SCARLETT HAD BEEN AT TARA two weeks since her return from Atlanta when the largestblister on her foot began to fester, swelling until it was impossible for her to put on her shoe or domore than hobble about on her heel. Desperation plucked at her when she looked at the angry soreon her toe. Suppose it should gangrene like the soldiers’ wounds and she should die, far away froma doctor? Bitter as life was now, she had no desire to leave it. And who would look after Tara if sheshould die?

　　She had hoped when she first came home that Gerald’s old spirit would revive and he wouldtake command, but in these two weeks that hope had vanished. She knew now that, whether sheliked it or not, she had the plantation and all its people on her two inexperienced hands, for Geraldstill sat quietly, like a man in a dream, so frighteningly absent from Tara, so gentle. To her pleas foradvice he gave as his only answer: “Do what you think best, Daughter.” Or worse still, “Consultwith your mother, Puss.”

　　He never would be any different and now Scarlett realized the truth and accepted it withoutemotion—that until he died Gerald would always be waiting for Ellen, always listening for her. Hewas in some dim borderline country where time was standing still and Ellen was always in the nextroom. The mainspring of his existence was taken away when she died and with it had gone hisbounding assurance, his impudence and his restless vitality. Ellen was the audience before whichthe blustering drama of Gerald O’Hara had been played. Now the curtain had been rung downforever, the footlights dimmed and the audience suddenly vanished, while the stunned old actorremained on his empty stage, waiting for his cues.

　　That morning the house was still, for everyone except Scarlett, Wade and the three sick girls wasin the swamp hunting the sow. Even Gerald had aroused a little and stumped off across thefurrowed fields, one hand on Pork’s arm and a coil of rope in the other. Suellen and Careen hadcried themselves to sleep, as they did at least twice a day when they thought of Ellen, tears of griefand weakness oozing down their sunken cheeks. Melanie, who had been propped up on pillows forthe first time that day, lay covered with a mended sheet between two babies, the downy flaxenhead of one cuddled in her arm, the kinky black head of Dilcey’s child held as gently in the other.

　　Wade sat at the bottom of the bed, listening to a fairy story.

　　To Scarlett, the stillness at Tara was unbearable, for it reminded her too sharply of the deathlike stillness of the desolate country through which she had passed that long day on her way home fromAtlanta. The cow and the calf had made no sound for hours. There were no birds twittering outsideher window and even the noisy family of mockers who had lived among the harshly rustling leavesof the magnolia for generations had no song that day. She had drawn a low chair close to the openwindow of her bedroom, looking out on the front drive, the lawn and the empty green pastureacross the road, and she sat with her skirts well above her knees and her chin resting on her armson the window sill. There was a bucket of well water on the floor beside her and every now andthen she lowered her blistered foot into it, screwing up her face at the stinging sensation.

　　Fretting, she dug her chin into her arm. Just when she needed her strength most, this toe had tofester. Those fools would never catch the sow. It had taken them a week to capture the pigs, one byone, and now after two weeks the sow was still at liberty. Scarlett knew that if she were just therein the swamp with them, she could tuck up her dress to her knees and take the rope and lasso thesow before you could say Jack Robinson.

　　But even after the sow was caught—if she were caught? What then, after she and her litter wereeaten? Life would go on and so would appetites. Winter was coming and there would be no food,not even the poor remnants of the vegetables from the neighbors’ gardens. They must have driedpeas and sorghum and meal and rice and—and—oh, so many things. Corn and cotton seed for nextspring’s planting, and new clothes too. Where was it all to come from and how would she pay forit?

　　She had privately gone through Gerald’s pockets and his cash box and all she could find wasstacks of Confederate bonds and three thousand dollars in Confederate bills. That was aboutenough to buy one square meal for them all, she thought ironically, now that Confederate moneywas worth almost less than nothing at all. But if she did have money and could find food, howwould she haul it home to Tara? Why had God let the old horse die? Even that sorry animal Rhetthad stolen would make all the difference in the world to them. Oh, those fine sleek mules whichused to kick up their heels in the pasture across the road, and the handsome carriage horses, herlittle mare, the girls’ ponies and Gerald’s big stallion racing about and tearing up the turf— Oh, forone of them, even the balkiest mule!

　　But, no matter—when her foot healed she would walk to Jonesboro. It would be the longestwalk she had ever taken in her life, but walk it she would. Even if the Yankees had burned the towncompletely, she would certainly find someone in the neighborhood who could tell her where to getfood. Wade’s pinched face rose up before her eyes. He didn’t like yams, he repeated; wanted adrumstick and some rice and gravy.

　　The bright sunlight in the front yard suddenly clouded and the trees blurred through tears.

　　Scarlett dropped her head on her arms and struggled not to cry. Crying was so useless now. Theonly time crying ever did any good was when there was a man around from whom you wished favors.

　　As she crouched there, squeezing her eyes tightly to keep back the tears, she was startled bythe sound of trotting hooves. But she did not raise her head. She had imagined that sound too oftenin the nights and days of these last two weeks, just as she had imagined she heard the rustle ofEllen’s skirts. Her heart hammered, as it always did at such moments, before she told herselfsternly: “Don’t be a fool.”

　　But the hooves slowed down in a startlingly natural way to the rhythm of a walk and there wasthe measured scrunch-scrunch on the gravel. It was a horse—the Tarletons, the Fontaines! Shelooked up quickly. It was a Yankee cavalryman.

