ddler Registre Bosquet marched right behind the wagon playing
hymns, and the servants sang in French.

Raoul cast his eye back over the long line of people following the
coffin. His glance slid past Nicole and Frank and their passel of kids.
With a feeling of satisfaction he saw two of his key men walking near
the end of the procession, Justus Bennett, the county land commissioner,
and Burke Russell, the county clerk. One copy of Pierre's will was in
Russell's keeping, and Raoul had already told him what to do with that.
Russell's wife, Pamela, was walking beside him, a handsome woman with
chestnut hair that she didn't braid as most women did but allowed to
fall in soft waves under her broad-brimmed hat. Strongly attracted to
her himself, Raoul wondered how a bespectacled weakling like Burke
Russell had ever been able to attract such a fine-looking woman. And
what she'd do if she had a sporting proposition from an equally
fine-looking man.

They were at the cemetery now. Raoul liked this hillside rising out of
the bluffs, where Pierre's wife, Marie-Blanche, lay overlooking the
bottomland and the river. The graves of about a dozen others who had
worked and died at Victoire were surrounded by a low split-rail fence.
Tall cedar trees shadowed the white gravestones. The flat markers with
their rounded tops, names, dates and inscriptions were chiseled by
Warren Wilgus, the mason who'd recently moved into the area. Auguste had
already made arrangements to have Pierre's headstone carved.

The sight of a solid limestone cube in the center of the cemetery gave
Raoul a twinge of guilt, as it always did. It was the first stone to
have been placed in the cemetery, and was a memorial to his mother,
Estelle de Marion, who was buried not here but in Kaskaskia, where she
had died in 1802 giving birth to him.

_It wasn't my fault!_

Helene was also remembered, though not buried here. The Indians had
thrown her poor, mutilated body into Lake Michigan. Her memorial marker
stood next to Maman's stone. A carved angel spread his wings over
Helene's name and dates, "HELENE DE MARION VAILLANCOURT, Beloved
Daughter and Sister. 1794-1812. She sings before the throne of God."
Below that were inscribed the name and dates of her husband, Henri
Vaillancourt, whose body also had never been found.

Raoul carried inside himself his own inscription for Helene: _Murdered
by Indians, August 15, 1812. She will be avenged._

And one act of vengeance