for each of
ours who died."

"Like you murdered them three at Old Man's Creek. I warned you not to do
that. That was what got Clarissa and her kids killed. I won't be helping
you get your vengeance, Colonel Raoul de Marion. Because if I did stay
around you, sooner or later I'd want blood for blood of mine that's been
spilled."

Raoul felt a chill, facing Greenglove's implacable, dull-eyed hatred.
But he was damned if he'd back down before this human weed.

"You'll leave this company when your term of enlistment is up and not
one damned day sooner. You're captain of the Smith County company."

Greenglove's mouth curled in a cold smile.

"By tomorrow there won't be any company. The Smith County boys heard
about what happened at Victor. Most of them'll be quitting."

Raoul felt the heat rising in his neck and head.

"The hell they will! My Smith County boys will want Indian blood just
like I do. And just like you would if you hadn't taken a notion to blame
Clarissa's death on me."

Auguste. The half-breed. Raoul felt his blood boiling as he saw the
olive-skinned face mingling Pierre's features with Indian looks. The
face he'd never stopped hating from the moment he first saw it. Auguste
was dead. Eli, here, had shot him. His body was rotting away somewhere
on the prairie behind them.

But the Indians of the British Band were alive--Auguste's people. They
snuck up on Victoire, Raoul's home. Burned it to the ground. Tomahawked
his woman. Chopped his children, his two boys, Andy and Phil, to pieces.

To pieces.

He saw that, for a moment, too vividly, and almost screamed. He grabbed
the jug and burned the bloody picture out of his mind with a swallow.

Auguste's band, skulking around up the river somewhere.

Why, Auguste might have given them the idea. Told them all about
Victoire and Victor. Lots of helpless women and children there. A rich
trading post. A big white man's house to burn down.

_My uncle kicked me off the land_, Auguste might have said. _Avenge me.
Go kill his woman and his children and burn his house down. And while
you're at it, kill every one of those white dogs in Smith County._

Sure, he probably put the idea in those devils' heads before he got
shot.

It hadn't been enough to kill Auguste. Wasn't enough.

He had to kill off every last one of Black Hawk's Indians. Exterminate
the whole band--bucks, squaws and papooses.

And he would shoot any shirker who refused to go with him.

Gr