Auguste's feet felt heavy and confined in his cowhide boots as they crunched over the short stubble. He walked alone on the newly cut track back toward the great stone and log house. He could hear the sound of spades biting into the mound of dirt beside Pierre's grave and clods of earth thudding onto his coffin.
Auguste led the procession of mourners. The others let him walk apart, to be alone with his grief. Behind Auguste, he was aware, were Nicole and Frank and Nancy Hale and Père Isaac, and then a long line of servants and farm hands and village people. Near the end of the procession Registre Bosquet played a sprightly tune, as was the custom among the Illinois French, a way of saying that life goes on. In the rear was the cart that had carried Pierre's coffin, with Elysée and Guichard.
As Auguste walked, he brooded about Père Isaac calling him the fruit of sin. Why did the priest have to dishonor his mother and father so? In the eyes of the Sauk people he was no "bastard," as he knew some pale eyes called him. Still, he was glad that the priest said Pierre had done the right thing in bringing him here. Perhaps people would remember that, when Raoul tried to take the estate away from him.
As he surely would.
Auguste knew, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, that it was only a matter of time before Raoul would strike at him.
He felt himself wishing for Black Hawk and Iron Knife and the other Sauk warriors, even Wolf Paw, to be here to stand by him. And Owl Carver and Sun Woman to advise him. Now he wished he had not agreed, at his father's insistence, to have no contact with the band. While he was being educated, being cut off from them had helped him become more quickly a part of the white world. But now that Pierre was gone he felt so terribly alone.
A chill fell over him like a cold downpour. Looking up, he saw men standing just outside the fence that surrounded the château, strung out in a line along the west side, where the gateway was. He had noticed them as he was leaving the graveyard, but had thought they must be hands, with field work of some sort important enough to keep them from the funeral. Now he was close enough to see that they were carrying rifles. Auguste recognized Raoul himself standing squarely in the gateway. How had he gotten over there? Auguste had thought he was with the funeral procession.
A cold hollow opened in his stomach as he grasped what was happening.
The moment my father is buried. What a fool I was to think Raoul would wait awhile.