Abruptly there came the scattered booming of more firing. Hard upon it could be heard distant cries that might have been either terror or exultation. They came not only from ahead of her, but also from behind her. Elise twisted this way and that on her sidesaddle, listening, her eyes widening with a terrible fear. Then, with sudden decision, she urged the mare onward though she held her to a walk.
The clearing of the Doucet arpents came into view. There was the Doucets’ farmhouse with smoke curling in a blue plume from the mud-and-stick chimney. For an instant the scene seemed peaceful, normal. Then Elise saw the body of Monsieur Doucet sprawled on the high front steps and the mastiff that served as his watchdog lying with blood-wet fur beside him. A fat billow of smoke came from the front windows. From the entrance door a pair of Indians emerged carrying bundles of clothing and sacks of food, one of them with a huge ham strapped to his back. Behind them came a third Indian who pushed a screaming woman with blood running down her face before him and held a wriggling, crying young boy still dressed in his nightgown under his arm. It was Madame Doucet’s daughter and six-year-old grandson.
For a stunned instant Elise allowed her mare to continue to walk toward the house. Then, with a gasp so sharp it hurt her throat, she pulled her mount up and around and slammed her heel into the horse’s side, kicking her into a gallop. Behind her came a yell. She had been seen. She did not look back. Putting her head down, she leaned over the mare’s head, urging her along the track back toward her own home. She scarcely gave a thought to the Indians in pursuit. They were laden with booty and captives and were without mounts. Her every fear was concentrated on the farm she had left, the farm she had worked so hard to keep and make prosper, the place where every single thing she owned or cared for was now endangered.
For there could be no doubt. In spite of the warnings and rumors, they had been caught unprepared. The attack they had not thought possible had come. It had come not with cries in the dawn but with a trick designed to put French arms into Indian hands. It had come with soft words and promises of meat for the winter, with trickery and guile worthy of the French themselves. The Natchez were rising, carrying, the French before them and leaving death behind.
2
MOMENTS LATER, SHE was sitting her horse in front of her own home. There were flames licking out of the window openings and smoke billowing in a fog around it. Of her African servants there was no sign. If they were inside the house, they must be dead, but it was possible that they had been taken captive, depending on the humor of the Indians. Near the shed lay her cow that had been with calf, or what was left of it after it had been butchered hastily. Feathers were scattered around the chicken run as if the poultry had been scooped up. As she sat in frozen horror, she saw a goose come from behind the house, scurrying into low flight as it made toward the woods.
She thought of the food that had been inside the house, the eiderdowns and woven coverlets and all the other comforts that she had made with her own hands here in the wilderness; of her few gowns, the material for which had been brought at great cost from France. Were they gone, taken by the savages? Could she save any of it?
She could not think of what she must do. There was a tight feeling in her throat as if she might scream at any sudden movement or noise. She was grateful for the warmth of the mare under her and for the necessity of controlling the animal that was upset by the smell of smoke and death since it occupied her hands and quivering muscles.
Her mind moved in distraction to the Indians who had accosted her just a short time before. Why had they not attacked her then? She had been unarmed, defenseless, an easy prey for the three of them in spite of the fact that she had been mounted while they had been on foot.
But wait, the shot she had heard must have been a signal. The time had not been right then. How short was the span of moments that had saved her.
On the wind came the faint sound of more gunfire and distant cries. Smoke was rising above the treetops at all points of the compass. It was a concerted attack, then, not just an isolated raid. The men at the fort would fight if they could reach their weapons in time, but how long could they last? There were over two thousand Natchez and of that number probably seven hundred and fifty were seasoned warriors. Of the French there were only seven hundred in all, with less than half of them ready to bear arms. Even if all the able-bodied French men were able to reach the fort, which seemed unlikely, they would be outnumbered two to one. With the element of surprise firmly on the side of the Indians, it was all too likely to be a massacre.
Tears of rage and terror sprang to Elise’s eyes, and there rose inside her a corroding bitterness for the ignored warnings. She wiped her face with hard impatience. Crying would not help. Something must be done. She could not sit here on the main road to the fort when at any moment another war party might appear around the bend. There was no safety anywhere, not at the fort, not at any other holding of the French. The only place left was the woods.
With one last look at her house, she clenched her teeth and released her knee from the pommel of the sidesaddle, sliding down. The mare was a scrubby beast, traded from the Spaniards, and she hated to lose her; still, she dropped the reins and gave the animal a hard slap on the rump to send her galloping wildly down the road. A horse was of no use in the thick, encroaching woodland and would be too likely to attract pursuit with its whickering and heavy movements. The cavalier’s hat she wore, with its broad brim, would also be a nuisance. She took it off and sent it sailing as close to her own front yard as she could, then she picked up her skirts and ran swiftly toward the woods on the opposite side of the track.
It was colder among the trees and damp. Elise did her best to step on the matted leaves and gnarled roots so as to leave as little trail as she could and to ease herself beneath the saw briers and smilax that hung in wads without snagging her habit and presenting anyone who followed her with bits of velvet. It was not always possible. The falling leaves drifted into her hair and clung to the skin of her face. Long red scratches appeared on her hands and wrists, stinging as if with some poison. She stepped into a hole and wet her shoe and stocking with foul-smelling black water. Her breath rasped in her chest, sending sharp shafts of pain into her lungs and side with every step. Still she pushed on.
