Gone with the Wind (129 page)

India shot one more quick anguished look at Ashley, and, wrapping her cape about her, ran lightly down the hall to the back door and let herself out quietly into the night.

Scarlett, straining her eyes past Rhett, felt her heart beat again as she saw Ashley's eyes open. Melanie snatched a folded towel from the washstand rack and pressed it against his streaming shoulder and he smiled up weakly, reassuringly into her face. Scarlett felt Rhett's hard penetrating eyes upon her, knew that her heart was plain upon her face, but she did not care. Ashley was bleeding, perhaps dying and she who loved him had torn that hole through his shoulder. She wanted to run to the bed, sink down beside it and clasp him to her but her knees trembled so that she could not enter the room. Hand at her mouth, she stared while Melanie packed a fresh towel against his shoulder, pressing it hard as though she could force back the blood into his body. But the towel reddened as though by magic.

How could a man bleed so much and still live? But, thank God, there was no bubble of blood at his lips—oh, those frothy red bubbles, forerunners of death that she knew so well from the dreadful day of the battle at Peachtree Creek when the wounded had died on Aunt Pitty's lawn with bloody mouths.

“Brace up,” said Rhett, and there was a hard, faintly jeering note in his voice. “He won't die. Now, go take the lamp and hold it for Mrs. Wilkes. I need Archie to run errands.”

Archie looked across the lamp at Rhett.

“I ain't takin' no orders from you,” he said briefly, shifting his wad of tobacco to the other cheek.

“You do what he says,” said Melanie sternly, “and do it
quickly. Do everything Captain Butler says. Scarlett, take the lamp.”

Scarlett went forward and took the lamp, holding it in both hands to keep from dropping it. Ashley's eyes had closed again. His bare chest heaved up slowly and sank quickly and the red stream seeped from between Melanie's small frantic fingers. Dimly she heard Archie stump across the room to Rhett and heard Rhett's low rapid words. Her mind was so fixed upon Ashley that of the first half-whispered words of Rhett, she only heard: “Take my horse… tied outside… ride like hell.”

Archie mumbled some question and Scarlett heard Rhett reply: “The old Sullivan plantation. You'll find the robes pushed up the biggest chimney. Burn them.”

“Um,” grunted Archie.

“And there's two—men in the cellar. Pack them over the horse as best you can and take them to that vacant lot behind Belle's—the one between her house and the railroad tracks. Be careful. If anyone sees you, you'll hang as well as the rest of us. Put them in that lot and put pistols near them—in their hands. Here—take mine.”

Scarlett, looking across the room, saw Rhett reach under his coat tails and produce two revolvers which Archie took and shoved into his waist band.

“Fire one shot from each. It's got to appear like a plain case of shooting. You understand?”

Archie nodded as if he understood perfectly and an unwilling gleam of respect shone in his cold eye. But understanding was far from Scarlett. The last half-hour had been so nightmarish that she felt nothing would ever be plain and clear again. However, Rhett seemed in perfect command of the bewildering situation and that was a small comfort.

Archie turned to go and then swung about and his one eye went questioningly to Rhett's face.

“Him?”

“Yes.”

Archie grunted and spat on the floor.

“Hell to pay,” he said as he stumped down the hall to the back door.

Something in the last low interchange of words made a new fear and suspicion rise up in Scarlett's breast like a chill ever-swelling bubble. When that bubble broke—

“Where's Frank?” she cried.

Rhett came swiftly across the room to the bed, his big body swinging as lightly and noiselessly as a cat's.

“All in good time,” he said and smiled briefly. “Steady that lamp, Scarlett. You don't want to burn Mr. Wilkes up. Miss Melly—”

Melanie looked up like a good soldier awaiting a command and so tense was the situation it did not occur to her that for the first time Rhett was calling her familiarly by the name which only family and old friends used.

“I beg your pardon, I mean, Mrs. Wilkes…. ”

“Oh, Captain Butler, do not ask my pardon! I should feel honored if you called me ‘Melly' without the Miss! I feel as though you were my—my brother or—or my cousin. How kind you are and how clever! How can I ever thank you enough?”

