"For now, scatter. Deny you had any part in this. Wait for me to come back."
"It will not go easy for us, mon colonel," Armand growled.
"I'll be back," Raoul said. "And when I am, it will be just like old times in Victor."
He plunged into the trees behind Elysée's house. While the Regulators charged up the hill, he'd have no trouble finding his way back to the trading post by moonlight.
Alone, moving quickly through woods he'd known since boyhood, he felt suddenly lighthearted. He might be on the run, but he'd done the most important thing. He'd killed Auguste. He had a winter to get through, maybe a hard winter. But by next spring things would be back the way they were in the days when he'd been happiest. Before he'd ever heard that Pierre had a son. When he'd ruled like a king in Smith County.
25
The Other World
To Nancy, young Dr. Surrey looked like a brainless clothier's mannequin in his black frock coat and ruffled white shirt. Though Woodrow had routed him out of bed at nearly three in the morning and he had spent over an hour working on Auguste, he didn't seem tired. If he wasn't tired, what in God's name had he been doing? Now he was leaving, and Auguste was still unconscious.
A helplessness in Surrey's face, round and blank as an unbaked pie crust, turned Nancy's grief and fear into fury. She wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him until he promised that he could and would save Auguste.