he'd left the
ruin till now to remind himself and everyone in Victor why the Sauk had
to be driven out of Illinois.

No, that was a damned lie.

Alone here in the dark he could not keep the truth from pecking at his
brain like a buzzard's beak: Every time he went near the ruin of the
chateau, he thought of Clarissa and the boys, and guilt stabbed him
without mercy. He'd looked down on Clarissa, and he had not felt for the
boys as a father should.

He'd left them unprotected, let them die horribly, just as Helene had
died.

_I did to Andy and Phil just what Papa and Pierre did to me. When my
boys needed me most, I wasn't there._

_And the Sauk never would have attacked Victor if I hadn't shot Auguste
and the other two redskins at Old Man's Creek._

He forced himself to stop thinking about the family he'd made without
wanting to and then had lost. Their blood was spilled, and nothing would
bring them back. He'd shed plenty of Indian blood to avenge them.

He remembered the Indian witch woman, Auguste's mother, the Bowie knife
slicing open her throat, her blood warm on his hand. What curse had she
laid on him before he killed her?

He put her out of his mind and thought of Victoire. When he rebuilt
Victoire it would not be just another blockhouse, but a stone mansion
that could be seen from the river. It would be the center of Raoul de
Marion's new empire--steamships, railroads, cattle, farmlands, mines.
Now that the Indians were gone for good, now that Pierre's bastard was
dead, there was no limit to what Raoul could make of the family's
wealth.

The dreams heartened him. Time to move. He stuffed the little bundle of
beef and biscuit into one saddlebag. He slung the saddlebags over his
shoulder, the light one with food hanging down his front, the heavy one
with the money in it on his back. He loosened the Bowie knife in its
sheath on his left hip. He checked the loads in his pistol and his rifle
again.

As he pushed back his coat to holster his pistol, he felt Pierre's
spectacle case in his pocket.

_What the hell am I carrying that around for?_

At times he'd suspected that he kept Pierre's spectacles because he
really did love his older brother, in spite of everything Pierre had
done to him.

The silver case, he told himself, was valuable. But the spectacles were
worthless. The eyes that had needed them had stopped seeing a year ago.

_Had they?_

He opened the case. The lenses glinted in the candle