Shaman, Robert Shea [new ebook reader .txt] 📗

id="Page_274">[274]

A gaunt brown face with strong bones, deep-set gray eyes, a young face aged by grief. In White Bear's vision of last winter this man had a black beard; now he was clean-shaven. But this was the man the Turtle had shown him.

A sudden shout from the woods made both White Bear and Wolf Paw jump with surprise.

"Help! Help me, please!"

White Bear saw Otto Wegner stagger from the trees about a hundred feet to his right. He was trying to run toward the tall man.

He limped badly and let out an "Oh!" of pain with every step.

The tall man set his hat back on his head and ran toward the Prussian, who fell forward on his face in the grass a short distance from the edge of the woods.

Wolf Paw swung the rifle toward Otto, but before he could fire, Otto fell and was almost obscured by the tall grass. The blue-black rifle barrel lifted toward the man going to his aid. White Bear heard Wolf Paw draw a deep breath through his nostrils and saw his finger tighten on the trigger.

Even as the hammer fell and the spark set the powder sizzling in the pan, White Bear thrust his hand out. In the instant between the pulling of the trigger and the firing of the rifle White Bear pushed the barrel off target.

The rifle went off with a boom and a flash and a puff of blue smoke.

The lanky man jerked his head around and stared into the trees where Wolf Paw and White Bear sat hidden on their horses. He shouted and pointed. The long knives spread out between the creek and the woods brought their rifles to their shoulders. Some of them jumped on their horses.

"Why did you do that?" Wolf Paw shouted. It no longer mattered that the long knives could hear him.

He raised his rifle as if to hit White Bear with the butt end, as Eli Greenglove had done many moons ago.

"Come on," said White Bear, ignoring the threat and kicking his horse's sides to start him galloping through the woods. Wolf Paw, who had no time to reload, thundered behind him, uttering shouts of inarticulate rage.

White Bear was certain Wolf Paw would strike at him with rifle butt or tomahawk or knife before they cleared the woods, but Wolf Paw was wholly bent now on escape.[275]

Now I understand!

The realization hit White Bear so suddenly and surprisingly that he sat up in his saddle. A tree limb flying toward him nearly hit him in the face. He ducked under it at the last moment.

This was why he had wanted to stay behind with Wolf Paw, even at the cost of delaying his reunion with Redbird, even at the risk of his life. It was not just to protect Otto Wegner. The Turtle—or perhaps even Earthmaker himself—had ordained it. If he had not been there Wolf Paw would have killed that tall, thin man who came to bury his fallen comrades.

White Bear remembered the rest of his vision—hundreds of blue-coated long knives charging and dying. Would this man send those long knives or their enemy into battle?

It was impossible to puzzle out. He might never know the answer.

They rode over the prairie on the other side of the woods, heading for Black Hawk's camp. The long knives following them had dropped away, doubtless afraid, as Wolf Paw had predicted, of an ambush.

Still expecting to feel a tomahawk blade split his spine, White Bear slowed down.

"So!" Wolf Paw shouted. "You are still a pale eyes!"

"No," White Bear tried to explain. "It was a vision I had. I had to save that man."

"A vision," Wolf Paw sneered. "I should kill you. If you were not a shaman— A warrior needs all his luck. But, since your pale eyes people are so precious to you, I will kill them. You heard what my father said. I will lead the war party that goes to your pale eyes' home. And this time you will not be along to save anyone."

They spoke no more. Though the morning sky was bright, a cloud of dread settled over White Bear. What would become of Nicole, Grandpapa, Frank and all the people of Victoire and Victor who had been his friends? At the prompting of some spirit, he had saved the tall, thin man, a stranger to him. And he had saved Otto Wegner, one of Raoul's hired men.

Was there nothing he could do for his own loved ones?

[276]

15
The Blockhouse

The devil's reek of gunpowder seared Nicole's nostrils. Arrows flew over the trading post palisade to fall in the courtyard, some quivering upright in the ground. She heard the piercing shrieks of the Indians above the steady crackling of rifle fire.

She stood in the open doorway of the blockhouse, her body tense with fear as she watched Frank, up on the catwalk above the main gate. He crouched behind the pointed logs of the palisade. Frowning with concentration, he was slowly reloading his rifle.

"Look at Frank up there," Nicole said to Pamela Russell, who stood beside her. "Oh, God, I hate to see him out in the open. Frank," she said, though she knew he couldn't hear her, "get into one of the towers!"

"Burke too," Pamela said. "Why do they do it?" She pointed to the east side of the palisade where her husband, a stocky man wearing spectacles, stood on the catwalk. With the Indians attacking the front gate, he was left alone to guard the east parapet. The rest of the men, ten of them, were at the front part of the palisades, banging away.

Twelve men. Twelve men who know how to use rifles. That's all we've got.

And four were Nicole's husband, two of her sons and her father.

She gasped.

She saw a loop of rope fly through the air above the eastern wall and catch on one of the sharpened logs. A moment later a dark head crowned with feathers appeared above the palisade. And Burke Russell was looking the other way.[277]

"Burke, look out!" Pamela screamed.

Burke heard that. He swung around, raising his rifle to his shoulder.

"Please, God!" Nicole cried.

The Indian leaped over the parapet. He seemed twice as tall as Burke, with bulging muscles that gleamed with oil. He wore only a loincloth, and his walnut-brown body was painted with red, yellow and black stripes. His scalplock flew out behind him as he rushed Burke, swinging a war club with a glittering metal spike protruding from its thick end.

