et out of this that easy.

Pierre bringing an Indian wife and son home, Clarissa trying to trap him
into a marriage--he began to feel as if he had walked into some kind of
an ambush.

And Indians at the mine.

He eyed Clarissa, who sat with a pillow between her bare back and the
rough-hewn log wall, sheet and blanket pulled up to her shoulders. He
walked over to her to make sure he could not be heard from outside.

"I'm going to have to ride out to the mine, and I'll be taking your
father with me," he said, keeping his voice soft. "Wait till you hear us
ride away, then get out of here. And make sure nobody sees you."

She was still wide-eyed. "Oh, Raoul, if he was to catch me with you he'd
beat me worse'n that Injun ever beat you."

Raoul leaned forward and put his hand, gently but firmly, on her throat.
"If he ever finds out from you that you and I were together," he said
softly, "I'll beat you even worse than that."

* * * * *

In the taproom on the first floor of the inn, Eli, a short, skinny man
whose thinning blond hair was turning gray, gave no sign of knowing that
Clarissa was in the room upstairs. Where did he think she was? Raoul
wondered. Maybe he knew, but was biding his time.

"Winnebago with a bundle of beaver pelts come in this morning," Eli
said. "Said that for an extra cupful of whiskey he'd tell me a thing I
might like to know. I obliged, and he told me riding over here yesterday
he'd seen smoke rising from the prairie. He went for a look-see and it
was three Sauk bucks carrying galena out of the mine and smelting it
down."

Eli had rounded up three big men to ride out with Raoul. Levi Pope, a
tall, hatchet-faced Sucker, an Illinois man, carried a Kentucky rifle
that almost came up to his shoulder. Otto Wegner, a veteran of the army
of the King of Prussia, was six foot three with broad shoulders. He wore
his brown mustache thick and let it grow back over his cheeks to join
his sideburns. Hodge Hode, like Eli, was a Puke, a Missourian. Huge as a
grizzly bear, he dressed in fringed buckskins. Under his coonskin cap
red hair, wild and knotted, hung down to his shoulders, and his red
beard hid three quarters of his face. Besides their long rifles, Eli,
Levi, Hodge and Otto had pistols stuck through their belts, powder horns
slung over their shoulders, hunting knives sheathed in pockets in the
front of their buckskin shirts.

Raoul let them each have a glass of whi