose in him, dark and powerful as a storm on the Great River, and he filled his lungs and squared his shoulders.
If they try to kill her, they will have to kill me first. If she is doomed, so am I.
If he stood by and let the people torture Nancy to death, he would hate himself forever.
Redbird lowered her eyes and began to undo the rope aroundNancy. Iron Knife helped his sister. Relief brightened in White Bear, like sunlight on the river after a storm. Relief, and a surge of love for his wife. With Iron Knife siding with him and Wolf Paw weakened by his wound, no brave would dare to challenge him.
Eagle Feather was standing in front of the crowd, and White Bear felt proud that his son was seeing the people treat him with respect. That might balance out the memory of that shameful night of the woman's dress.
"Eagle Feather, run and get one of our blankets."
Nancy looked at White Bear with huge, frightened eyes, saying nothing. Terror must have struck her dumb. But he was relieved to see she was able to stand on her own. Redbird put a hand on her shoulder to steady her.
"You're going to be all right," White Bear said in English. "We will take you to my wickiup."
He turned to Wolf Paw. "Come with me. I will see to your wound." Wolf Paw's brown skin looked clammy and bloodless. He had ridden for four days with a bullet in his shoulder. It must come out at once, or it would kill him. But White Bear took pleasure in giving orders to Wolf Paw.
Eagle Feather came with a blanket, and Redbird wrapped it around Nancy.
Most of the people scattered, many to mourn their dead, others to hear the stories of the braves and warriors who had come back with the war party, still others to see the horses and to butcher some of the cattle they had brought back. A small crowd followed White Bear, the yellow-haired prisoner and Wolf Paw.
As Redbird and Iron Knife helped Nancy, now softly sobbing, into the low structure of branches and bark, Owl Carver came up to White Bear.
"I was ready to terrify the people if they turned against you, but you did not need my help. You spoke to them, and against their will they heeded you."
Owl Carver's praise delighted White Bear. But as he saw once again how the old shaman had declined, it took some of the edge from his pleasure.
Owl Carver's eyes were watery and his cheeks were sunken. His arms and legs were thin as spear shafts. The trek up the Rock River had not been good for him. White Bear and Sun Woman hadtaken over most of the work of caring for the wounded and sick, though Owl Carver did as much as he could.
"You are a Great Shaman, as I predicted you would be," Owl Carver said. "You foretold exactly what would happen if Black Hawk led the British Band across the Great River. But I am sad that your greatness must be proved by the suffering of our people."
White Bear felt his chest expand and a warmth spread through his limbs at these words of his teacher.
"I may need your help yet," he said. "The people do not like me protecting this pale eyes woman."
Owl Carver nodded. "But they respect you. And they will respect you more when you show them you have magical powers."
"I have no magical powers."
"You do. It was not I who put the mark of the Bear on your chest."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that the White Bear is your spirit self. And he can act in this world. The mark of his claws is the mark of his favor."
As White Bear let this sink in, Wolf Paw approached with a stumbling walk. Running Deer and Burning Pine followed him.
Out of their wickiup Redbird brought a blanket, White Bear's Sauk medicine bag and his black bag of surgical instruments.
"Sit in the wickiup with the pale eyes woman," White Bear told Redbird. "She is very frightened."
"I am frightened too," said Redbird as she left him.
White Bear bit his lip. The tone of her voice said,Who is this woman?
As White Bear set out the markers for the seven directions, positioning four stones around Wolf Paw, he said, "This will hurt very much and Wolf Paw must not move."
Keeping in place the two stones and the bear's claw White Bear laid on Wolf Paw's chest would force the brave to lie still.
"You cannot hurt me," said Wolf Paw, just as if he were a captive and White Bear was about to torture him.
White Bear turned to the people standing around them.
"All of you join hands and ask Earthmaker to heal Wolf Paw's wound."
Running Deer's face, which had been hard with anger, now melted into tears. Burning Pine looked hopefully at White Bear.
White Bear gestured to Iron Knife to lift Wolf Paw's shoulder slightly. Carefully, gently, he untied and unwrapped the blood-soaked blue rag torn from Nancy's dress. Recent bleeding had softened the scab, so that the cloth came away easily from the wound, which was between Wolf Paw's left armpit and his collarbone. Its shape surprised White Bear: not a round bullet hole, but a long, narrow gash, surrounded by bruised and swollen flesh.
"How did this happen to you?" he asked. He was going to have to hurt Wolf Paw all the more because the wound had gone untreated for four days.
"When the braves attacked the blockhouse all together at the end of the day, the pale eyes opened the door and fired a big gun."