“Thank you,” said Rhett and for a moment he looked almost embarrassed. “I should never presume so far, but Miss Melly,” and his voice was apologetic, “I'm sorry I had to say that Mr. Wilkes was in Belle Watling's house. I'm sorry to have involved him and the others in such a—a— But I had to think fast when I rode away from here and that was the only plan that occurred to me. I
knew my word would be accepted because I have so many friends among the Yankee officers. They do me the dubious honor of thinking me almost one of them because they know my—shall we call it my ‘unpopularity'?—among my townsmen. And you see, I was playing poker in Belle's bar earlier in the evening. There are a dozen Yankee soldiers who can testify to that. And Belle and her girls will gladly lie themselves black in the face and say Mr. Wilkes and the others were—upstairs all evening. And the Yankees will believe them. Yankees are queer that way. It won't occur to them that women of—their profession are capable of intense loyalty or patriotism. The Yankees wouldn't take the word of a single nice Atlanta lady as to the whereabouts of the men who were supposed to be at the meeting tonight but they will take the word of—fancy ladies. And I think that between the word of honor of a Scallawag and a dozen fancy ladies, we may have a chance of getting the men off.”

There was a sardonic grin on his face at the last words but it faded as Melanie turned up to him a face that blazed with gratitude.

“Captain Butler, you are so smart! I wouldn't have cared if you'd said they were in hell itself tonight, if it saves them! For I know and every one else who matters knows that my husband was never in a dreadful place like that!”

“Well—” began Rhett awkwardly, “as a matter of fact, he was at Belle's tonight.”

Melanie drew herself up coldly.

“You can never make me believe such a lie!”

“Please, Miss Melly! Let me explain! When I got out to the old Sullivan place tonight, I found Mr. Wilkes
wounded and with him were Hugh Elsing and Dr. Meade and old man Merriwether—”

“Not the old gentleman!” cried Scarlett.

“Men are never too old to be fools. And your Uncle Henry—”

“Oh, mercy!” cried Aunt Pitty.

“The others had scattered after the brush with the troops and the crowd that stuck together had come to the Sullivan place to hide their robes in the chimney and to see how badly Mr. Wilkes was hurt. But for his wound, they'd be headed for Texas by now—all of them—but he couldn't ride far and they wouldn't leave him. It was necessary to prove that they had been somewhere instead of where they had been, and so I took them by back ways to Belle Watling's.”

“Oh—I see. I do beg your pardon for my rudeness, Captain Butler. I see now it was necessary to take them there but— Oh, Captain Butler, people must have seen you going in!”

“No one saw us. We went in through a private back entrance that opens on the railroad tracks. It's always dark and locked.”

“Then how—?”

“I have a key,” said Rhett laconically, and his eyes met Melanie's evenly.

As the full impact of the meaning smote her, Melanie became so embarrassed that she fumbled with the bandage until it slid off the wound entirely.

“I did not mean to pry—” she said in a muffled voice, her white face reddening, as she hastily pressed the towel back into place.

“I regret having to tell a lady such a thing.”

“Then it's true!” thought Scarlett with an odd pang.
“Then he does live with that dreadful Watling creature! He does own her house!”

“I saw Belle and explained to her. We gave her a list of the men who were out tonight and she and her girls will testify that they were all in her house tonight. Then to make our exit more conspicuous, she called the two desperadoes who keep order at her place and had us dragged downstairs, fighting, and through the barroom and thrown out into the street as brawling drunks who were disturbing the place.”

He grinned reminiscently. “Dr. Meade did not make a very convincing drunk. It hurt his dignity to even be in such a place. But your Uncle Henry and old man Merriwether were excellent. The stage lost two great actors when they did not take up the drama. They seemed to enjoy the affair. I'm afraid your Uncle Henry has a black eye due to Mr. Merriwether's zeal for his part. He—”

The back door swung open and India entered, followed by old Dr. Dean, his long white hair tumbled, his worn leather bag bulging under his cape. He nodded briefly but without words to those present and quickly lifted the bandage from Ashley's shoulder.

“Too high for the lung,” he said. “If it hasn't splintered his collar bone it's not so serious. Get me plenty of towels, ladies, and cotton if you have it, and some brandy.”

