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?"