Through the Fire (The Native American Warrior Series) (26 page)

Bancroft spoke in a voice meant to carry to everyone within the palisade walls.
“We can’t stand about here. Get to the firing platform, McCutcheon. We’ve a fort to defend.”

Rebecca couldn
’t reach out to her uncle, but she could speak. “Help me. Let me help you, before it’s too late.”

Regret crossed his eyes. He shook his head.
“I can help you best by fighting, gal. You’ll come to see the sense of it.”

Her heart sank.

He picked up his musket, turning away, and the captain towed her toward the officer’s quarters. Though not as muscular as Shoka, Bancroft was formidable. Hopelessness washed over Rebecca. It seemed no one would come to her aid, but Tessa still stood in the crowd watching her.

“
Tessa! Logan begged me to—”

“
Enough!” Bancroft clapped his hand over her mouth and dragged her across the flattened grass to the small log building. He flung open the door and hauled her into the room—his evidently..

A man
’s white shirt and brown breeches hung from a wooden peg near the narrow bed built against one wall. Beside the bed stood an open leather-bound trunk containing books, letters, and a portable writing desk with a quilled pen and an inkwell. This man was well-educated. Perhaps she’d find some way to reason with him. He shut the door and shot the bolt into place.

The instant he freed her mouth, she tried again.
“Captain, please. Making me your prisoner solves nothing.”

He pushed her down into a rough-hewn chair.
“We’ll know soon enough.”

“
You don’t understand!”

“
I think I do.”

She bounded up.
“You can’t keep me here!”

He fished about in the leather pouch at his waist and drew out a length of cord.
“I’m not averse to binding you.”

She ducked beneath his outstretched arms and ran across the wide floorboards.
“What crime have I committed to be treated like a common criminal?”

He lunged at her.
“Fraternizing with the enemy.”

“
For God’s sake, I was captured!” She thrust the chair between them. “Besides that, I’m a lady. My late husband, a British captain.”

Bancroft dashed the chair aside with a clatter.
“What would he think of his fair widow now?”

She fled to the other wall.
“Captain Elliot would have your head!”

Bancroft charged after her.
“Would he? Or would he have yours?”

“
I’ve done him no dishonor.”

“
No? How would Captain Elliot feel if he knew of your infatuation with a Shawnee warrior?”

“
John would want only my happiness!” she cried, racing to the opposite wall. Instinct guided her just out of Bancroft’s reach.

His hazel eyes taunted her.
“At any cost? Tell me, is it possible you are carrying this Shoka’s bastard?”

Fury exploded into a haze of red across her vision and she threw herself at him with a wild cry.

He seized her. “It is possible, is it not?”

“
’Tis no concern of yours!”

“
You’ve made it my concern, by trying to persuade me and others within this fort to surrender to a brutal enemy.”

“
I thought to save lives.”

“
Or help your lover gain prisoners and a fort?”

“
No!” The injustice of his charge enraged her.

Bancroft embodied the arrogance of the pompous aristocrats she
’d left behind. She wanted to drive her elbow into his gut and her knee where the sun didn’t shine. But he clamped her wrists in one hand and wound the rawhide around them, knotting the ends.

“
Granted, the situation is highly unusual. Still, you could be justly accused of attempting to incite insurrection.”

She thrashed in his arms.
“Son of a bitch!”

“
Cursing the senior officer of a fort carries a stiff penalty,” he calmly informed her.

“
Worse than cursing a chief?”

“
The punishment is flogging.”

She stilled at his threat.
“You would beat me?”

He pulled her to him and buried his heated lips in the vulnerable spot where her neck met her shoulder.
“If you were not the most disturbingly beautiful woman I’ve ever met, I would do just that.”

She tried unsuccessfully to twist from his lusting mouth.
“Will you force your attentions on me with a war party on the verge of attack?”

“
I’m sorely tempted to.”

“
Bastard!”

“
That’s another fifty stripes,” he said, his breath hot against her skin.

But it wasn
’t the threat he voiced that frightened her.

“
What intrigues me,” he continued, “isn’t why this warrior is so taken with you. Rather, why you’ve given yourself to him. Do you honestly care for him?”

“
Is it so impossible to believe?”

“
Perhaps you just need a man.” He gripped her face with hard fingers, crushing his lips against hers.

A fist pounded on the door.
“Fire at the north gate, Captain!”

He jerked from her mouth.
“Damn. I hoped they’d hold off with you inside.”

“
I told you Black Knife wouldn’t.”

He hauled her across the room, kicking the overturned chair out of the way, and pushed her toward the wall.

She bucked in his grip. “What are you doing?”

“
Being certain where you are.”

Forcing her arms above her head, he caught the binding at her wrists over an iron hook high on the log wall. The tips of her toes barely touched the floor.

“You can’t leave me like this! I’ll be overcome by smoke!”

“
You’re safe enough for the present.”

“
Not if you’re killed.”

He strode to the door and opened it.
“Best hope I’m not, then,” he called over his shoulder, and stepped outside. The door swung shut behind him.

“
Arrogant bastard!” she hurled after him, tugging wildly against the hook. It was solidly wedged and the cord cut into her wrists. “Uncle Henry! Tessa! Help me!”

She waited, more afraid than she
’d ever been in her life. Again she called, “Somebody come!”