Rhett took the lamp from Scarlett and set it on the table as Melanie and India sped about, obeying the doctor's orders.

“You can't do anything here. Come into the parlor by the fire.” He took her arm and propelled her from the room. There was a gentleness foreign to him in both hand and voice. “You've had a rotten day, haven't you?”

She allowed herself to be led into the front room and
though she stood on the hearth rug in front of the fire she began to shiver. The bubble of suspicion in her breast was swelling larger now. It was more than a suspicion. It was almost a certainty and a terrible certainty. She looked up into Rhett's immobile face and for a moment she could not speak. Then:

“Was Frank at—Belle Watling's?”

“No.”

Rhett's voice was blunt.

“Archie's carrying him to the vacant lot near Belle's. He's dead. Shot through the head.”

F
EW FAMILIES IN THE NORTH
end of town slept that night for the news of the disaster to the Klan, and Rhett's stratagem spread swiftly on silent feet as the shadowy form of India Wilkes slipped through back yards, whispered urgently through kitchen doors and slipped away into the windy darkness. And in her path, she left fear and desperate hope.

From without, houses looked black and silent and wrapped in sleep but, within, voices whispered vehemently into the dawn. Not only those involved in the night's raid but every member of the Klan was ready for flight and in almost every stable along Peachtree Street, horses stood saddled in the darkness, pistols in holsters and food in saddlebags. All that prevented a wholesale exodus was India's whispered message: “Captain Butler says not to run. The roads will be watched. He has arranged with that Watling creature—” In dark rooms men whispered: “But why should I trust that damned Scallawag Butler? It may be a trap!” And women's voices implored: “Don't go! If he saved Ashley and Hugh, he may save everybody. If India and Melanie trust him—” And they half trusted and stayed because there was no other course open to them.

Earlier in the night, the soldiers had knocked at a dozen doors and those who could not or would not tell where they had been that night were marched off under arrest. René Picard and one of Mrs. Merriwether's nephews and the Simmons boys and Andy Bonnell were
among those who spent the night in jail. They had been in the ill-starred foray but had separated from the others after the shooting. Riding hard for home they were arrested before they learned of Rhett's plan. Fortunately they all replied, to questions, that where they had been that night was their own business and not that of any damned Yankees. They had been locked up for further questioning in the morning. Old Man Merriwether and Uncle Henry Hamilton declared shamelessly that they had spent the evening at Belle Watling's sporting house and when Captain Jaffery remarked irritably that they were too old for such goings on, they wanted to fight him.

Belle Watling herself answered Captain Jaffery's summons, and before he could make known his mission she shouted that the house was closed for the night. A passel of quarrelsome drunks had called in the early part of the evening and had fought one another, torn the place up, broken her finest mirrors and so alarmed the young ladies that all business had been suspended for the night. But if Captain Jaffery wanted a drink, the bar was still open—

Captain Jaffery, acutely conscious of the grins of his men and feeling helplessly that he was fighting a mist, declared angrily that he wanted neither the young ladies nor a drink and demanded if Belle knew the names of her destructive customers. Oh, yes, Belle knew them. They were her regulars. They came every Wednesday night and called themselves the Wednesday Democrats, though what they meant by that she neither knew or cared. And if they didn't pay for the damage to the mirrors in the upper hall, she was going to have the law on them. She kept a respectable house and— Oh, their
names? Belle unhesitatingly reeled off the names of twelve under suspicion. Captain Jaffery smiled sourly.

“These damned Rebels are as efficiently organized as our Secret Service,” he said. “You and your girls will have to appear before the provost marshal tomorrow.”

“Will the provost make them pay for my mirrors?”

“To hell with your mirrors! Make Rhett Butler pay for them. He owns the place, doesn't he?”

Before dawn, every ex-Confederate family in town knew everything. And their negroes, who had been told nothing, knew everything too, by that black grapevine telegraph system which defies white understanding. Everyone knew the details of the raid, the killing of Frank Kennedy and crippled Tommy Wellburn and how Ashley was wounded in carrying Frank's body away.