White Bear desperately wanted to make Wolf Paw tell him everything that had happened, but there was no time for that now. And after he heard Wolf Paw's tale, he might want to hurt him even more than he had to.
Raoul kept a naval six-pounder at the trading post; White Bear had heard about it. Probably this was a piece of what the long knives called canister shot or grapeshot in Wolf Paw's shoulder. But then why not a round hole?
White Bear slid the steel rod he would use to explore Wolf Paw's wound through a loop in the end of the tongs. To see how the brave was taking it, he looked up at his face. Wolf Paw stared back at him with hard black eyes as he pushed the probe into the wound with one hand, the other holding the handles of the tongs. When the rounded tip of the probe had gone in about half a finger's length, it touched something hard. Not a bone, White Bear was sure. He moved the probe up and down and from side to side. The only sign of pain Wolf Paw gave was deeper, heavier breathing.
How odd! The object was definitely flat and must have hit Wolf Paw edge on. It lay buried in a muscle. An inch higher and whatever it was would have broken Wolf Paw's shoulder. White Bear moved the tongs into position within the torn flesh, one end on each side of the flat object. His hand ached as he tightened his grip on the tongs. He had learned how to get a good grip on bullets, but the blood would make this flat missile slippery.
Wolf Paw was not breathing now. White Bear did not dare to look into his face. For both of them, White Bear understood, this was a moment of testing.
Holding his own breath, praying to Earthmaker to strengthen his grip on the tongs, White Bear began to pull.
Wolf Paw gave the faintest groan. Another man would probably be screaming.
The flat piece of metal came almost to the surface of Wolf Paw's blackened flesh, but slid out of the tongs' grip just as White Bear was about to draw it out. He gritted his teeth in anger.
Wolf Paw sighed. White Bear looked at his face and saw that only the whites of his eyes were showing under the half-closed lids. Mercifully—for both of them—he had fainted.
White Bear looked again at the object he was trying to pull out of Wolf Paw's shoulder. He could just see a corrugated edge covered with blood. With a bit of cloth he wiped the blood away and saw a bright silver gleam.
He gave a little gasp of amazement.
A silver coin. The last thing anyone would expect to find loaded into a cannon. Or embedded in a man's body. Those people at Victor must have been desperate.
That gave White Bear an inspiration. No one else was close enough to see what he had seen in the wound. He remembered what Owl Carver had said about showing the people magical powers.
He waited until he saw Wolf Paw's eyelids flutter and then said, "Wolf Paw, because you have allowed the pale eyes woman to live, the spirits will reward you."
Wolf Paw, his lips compressed, frowned at him.
"The spirits will allow me to change the lead ball the pale eyes shot into you to one of their silver coins." He spoke loudly so that the people watching could all hear him.
Wolf Paw stared, as White Bear passed his medicine stick three times in a sunwise circle over the bleeding shoulder.
Once again White Bear pushed the tongs into the wound. He pushed the ends in past the coin, to get a good purchase on it. Wolf Paw groaned. White Bear pulled.
Joy sprang up in him as he felt the silver coin coming free. He had it this time. The spirits might not have changed lead to silver, but they had made him skillful. The tongs came out holding an eight-real silver piece dripping with blood. White Bear held it up for all to see.
Wolf Paw's eyes grew round. The people cried out in amazement. Even Owl Carver looked astonished.
Delighted with the effect, White Bear wiped the blood from the Spanish dollar carefully with the rag from Nancy's dress. It shone in the afternoon sunlight, the head of the King of Spain on one side along with a Latin inscription and the date 1823. On the other side, a coat of arms.
Perfect! Now, he thought with pleasure, the braves and warriors and their wives would be more reluctant than ever to challenge him. And that meant Nancy would be safer.
He held the coin before Wolf Paw's face. "The form is the form of a pale eyes coin, but this is a gift from the spirits."
Wolf Paw, slowly sitting up, took the coin and said, "I will wear it around my neck. Maybe it will be a charm against more wounds."
"Let it remind you that it is honorable to treat prisoners kindly," said White Bear. He kept his face grave, but within he was bubbling over with triumph.
After stuffing the wound with buzzard's down and giving Wolf Paw herb tea to drink, White Bear sent him on his way. The brave stumbled off, leaning on Running Deer. White Bear stood up, stretched his tired arms and legs and turned to the doorway of his wickiup.
A painful moment of doubt assailed him. Was this what the way of the shaman came to, then? Trickery? Perhaps his visions, too, were only dreams. No, the White Bear spirit was real. He had seen the paw print beside his father's body. He bore the claw marks on his chest.
