d cut open, splashed over his knife blade, poured hot on his
hand. It spread down over her dress and over the gold lace on his
sleeve. He looked down at his red hand and felt some force within him
stretch his lips and bare his teeth.

He thrust the woman away from him. Her eyes were still open, but she
looked at no one and nothing. She fell to the ground like a bundle of
sticks. She lay on her back, the deep wound in her throat spread wide,
her eyes staring up.

He stood over her and saw that something shiny had fallen out of the
front of her dress and lay beside her head. Tied around her neck with a
purple ribbon was an oval metal case splashed with blood.

He had seen the case, or one like it. He reached down with the knife and
slashed the ribbon. He wiped his knife on his jacket and slammed it into
its sheath, then picked up the slippery case and opened it.

A pair of spectacles. Round, gold frames, thick glass lenses.

They looked exactly like Pierre's old spectacles. Was that possible? How
could this Indian woman have gotten them? Stolen from Victoire, when the
Sauk burned it?

Or had the mongrel somehow gotten his father's spectacles, taken them
with him when he fled from Victor? Pierre's watch had disappeared then;
Raoul was sure Auguste had stolen it. And if this woman had Pierre's
glasses now, could she be the Sauk woman Pierre had lived with, the
mother of his bastard son?

Despite the August heat beating down on the clearing, the air around
Raoul suddenly felt winter cold. All day long while he fought the
Indians he'd struggled with his fear of being killed. Now a worse fear
had him in its grip, a fear of something worse than death, of having
called down upon himself a vengeance that would follow him beyond the
grave.

_My God! I've just killed Pierre's squaw._

The spectacles stared up at him like accusing eyes. The flesh of his
back prickled.

He shut the case and dropped it into his pocket. If it was Pierre's he
couldn't just throw it away.

The few remaining Indians, a flock of women and children, huddled
weeping with their backs to a big tree, arms around one another. Some
were already wounded and screaming in pain.

Tiredly Raoul told himself he must reload rifle and pistol and get on
with the killing. But his anger was spent. He felt empty, worn out.

From somewhere behind him came a shout of, "Cease fire!"

It was welcome. He'd done enough.

"Yonder come the bluebellies," said Levi.