kins tore away the last few rags of Raoul's clothing.

A circle of grimacing dark faces painted with yellow and black stripes
closed in on him. They bared sharp teeth like snarling dogs. They were
going to eat him alive.

Raoul's father and Raoul's brother, Pierre, faces marble and calm,
appeared in the midst of the Indians. They looked down at Raoul's agony.
Just curious.

Raoul tried to cry out, "Papa! Pierre! Help us! They're killing us!"

No sound came out of his mouth but a useless little wheeze. He had lost
his voice.

"You should not have angered them," Papa said.

One of the savages, holding high a long, thin skinning knife, seized
Raoul's balls. He brought the knife down, slowly.

Raoul kept trying to scream at his father and brother. Again and again
he forced air through his aching throat. Nothing came but a silly
squeak. Then a groan, a little louder.

Pierre reached out a marble hand to him. Thank God!

Just as their fingers touched, Pierre jerked his hand away and
disappeared.

Raoul felt the Indian's blade like cold fire slicing through the sac
between his legs. At last he let out a full-throated scream.

"Raoul!"

His body cold and wet with sweat, he sat up in darkness. He felt arms
clutching at him and fought them off.

"Raoul! Wake up."

Panting, he said his name in his mind. _I am Raoul Francois Philippe
Charles de Marion._ He repeated it over and over again to himself.

He was sitting in bed in the dark, someone beside him. Not an Indian,
and not his long-dead sister Helene. He gasped again and again, as if he
had run a race.

He tried to pull his mind together. His heart was still pounding against
the wall of his chest, his hands trembling, his skin ice cold. That
terrible dream! He hadn't had it in a year or more.

"Lordy, what a nightmare you must have had! You did a right smart of
hollerin'."

In the dim light seeping in through cracks in the shuttered window,
Raoul saw a woman with long blond hair sitting up beside him, staring at
him with pale blue eyes.

Clarissa. Clarissa Greenglove. He looked down at her. A warmth began to
creep back into his body, rising first in his loins, as he remembered
what they had done together the night before. Five times! No--six! Never
before had he done it that many times in one night.

He was still panting in the aftermath of the horror, but the sight of
her naked body was helping him get the dream out of his mind.

Never done it with