He'd left them unprotected, let them die horribly, just as Helene had died.
I did to Andy and Phil just what Papa and Pierre did to me. When my boys needed me most, I wasn't there.
And the Sauk never would have attacked Victor if I hadn't shot Auguste and the other two redskins at Old Man's Creek.
He forced himself to stop thinking about the family he'd made without wanting to and then had lost. Their blood was spilled, and nothing would bring them back. He'd shed plenty of Indian blood to avenge them.
He remembered the Indian witch woman, Auguste's mother, the Bowie knife slicing open her throat, her blood warm on his hand. What curse had she laid on him before he killed her?
He put her out of his mind and thought of Victoire. When he rebuilt Victoire it would not be just another blockhouse, but a stone mansion that could be seen from the river. It would be the center of Raoul de Marion's new empire—steamships, railroads, cattle, farmlands, mines. Now that the Indians were gone for good, now that Pierre's bastard was dead, there was no limit to what Raoul could make of the family's wealth.
The dreams heartened him. Time to move. He stuffed the little bundle of beef and biscuit into one saddlebag. He slung the saddlebags over his shoulder, the light one with food hanging down his front, the heavy one with the money in it on his back. He loosened the Bowie knife in its sheath on his left hip. He checked the loads in his pistol and his rifle again.
As he pushed back his coat to holster his pistol, he felt Pierre's spectacle case in his pocket.
What the hell am I carrying that around for?
At times he'd suspected that he kept Pierre's spectacles because he really did love his older brother, in spite of everything Pierre had done to him.