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.