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 chateau-- _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 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 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