Raoul. His fist clenched on the handle of his
knife.

Taylor wore a pistol and carried a saber, but he was a far smaller man
than Raoul, and his stout body, dressed today in a blue jacket and
knee-high fringed buckskin boots, seemed to invite attack.

Taylor's calm blue eyes went to Raoul's hand, then back to his face. He
stood motionless, waiting.

_God! What am I thinking? The regulars would shoot me down the minute I
drew this knife._

Raoul silently beckoned to his men and started back through the broken
trees the way they had come.

After walking a short distance, Raoul saw the sergeant Taylor had sent
behind the lines coming toward him with an Indian walking beside him.

Raoul glanced at the Indian and stopped dead.

He felt as if the arrow he'd been expecting and fearing all day had
finally struck him.

_There are no ghosts._

But Auguste couldn't be alive. He'd been shot to death at Old Man's
Creek.

Was this what killing Pierre's squaw had brought on him?

The man before him had gone hungry for a long time. His almost
skull-like face was a chilling reminder of the woman whose throat Raoul
had slashed. But his gauntness also made him look more like Pierre than
ever before. His buckskin leggings, like those of the Indians Raoul had
just killed, were dirty and full of rips and holes. But the pale scar
line running down his cheek, and those five parallel scars on his bare
chest, left Raoul in no doubt who this was. Auguste's dark eyes burned
at Raoul, alight with a fierce hatred.

The sergeant pulled Auguste by the arm. As the mongrel turned, Raoul
suddenly saw that the middle of his ear was missing, the empty space
bordered by partly healed red flesh.

Stunned speechless, Raoul looked at Levi and Armand, who stared back at
him. They couldn't speak either. They were just as shaken.

Still burning at Taylor's high-and-mighty dismissal of him, Raoul was
staggered by the shock of this meeting. But he saw one thing clear. All
right, Auguste was still alive. That meant Raoul's revenge on the Sauk
was not complete. Auguste was a traitor. Auguste was a murderer. And
Raoul was going to work day and night to get him hanged.

21

The Red Blanket

Longing to hear that White Bear was safe, Redbird could not stop
thinking about him. She sat cross-legged on the ground with Floating
Lily bundled in a blanket on her lap. She gazed out at the small lake
where Black Hawk and his few remaining follower