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."
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."