At last a huge magnolia tree rose before her. Its evergreen leaves were duck and glossy green on top, rust-brown on the undersides. The massive limbs grew low, twisted and arthritic, resting on the ground to make a pyramid of deep black green. Here was shelter. Elise pushed into the tree, stepping over the limbs and bending over to reach the more open center. There she sank down and put her back to the rough trunk. Drawing up her knees, she clasped them with her arms. She sat for long moments, listening to the stillness. Finally she put down her head and closed her eyes.
It might have been half an hour, it might have been two full hours later, when she heard the blundering crash of footsteps. She tensed, lifting her head and breathing deeply like an animal scenting danger. She came to her knees, parting the branches a minute amount to look in the direction from which the sound came. The first thing she saw was a moving shape, careening, staggering along. It resolved into the thin shape of a man. He wore nothing more than a shirt and breeches, and the linen of his shirt was splotched with blood. His face was white and his eyes staring. It was an instant before Elise recognized him as the teenage boy who was apprenticed to the man who had the cooperage and lived beyond the Doucets.
“Henri!” she called as loudly as she dared, “over here.”
He did not seem to hear. She called again, then got to her feet and pushed the limbs aside to wave.
He stopped so abruptly that he fell sprawling, then came to his hands and knees, scrabbling toward her in the fallen magnolia leaves so that they crackled like musket shots. She bent to help him through the limbs. As they reached the center, he fell against her and lay trembling.
“Are you hurt?” she said softly.
“J-j-just a g-graze.”<
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It was difficult to understand his speech through the stuttering and chattering of his teeth brought on by shock. “Are you sure?”
He nodded his head violently. “I w-was in the p-privy. The Indians killed them all, m’sieu, madame, the t-three little ones. They found the wine and c-cognac or else they would have k-killed me.”
It came out in bits and pieces. The boy had huddled in the privy while his master and his family were killed, had watched them being hacked to pieces through the cracks in its walls, and had seen their house fired. The Indians had saved the spirits and some food and proceeded to have a feast. The sparks from the house had set fire to the roof of the privy and Henri had been forced to emerge. He had run and they had shot at him. A ball had scratched him, but so drunk were the Indians that they had not pursued him when he ran into the woods.
Elise soothed him as best she could, persuading him to let her look at his wound. It was no more serious than he had said; still, he could not stop shaking. He had barely controlled himself to the point where he could sit up with his hands tightly folded between his legs when they heard the woman crying.
The sound was thin and hoarse, like the wailing of a newborn infant and yet fraught with the hopeless grief only heard in the sobbing of women. Henri looked at Elise and there was fear in his face, fear that the sound was a trick, fear that as the woman drew near she might bring the Indians down upon them with the noise she was making. It was easy to recognize the emotions that moved over his thin features for Elise felt them herself. She was torn between a need to make the woman be quiet at all costs and the pricking of compassion that urged her to do what was in her power to aid her.
It was neither one impulse nor the other that won, but a combination of both. Driven by anger and concern, she pushed her way out of the magnolia. She stood, getting her bearings for a moment, but before she could move, Henri was beside her. Her voice was curt as she said, “You stay here.”
“I-I can’t, not by m-myself.”
“There’s nothing you can do.”
“T-there might be.” Though his teeth had stopped chattering, his difficult speech remained.
“You’ll be safer,” she pointed out with reasonableness that was surprising, considering the state of her nerves.
“I don’t c-care.”
She could not force him. She gave a curt nod and started off in the direction of the crying.
They came upon the woman suddenly and from the last quarter they expected. It was a moment before Elise realized that the crying woman had been lost and was wandering in a wide circle. Hard on that understanding came the knowledge that she also knew her. Under the wild tangle of her hair, behind the sagging flesh of her face that seemed to have aged years, the woman was none other than Madam Doucet.
“Elise!” Madame Doucet cried on a fresh sob and cast herself upon Elise’s bosom with no more surprise than if the younger woman had stepped into her own salon at a time of mourning.
Elise held her, stroking her and murmuring, but the sobs continued. She had forgotten Henri until she felt him clutch her arm, heard his strangled sound of joy. She looked up then to see two Frenchmen striding toward them through the trees. One carried a musket in his hand while the other limped along with the aid of a stout limb, favoring an ankle that was badly swollen, perhaps sprained if not broken.
“Shut her up,” the armed man rapped out, “else the Natchez will do it permanently.”
“She is too distraught.” Elise raised her voice no more than was necessary to make herself heard over the sobs.
“A slap in the face is what’s needed. Here, give her to me.”