He had to force himself to stoop down, to step through the low doorway and face Nancy. He felt tremulous within. Whatever horrors Nancy had seen and endured, she would surely blame them on him. In all his paint and ornaments he was too obviously a Sauk.
And how would his efforts to protect Nancy and win her trust make Redbird feel? How could he make her truly understand what was between him and Nancy—and what was not?
He was not sure that he himself understood it.
In the light from the open doorway he saw Nancy, crouched on the opposite side of the round hut, trembling, still wrapped in the blanket Redbird had put on her. Redbird and Eagle Feather were sitting silently against the curving wall.
He sat down facing Nancy and she drew away, shuddering.
He said, "Don't be afraid of me, Nancy. I know I look strange to you. I'm the shaman, the medicine man, for my people."
"Your people!" she burst out. "Your people murdered my father!"
He had been afraid of that. He bowed his head and closed his eyes.
"Oh, Nancy. I'm sorry."
What a ridiculous, futile thing to say.
I must know what happened at Victor. Nancy's father was killed. Who else?
White Bear said, "Nancy, I don't ask you to forgive me for what my people did to you. But I did try to stop all this from happening. I pray you'll let me tell you how I tried to make peace. And you are safe now as long as you stay with me."
"Safe with you? Here?" She shuddered. "If I mean anything at all to you, you've got to help me to get away."
His heart sank. The one thing he was sure he could not do was have her set free.
"That will be hard."
"I heard you talking to them. You were ordering them to leave me alone, and they did. Tell them to let me go. Auguste, I'll go mad. I'm so frightened!"
She clutched at his arm. He could feel her fear pouring into his arm up to his heart. He put his hand on top of hers and held it firmly. He wanted to take her in his arms to comfort her, but Redbird's eyes were on him, and she would not understand. So he just patted Nancy's hand and released it.
He told Redbird what he had been saying to Nancy.
"Does she not see that the braves would kill you if you tried to set her free?" Redbird asked.
"She is too frightened to see anything," he said, and turned back to Nancy.
"The only man who can free you is Black Hawk. I'll try to convince him that he should, but he is away with a war party now."
"Killing more innocent men and women and children?" Her teeth and eyes gleamed in the faint light within the wickiup.
Her words left a hollow ache in his chest, but he went on speaking doggedly.
"When he comes back, I'll go to him. Meanwhile, ask your God to help you be brave."
She let go of his arm abruptly. "What do you know about my God, with your paint and your feathers and your magic wand?"
Her words hurt, and he was about to answer angrily, but he told himself she was half mad with terror and grief.
"Because I have these things I can help you," he said gently. "But I want so much to know what happened at Victor. Can you bear to tell me?"
She took his arm again. "I'd just gotten dressed to go out and feed the animals—when I saw the Indians riding toward our house. So many of them! I knew right away. I ran into the house and woke Father. By the time they got to the house he was standing in the doorway. He never even got his rifle loaded, Auguste. Before he could move there was an arrow in his chest."
White Bear knew that Reverend Hale had never liked him; but he was Nancy's father, and to see her father killed—how that must hurt her!
"He was a good man," he said. "He never did harm to our people. It is wrong that he died."
Nancy went on, sobbing softly. "I must have fainted. I remember a ride, I was thrown over the back of a horse, then we were at Victoire. Auguste, they—they just overran Victoire."
"Did anyone get away?"
"I think the people at Victoire must have seen our church and the farms burning, so they had some warning. I couldn't see much. I was left tied on the horse while they attacked. I did see them chase one woman and run a spear through her. It was over very quickly. They set fire to Victoire."
White Bear swallowed hard.
He saw the château with its magnificent hall and its great sweeping roof. There he had lived and learned so much from Grandpapa and Father. Their hopes, their lives, had gone into that great house. And the men and women of Victoire, kindly, cheerful hard-working people—Marchette Perrault, Registre and Bernadette Bosquet. They may not have tried to stop Raoul from seizing the estate, but they had, most of them, loved Elysée and Pierre and Auguste de Marion.
The pain in his chest spread till it seemed to fill his whole world, hammering at him inside and out.
Nancy said, "Then they rode on to Victor, taking me with them."
He choked as he asked, "Did they burn Victor down too?"
"Yes, as they left."
A voice seemed to echo inside him like a scream in a huge, empty hall.
Nicole! Frank! Grandpapa!
"Can you tell me—my family—were any of them hurt?"
Nancy said, "I think the people at Victor got into the trading post before the Indians got there. There were men on the palisade shooting at the Indians. The leader, the one with the red crest on his head, tied me to a tree. I had to watch it all."
"He is called Wolf Paw. He is Black Hawk's son."