d the house Reverend Hale built on the
prairie were burned down.

As Raoul read aloud the list of the dead, he thought of Nancy and then
of his sister Helene. Did they do _that_ to Nancy? The red devils!
Probably did. Horrible!

He saw the naked, slashed, violated body lying on the prairie. Nancy
Hale's body. Just like Helene's.

But it could be, too, she was alive. And if he kept after Black Hawk, he
might be the one to rescue her. There was comfort in that.

A little comfort.

And then a black bile of hatred for himself trickled up into his throat.

Great God in Heaven, this man he was sitting with--he'd had this man's
daughter in his bed for six years. And now she was murdered. And already
he was figuring how to replace her.

_Maybe I am as bad a man as Papa said I was._

_That's what Nicole meant by "All happens as God ordains." This was to
punish me._

He took a drink to wash that thought away.

He winced when he came to the name Marchette Perrault on the list of
dead. Maybe she had died trying to help Clarissa. Did Armand know yet?

Eli stood up. "Well, poor Clarissa. Poor little boys. It was a black day
in our lives when Clarissa and me met up with you, Raoul de Marion."

The words tore at a wound that was fresh and bleeding.

"Look here, now, Eli. Don't you know that I feel as bad as you do?"

"No, I don't know that. Clarissa was all I had in the world. I kept
hoping you'd find it in your heart to marry her, but you never treated
her decent. Never cared enough for them kids to give them your name.
Your brother, he did more for that half-Injun son of his than you did
for your two that was all white."

_All white they were, but half Puke_, Raoul thought, feeling his disdain
for the man who stood slumped before him.

Puke, a good nickname for Greenglove's breed. Missouri puked up the
worst of its people, and they landed in Illinois. Clarissa's breasts
flattening and sagging, her shoulders round, her teeth stained by pipe
smoke. So slatternly she'd gotten to be, he hardly cared to take her to
bed. And Phil and Andy growing up with that same washed-out, weak-boned
Greenglove look.

_How could I think that way about my own kids? What kind of a man am I?
And now they've been murdered, and I'm still despising them._

He had to quit this. He was torturing himself. Wasn't it bad enough? It
was the goddamned Indians he should be hating.

"We'll have our revenge, Eli. We'll kill a hundred Indians