Burke's rifle went off with an orange flash, a boom, a cloud of smoke.

The Indian wasn't stopped. The war club came down on Burke's head. Nicole heard the hollow thud and heard herself cry out.

Pamela screamed. "Oh, no, oh God, no! Burke! Burke!"

Burke's glasses flew from his face, hit the catwalk and caromed off to the ground. With his free hand the Indian giant seized the rifle as Burke crumpled. He raised both arms over his head, rifle in one hand, bloodstained club in the other, and shouted his triumph.

Nicole's stomach heaved.

Pamela fell against her, fainting. She threw an arm around Pamela and eased her to the ground, and she saw half a dozen more Indians waving rifles and tomahawks leap over the eastern parapet and land on the catwalk near Burke Russell's body.

"Frank! Behind you!" she screamed.

Frank turned, took aim and fired at the Indians. He ran for the nearest corner tower.

Nicole didn't see whether he hit any of the Indians. She dragged Pamela out of the doorway with the help of Ellen Slattery, the blacksmith's wife. They got Pamela sitting on a bench by the wall. Her thick chestnut hair tumbled forward as Nicole pushed her head down to revive her.

I don't know why I'm doing this. It's a mercy she's unconscious.

Frank!

Her heart in her throat, Nicole pushed herself to her feet and ran back to the door. An arrow whizzed through the open doorway. It clanged off the iron muzzle of the cannon that stood in the center of the blockhouse hall.

I'd make a mighty big target for those Indians, she thought, the wry little joke helping to keep her from crying in her terror.[278]

She peered around the edge of the doorway to see a fury of brown bodies on the southern catwalk where Frank had been standing. In the center of the catwalk, one brave with a rooster's comb of red-dyed hair shouted and brandished a steel-headed tomahawk, sending parties to hammer at the doors of the corner towers with clubs, tomahawks and rifle butts. Black rings painted around his eyes and yellow slashes on his cheekbones gave him a terrifying look.

Even in the midst of her fear and hatred she could see that his body was magnificent. The most beautiful man's body she'd ever seen.

To her relief Nicole saw no dead white men anywhere—except for Burke Russell, who lay still, his head a bright red mess, one arm hanging down over the edge of the eastern catwalk. She looked at him quickly and then looked away, feeling sick again.

What made it even more of a shame that Burke had died on the palisade was that the men never planned to hold it. They just wanted to delay the Indians a bit. Here in the blockhouse was where they hoped to be able to hold out.

With God's help.

"Oh, Burke! Oh, my Burke!" Pamela Russell was awake and screaming. Ellen Slattery looked helplessly at Nicole.

Nicole felt heartbroken for Pamela, but she had to let her be. There was too much to do. She ran through the people crowded into the main room on the ground floor of the blockhouse. There must be four hundred people here, mostly women and children, she thought.

And Raoul's got over a hundred men from Victor with him. God knows where.

Here they had more rifles than men. Two dozen rifles leaned against the stone wall. Many families owned two or three rifles, and people had grabbed them as they fled to the trading post.

Well, a woman can ram a ball down a muzzle and pull a trigger too.

And miss, she thought, her heart a ball of ice. She hadn't seen one Indian hit yet.

Nicole spoke loudly to the women around her. "The Indians will be shooting down from the catwalk at our men when they try to get back here to us." She started to load a rifle. "We've got to shoot at the Indians and drive them to cover."[279]

She had not held a rifle in her hands since marrying Frank, who would not have a firearm in the house. But Elysée de Marion had taught his daughter how to shoot, and she had not forgotten.

Piled by the rifles were flannel bags, powder horns and five small barrels, all full of gunpowder. In that frantic dawn, after fleeing here, the men and women had formed a relay line to rush the bags and barrels of gunpowder from Raoul's stone magazine to the blockhouse.

Feeling a bit more hopeful, Nicole noticed lead ingots lying beside the ammunition—probably from the lead mine that Raoul had shut down just before leaving Victor. And she saw scissor-shaped bullet molds. They had some of the things they needed.

If only they knew how to use these things.

"Who knows how to mold bullets?" she asked the group of women who'd been standing silently, watching her.

"I know," Elfrida Wegner said. Of course, thought Nicole. Her husband had been a soldier, over in Europe.

"Take some others and show them how to do it," Nicole said. "We're going to need all the bullets we can make."

Elfrida and two other women carried the lead bars and the molds to the huge fireplace at the rear of the hall.

From the hundred and more women crowded into the hall Nicole collected ten volunteers who knew something about rifles, five to shoot and five to load.

She called two of the bigger boys to carry baskets of shot upstairs. But carrying powder—that was dangerous. She couldn't make herself ask anyone else to do that.

She filled a bushel basket with sacks of cartridges, added a powder horn on top, swung it up to her shoulder and charged up the stairs, terrified all the way.

"Judas Priest, you're strong, Missuz Hopkins," said one of the boys carrying shot. It gave her a warm feeling to hear that; she figured most people thought of her as just plain fat.

She still couldn't believe she was going to do this. Going to try to kill people. She picked out a slot in the log wall and pushed her rifle barrel through it. She could see a bit of the courtyard below. White men were falling back from the towers. Indians were coming at them. All of them were moving slowly. White men backing up a step at a time. Indians matching them