No one did. It occurred to her that no one could hear her. The walls muffled her cries and the mounting confusion within the fort drowned her out. Women
’s shrieks and the rising shouts of men reached her as a volley of musket fire erupted. A hellish fate was descending on them all.

She sagged against the uneven wood. Giving into the frenzy engulfing the fort beyond the captain
’s quarters would do her no good. She fought numbing panic and drew on the survival instincts that had aided her in the past.

“
God help me,” she prayed over and over, turning as far as she could from one side to the other in search of anything she could use to raise her height. If she were just a little taller, she could slide her cords off the hook.

She kicked back one leg, probing blindly behind. Her f
oot encountered something hard—the chair Bancroft had tossed aside. Wary of pushing it away, she eased the toe of her shoe over one of its legs. The chair was heavy and awkward. Bit by agonizing bit, she inched it nearer.

Memories flooded back, her challenges to Shoka, even Wabete, to shoot her. Shoka had known she didn
’t mean it and he’d been right. Somehow she must escape this fort and find him.

Wisps of smoke curled under the door, as silent and insidious as a venomous snake. Abandoning caution, she tugged savagely and slid the chair against her. Buoyed by success, she climbed onto the sturdy leg that lay across the floor and stretched upward to work her cords over the hook.

“I’m free!”

Her exhilaration turned into a yelp as the precarious support slipped and threw her into the wall, slamming her cheek into the unforgiving wood. She cried out and collapsed on the floor, banging her knees.

She moaned and rubbed her throbbing cheek with bound hands, then got to her feet. If ever there were a day to forget the world and stay by the fireside, this was the one. Yet here she stood, having accomplished nothing except placing herself in grave danger.

Anger flared up inside her like the fire raging outside, far more useful than paralyzing fear. She clung to this familiar emotion like a trusted friend and kicked open the door. A nightmarish scene greeted her. Smoke billowed in a black-gray cloud. Garish orange flames licked the north wall. Women and children pitched buckets of water at the flaming wood, a pitiful gesture.

The men had deserted the catwalk along that portion of the wall; although a few still fired from other vantages. Several women crouched beside them, reloading spare muskets in exchange for those in need of a fresh charge. She admired their courage but couldn’t help wondering if they’d be better served to throw down their weapons and wave a white flag.

Couldn
’t they see the impossibility of their situation? Then again, maybe they could. She remembered Shoka saying he’d never surrender. If she were crouched beside him in grim defiance, neither would she.

The smoke obscured the men on the firing platform. She made out one rugged figure who might be Uncle Henry. Holding the cloak over her nose and mouth, she ran forward and missed colliding with Captain Bancroft by an inch.

He grabbed her arm and pointed to the nearest of the square buildings enclosed by the fort’s walls. “Get to the blockhouses!” he shouted at the terrified women and children, waving them away from the flaming wall.

They threw down their buckets and fled. He squinted at Rebecca with grudging admiration.
“You escaped my quarters.”

“
And shall escape this fort.”

“
The warriors will shoot anyone attempting to leave.”

“
Shoka is bound to have told them I may try.”

Bancroft coughed and hawked black phlegm on the dirt at his feet.
“Pure madness.”

“
It’s cruel to make me share your fate. Short of a miracle, death seems imminent.”

He shielded his face with one arm.
“Blockhouses act as miniature forts, Mrs. Elliot. We can hold out there even after our gates are forced.”

She lifted stinging eyes to the musket barrels that protruded from long slits cut through the wood in the upper level of the blockhouse. The men firing from these narrow openings could keep the warriors at bay while seeking cover behind the thick walls, but how long could they resist the flames? The fire would soon spread beyond the north wall and engulf the fort. And how long would their powder last? They couldn
’t have enough left for many rounds.

A burst of musket fire tore over her head and struck two men on the platform, hurtling them both backwards to the ground.

“Papa!” shrieked a girl with gold-brown hair—Tessa. She raced down from the narrow walk and threw herself over Henry McCutcheon’s body. “Papa! Papa!” Her anguished wails overwhelmed another woman’s piteous cries.

Rebecca jerked at Captain Bancroft.
“Uncle Henry’s hit! Let me go!”

He held her back.
“There’s nothing you can do.”

“
He may yet live!”

“
To the blockhouses!” Bancroft shouted again, his voice barely carrying above the grief and confusion in the fort yard. He cast a glance at Tessa McCutcheon weeping over her father. “He moves not at all. Come on.”

“
Captain, I beg you. Cut my bonds. Let me take Tessa and go.”             

He ignored her, dragging her toward the door of the structure that loomed above her more like a death trap than a haven from the madness closing in on them.

She dug her heels into the dirt. “Turn me loose or I fight you now.”

In mocking contrast to their circumstances, a smile flickered at his mouth.
“Much as I’d enjoy that delightful diversion, I fear we haven’t the time.”

She anticipated his stride and hooked her leg over his. Caught off guard, he stumbled. She shoved him hard and tore loose from his grasp. Then she leapt forward and slammed her bound fists up under his chin.

“Enjoy this!” she cried and kneed him in the groin.

He doubled over, groaning.
“Damn you, woman,” he gasped out as he crumpled to the ground. “Go back to that savage you’re so hell-bent on joining. Poor devil deserves you.”

She fought a brief inclination to kick him again, turning instead to race toward Tessa. A heavyset frontiersman, powder horn in hand, pushed his way out of the magazine in front of her. Before she could pull up, she slammed into him.