The moonlight helped Auguste guide his horse up the steep road out of the village. Davis led, followed by Auguste, the two corporals bringing up the rear. After weeks of imprisonment, Auguste reveled in the cool night air blowing in his face.
They passed the trading post. The road was wider here, and the three soldiers bunched around him. Raoul was surely in there getting drunk, laughing as he looked forward to seeing Auguste swinging at a rope's end.
They trotted along the ridge leading to Victoire. Auguste's heart started to beat harder as he approached the place that had been his home.
The remains of the mansion sprawled on its hilltop like the skeleton of some huge animal, blackened timbers rearing up in the moonlight. People had died bloody, horrible deaths there. Was the place haunted now? Accursed?
A longing came over him to climb that hill again, to sweep away that ruin and rebuild. Put up a fine new house like the ones he'd seen in the East.
I could do so much with this land, but I'm running away from it again. Leaving it to Raoul again.
Then they were past Victoire, but the yearning for it clung to him like a lover's scent.
"By morning you'll be far out of your uncle's reach," said Davis, riding beside him.
Auguste's heart swelled in his chest with the thought that he was more nearly a free man than he had been in weeks.
"If I'm not guilty, why must I run away?"