Power play

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Her hands were sweaty on the g*n. She felt her finger twitch with readiness as the intruder came closer. She could hear his breathing. He was close enough. Frod Dominos gritted her teeth and quickly stood, head c****d, with one eye closed as she had been taught, and fired the g*n. The man in buckskin crouched and sprung at her, catching her waist and knocking her to the ground.

"What are you doing?" screamed the man as he pinned her shoulders to the ground and sat on her. Frod Dominos closed her eyes and turned her head. She didn't want to see the tomahawk speeding toward her scalp.

"What are you doing?" the man breathlessly repeated.

Frod Dominos slowly turned her head and opened one eye and then the aren't an Indian," she said in surprise.

other. "You

"I'm not? Thank you for pointing that out to me," he replied, still holding her to the ground.

"Why are you dressed like that?" she demanded. "What do you want with me? My husband will be back any time now. He always comes home about this time. Who are you?" she asked as she attempted to free herself from his grip. "I am Eliot LaPointe." He tightened his hold. "Surely my mother has told you

about me."

"Eliot LaPointe? The fur-trader?"

"Yes."

"Well, Eliot LaPointe, let me up!" she yelled. "How dare you creep around here dressed like an Indian, scaring the life out of me! You are lucky that you are not the one lying in this cornfield with a hole in your chest. Now, let me up!"

"Madame, I was not creeping around. I came walking in full view. How was I to know you find amusement by hiding in cornfields and blasting people as they walk past? I will let you up if you promise not to touch that musket..." Eliot lurched backward and met with a strong fist to the jaw.

"Frod Dominos, are you all right?" asked Captain Rodrigo Liam with alarm and breathlessness. "Did he hurt you?" He extended his hand and helped her to her feet. "I thought he was an Indian." Captain Rodrigo Liam panted as he looked at Eliot lying still in the corn, blood from his

split lip trickling down his chin. "He's a white man." "He is Eliot LaPointe." She bent over him. "Did you have to hit him so hard?"

"Aggh," he said in disgust. "The next time I see some man in buckskin pin you to the ground I'll be sure to get his permission to hit him." "If he had been an Indian, I would have been dead." She shuddered.

Captain Rodrigo Liam bent over and picked up Eliot in his arms. "We can at least get him out of the garden. Run up ahead and get a chair from the house. Maybe we can and make it look like we have an Iroquois over for dinner." prop him up Captain Rodrigo Liam set him on the chair Frod Dominos had brought from the house and patted his face to wake him. "Whoa!" he said as he came to and blocked Captain Rodrigo Liam's hand. "Enough, enough!

What hit me?" "I did," said Captain Rodrigo Liam.

"My mother didn't tell me you folks attacked people for fun."

"Attacked?" asked Frod Dominos. "Who attacked whom, Monsieur LaPointe?"

"From where I stood it looked like you were doing the attacking." Captain Rodrigo Liam said to

Eliot as he sat on a tree stump. "I was merely delivering baked goods from my mother. If you look in the garden, you'll probably find them." Eliot rubbed his jaw. "You have got a strong punch, Monsieur Marot."

"Please, call me Captain Rodrigo Liam. I would feel compelled to apologize for the beating if I did

not feel it was deserved." "And I would apologize for knocking down your wife if I did not feel that it was necessary to save my life. You may call me Eliot."

"Oh, look," said Frod Dominos as she came up from the garden. "Madame LaPointe did send us baked goods." She held open the cloth that held the pulverized pastries. "Do you care for some, Eliot?"

"Ah, no, thank you."

"Captain Rodrigo Liam?"

"I will have to decline."

"When did you arrive in Quebec?" Frod Dominos picked at the larger chunks of pastry. "A few days ago. I was at Tadoussac some time back to trade my pelts. We must have been there at the same time. I think you were the only shipload of settlers to land this year."

"Tadoussac! What an awful place...awful people." She sat on a grassy patch of

ground near Eliot and continued to pick at the pastry pieces. "Just awful!" "Fur-traders are not what you would call the socially elite, but most are

harmless...unless you've got fur for skin."

"Do you really live with those men?" she asked.

"Frod Dominos," Captain Rodrigo Liam admonished, "perhaps Eliot would prefer to remain private

with complete strangers.

"Nonsense," he replied. "My mother has told me so much about you both that I feel as if I know you well. To answer your question, I did not live with the French fur this last year with a band of Huron Indians."

traders. I have spent Frod Dominos gasped.

"They are very good in the woods. They were here long before we came and know this land up and down and backwards. You couldn't pick better people to spend the winter with."

"I heard rumors that the Huron didn't fare very well this past winter between lack of food and the Iroquois," said Captain Rodrigo Liam. "The band I was with did better than most. Other Huron have not been so

fortunate. I've heard that some had to eat the rawhide thongs in their snowshoes to

survive. Others ended up with smallpox. Considering that, I say we did rather well."

"At least the Huron are not as barbaric as the Iroquois." Frod Dominos shivered. "I disagree with you on that point," Eliot said. "You must understand that all the

setting.