"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.