Elise had seen both of the new arrivals about the fort and, in the way of all small communities, knew them by repute. The man with the makeshift crutch was Jean-Paul St. Amant, a man near thirty whose handsome appearance was considered to be enhanced by the desolate look in his dark eyes. He had come upriver to satisfy his curiosity about the country and remained to become a planter of sorts on family holdings. He was so obviously unsuited to the undertaking that no one understood why he stayed, particularly when preferment in New Orleans would have been made easy by his family connections. The other man was known as Pascal, a merchant friend of the commandant who supplied the fort by special, and mutually profitable, arrangement with Chepart, or so it was whispered. His thickset body and overbearing manner had so reminded Elise of her dead husband that she had always avoided him.
Now she took instant dislike to his rough words. Her grasp on Madame Doucet tightened and she turned her shoulder to the merchant. “She will calm herself in a few minutes.”
“We don’t have a few minutes.”
“I am as well aware as you, m’sieu, but see no need for cruelty.”
Pascal grabbed the older woman, jerking her free of Elise and swinging her around. He drew back his hand, but the blow never landed. Madame Doucet, her eyes wide and so pale blue they were colorless, stared beyond him with horror growing in her face, then crumpled forward in a faint at their feet.
“Your problem,” said a deep voice tinged with derision from just beyond where they stood, “seems to be solved.”
Henri drew in a single deep breath and was still. The merchant spat out an oath and raised his musket. Elise swung her head to see a tall man with copper skin and white breechclout and cape and instantly thrust up her arm, flinging the barrel of the merchant’s firearm skyward. The Frenchman cursed again, but the expected report did not come; it seemed he, too, had identified the man in front of them in time to keep from pulling the trigger.
He grunted as he lowered his musket. “You were nearly a dead man, Chavalier.”
“As you say.”
Elise watched the graceful inclination of the head that accompanied the acknowledgment with resentment as rankling as it was amazing. Even more astonishing was her action in preventing injury to the half-breed. It was self-preservation, she told herself, no more and no less. The noise of the shot might have brought the Natchez down on them, and in Reynaud Chavalier could well lie their salvation.
“What brings you here?” the merchant was demanding. “Is your scalping arm tied or could it be the handiwork of your blood brothers turns your stomach?”
“I was following the lady.”
Reynaud allowed his gaze to rest on the woman at their feet. If they wanted to think it was this one he meant, he would not enlighten them. In truth, it was the Widow Laffont for whom he had been searching since he had found her hat lying in the mud in front of her burning house. The sight of it there had struck sick pain into the center of his being. For an instant he had wanted to kill his brother, the Great Sun, for leaving him in ignorance of the day of the attack, for letting him lie sleeping while the warriors set off at dawn to station themselves for the slaughter. An instant of reflection had convinced him that the Great Sun might well not have known himself. As the godlike ruler of his tribe, he was not expected to take part in the planning of such exploits, much less direct them. That last was the responsibility of the second most important man in the tribe, their uncle, Tattooed Serpent, chief of war.
“For what purpose?”
That was an excellent question. Reynaud flicked a glance over the face of the young Frenchwoman, who had knelt to take Madame Doucet’s head on her lap. There were traces of tears on her cheeks, but her self-control was complete. She looked deathly tired, however, and her features mirrored a haunted fear that he would give much to banish. At that instant she lifted her lashes, meeting his gaze, and so much virulent dislike sprang into her eyes that he felt the muscles of his abdomen tighten involuntarily as if in anticipation of a blow.
“To keep her from harm,” he said slowly.
“You could do that?” It was the man with the crutch who spoke and the hope that threaded his voice gave it a ragged sound.
“It’s possible.”
“How?” the merchant asked, a sneer curling his lip. “By taking her back to the village to slave for you?”
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“There is another way.”
Something in the half-breed’s tone sent a tremor of uneasiness over Elise. Or perhaps it was the way his gaze kept returning to rest on her in impassive speculation. She had had time while hiding under the magnolia to think about what might be done, however. She swallowed hard, then spoke from where she knelt.
“If we could know what has happened at the fort, know if they are holding out there, perhaps we could reach it.”
“It has fallen.” St. Amant shifted uncomfortably on his crutch. “Or perhaps it might be best to say it never held. Chepart is dead. I saw him struck down and dismembered in his own garden.”
She caught her breath at the implication of those stark words. If the fort had not held, then all was lost. There was scarcely time to consider it at this moment. “Then we must get away. With a boat, we could go down the river to New Orleans, give the alarm.”
Reynaud shook his head. “The river will be watched, sentries posted for miles downstream. It is unlikely that you would get through. There were six men who took to the river at the first sign of the attack. Four were killed and the other two are being pursued even now.”
Elise glanced at the others. Their faces were tight and pale, their eyes fixed on Reynaud Chavalier as if he alone could save them.
“You mentioned a way out,” St. Amant suggested.
“The nearest place of refuge for you is at the fort at the Poste de la Saint Jean Baptiste. I could take you there.”
The normal method of reaching this post, located in the country of the Natchitoches Indians, was to travel down the Mississippi to where the Red River flowed into the larger river, then to proceed up the Red to the site of the French post, which had been built on its banks.
“But if we can’t go on the river, how—”
“We would have to cross to the west bank after nightfall, then make our way overland using the Indian trails. That’s much less dangerous than running the gauntlet down the river.”
Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 Page 3