shoot him on the spot.

Or try to. He doubted they could hit anything, drunk as they looked.
With that thought, his tense muscles eased a little.

The men crossed a narrow ridge that connected a hill with the bluff on
which the trading post stood. Auguste flinched, startled by a whoop and
a wail, followed by the crash of a body falling through shrubbery and a
heavy clattering--probably a rifle--against rocks.

From the ridge came a burst of drunken laughter. Two of the men mocked
their comrade who had rolled to the bottom of the hill. They wouldn't
help him climb back up. Sleep it off down there, they told him. Curses
floated faintly from below, then there was silence.

"What if that Indian is lurking around here?" said the man carrying the
lantern. "He might come upon Hodge in the dark and scalp him or
something."

Auguste thought, _How I would love to_. He recognized the Prussian
accent of the man speaking. It was Otto Wegner, one of the men who
worked at Raoul's trading post.

The other man said, "Hell, if the Injun ain't dead from the way Eli
conked him with that rifle butt, he's halfway to Canada. He knows he'll
get his red hide full of holes if he stays around Smith County."

"As for me, I do not shoot unarmed Indians," said Wegner. "Fifty Spanish
dollars or not. I have my pride. I served under von Bluecher at
Waterloo."

"Waterloo, hah? Well, ain't you a hell of a fella! Raoul'd skin you
alive and wear you for a hat if he heard you talking like that."

"He would not. I am his best rifleman--after Eli Greenglove. He knows
my value. And my honor as a soldier is worth more to me than fifty
pieces of eight."

Crouching in the shrubbery, Auguste shook his head in wonder. There was
some sense of right and wrong even among Raoul's rogues.

But that hadn't stopped Wegner from being one of the men who backed
Raoul with his rifle this morning.

He waited for the men to cross the ridge. He heard no sound from the one
who had fallen; he had probably taken his comrades' advice and gone to
sleep.

When the lantern swung out of sight around a corner of the trading post
palisade, Auguste darted forward. Keeping low, he made a wide circle
through the wooded slope above Victor. He scrambled down to the road
where the Hopkins house stood. A long-eared black dog barked and ran at
him when he passed one of the houses along the road. His heart stopped
as he waited for doors to fly open and rifles to fire at him. But h