he had no choice. He couldn't allow Auguste to get his feet
planted firmly. He couldn't allow Pierre's will to be read aloud.

He felt even better when he remembered that with Pierre dead the
servants would be taking their orders from Armand. He looked around the
hall for the overseer. There he was, near the door, most of his face
buried by his thick brown beard. Armand's wife, Marchette, was standing
next to him. Sporting a black eye, Raoul noticed with amusement.

Armand Perrault was one who didn't love Pierre.

That sanctimonious hypocrite Pierre. First the squaw, the mongrel's
mother. Then he marries Marie-Blanche, and as soon as she dies, he's
putting it to the cook.

Raoul took a deep breath of relief when he saw that Pere Isaac had
finally finished with the funeral mass. The old Jesuit was again
sprinkling holy water on the black-painted coffin, heaped with wreaths
of roses and chrysanthemums that lay on trestles in the center of the
hall. Frank Hopkins, Raoul knew, had built that coffin of oak planks.

Old red-nosed Guichard came up to Raoul. "Your father requests that you
be one of those who carries your brother's coffin to the wagon."

Raoul felt a momentary jolt of fear. Help pick up Pierre's coffin and
carry it, when he was about to dispossess Pierre's son? If he laid a
hand on Pierre's coffin, God might strike him dead. Or Pierre's ghost
would rise up against him.

He shook his head. Fool's thinking.

"I wouldn't have it any other way, Guichard."

He was angered to see Auguste standing opposite him when he went to the
head of the coffin. It was infuriating to see Pierre's features in that
brown-skinned face. The half-breed was wearing a green clawhammer
jacket, with a black silk band around the left arm.

His arms and back strained as they took the weight of his corner of the
coffin. A chorus of grunts arose from Raoul, Auguste, Armand, Frank
Hopkins, Jacques Manette and Jean-Paul Kobell as they hoisted the coffin
to their shoulders. They trudged out the door with it and slid it on the
bed of a flower-bedecked farm wagon. Guichard helped Elysee climb up on
the wagon. A snap of the old servant's whip started the two horses
moving, as black ribbons tied to their harnesses fluttered.

Raoul walked alone, following the cart the half mile south along the
bluffs to the burial ground. Some of the hands had cut a track through
the shoulder-high prairie grass for the funeral procession to follow.
The fi