　　Automatically, she dodged behind the curtain and peered fascinated at him through the dim foldsof the cloth, so startled that the breath went out of her lungs with a gasp.

　　He sat slouched in the saddle, thick, rough-looking with an unkempt black beard stragglingoverhisunbuttonedbraeja(a) cket.Littleclose-seteyes,s(man) quinting in the sun glare, calmlysurveyed the house from beneath the visor of his tight brae cap. As he slowly dismounted andtossed the bridle reins over the hitching post, Scarlett’s breath came back to her as suddenly andpainfully as after a blow in the stomach. A Yankee, a Yankee with a long pistol on his hip! And shewas alone in the house with three sick girls and the babies!

　　As he lounged up the walk, hand on holster, beady little eyes glancing to right and left, akaleidoscope of jumbled pictures spun in her mind, stories Aunt Pittypat had whispered of attackson unprotected women, throat cuttings, houses burned over the heads of dying women, childrenbayoneted because they cried, all of the unspeakable horrors that lay bound up in the name of“Yankee.”

　　Her first terrified impulse was to hide in the closet, crawl under the bed, fly down the back stairsand run screaming to the swamp, anything to escape him. Then she heard his cautious feet on thefront steps and his stealthy tread as he entered the hall and she knew that escape was cut off. Toocold with fear to move, she heard his progress from room to room downstairs, his steps growinglouder and bolder as he discovered no one. Now he was in the dining room and in a moment hewould walk out into the kitchen.

　　At the thought of the kitchen, rage suddenly leaped up in Scarlett’s breast, so sharply that itjabbed at her heart like a knife thrust, and fear fell away before her overpowering fury. Thekitchen! There, over the open kitchen fire were two pots, one filled with apples stewing and theother with a hodgepodge of vegetables brought painfully from Twelve Oaks and the Macintoshgarden—dinner that must serve for nine hungry people and hardly enough for two. Scarlett hadbeen restraining her appetite for hours, waiting for the return of the others and the thought of theYankee eating their meager meal made her shake with anger.

　　God damn them all! They descended like locusts and left Tara to starve slowly and now theywere back again to steal the poor leavings. Her empty stomach writhed within her. By God, thiswas one Yankee who would do no more stealing!

　　She slipped off her worn shoe and, barefooted, she pattered swiftly to the bureau, not evenfeeling her festered toe. She opened the top drawer soundlessly and caught up the heavy pistol shehad brought from Atlanta, the weapon Charles had worn but never fired. She fumbled in the leatherbox that hung on the wall below his saber and brought out a cap. She slipped it into place with ahand that did not shake. Quickly and noiselessly, she ran into the upper hall and down the stairs,steadying herself on the banisters with one hand and holding the pistol close to her thigh in thefolds of her skirt.

　　“Who’s there?” cried a nasal voice and she stopped on the middle of the stairs, the blood thudding in her ears so loudly she could hardly hear him. “Halt or I’ll shoot!” came the voice.

　　He stood in the door of the dining room, crouched tensely, his pistol in one hand and, in theother, the small rosewood sewing box fitted with gold thimble, gold-handled scissors and tinygold-topped acorn of emery. Scarlett’s legs felt cold to the knees but rage scorched her face.

　　Ellen’s sewing box in his hands. She wanted to cry: “Put it down! Put it down, you dirty—” butwords would not come. She could only stare over the banisters at him and watch his face changefrom harsh tenseness to a half-contemptuous, half-ingratiating smile.

　　“So there is somebody at home,” he said, slipping his pistol back into its holster and moving intothe hall until he stood directly below her. “All alone, little lady?”

　　Like lightning, she shoved her weapon over the banisters and into the startled bearded face.

　　Before he could even fumble at his belt, she pulled the trigger. The back kick of the pistol madeher reel, as the roar of the explosion filled her ears and the acrid smoke stung her nostrils. The mancrashed backwards to the floor, sprawling into the dining room with a violence that shook thefurniture. The box clattered from his hand, the contents spilling about him. Hardly aware that shewas moving, Scarlett ran down the stairs and stood over him, gazing down into what was left ofthe face above the beard, a bloody pit where the nose had been, glazing eyes burned with powder.

　　As she looked, two streams of blood crept across the shining floor, one from his face and one fromthe back of his head.

　　Yes, he was dead. Undoubtedly. She had killed a man.

　　The smoke curled slowly to the ceiling and the red streams widened about her feet. For atimeless moment she stood there and in the still hot hush of the summer morning every irrelevantsound and scent seemed magnified, the quick thudding of her heart, like, a drumbeat, the slightrough rustling of the magnolia leaves, the far-off plaintive sound of a swamp bird and the sweetsmell of the flowers outside the window.

　　She had killed a man, she who took care never to be in at the kill on a hunt, she who could notbear the squealing of a hog at slaughter or the squeak of a rabbit in a snare. Murder! she thoughtdully. I’ve done murder. Oh, this can’t be happening to me! Her eyes went to the stubby hairy handon the floor so close to the sewing box and suddenly she was vitally alive again, vitally glad with acool tigerish joy. She could have ground her heel into the gaping wound which had been his noseand taken sweet pleasure in the feel of his warm blood on her bare feet. She had struck a blow ofrevenge for Tara—and for Ellen.

　　There were hurried stumbling steps in the upper hall, a pause and then more steps, weakdragging steps now, punctuated by metallic clankings. A sense of time and reality coming back toher, Scarlett looked up and saw Melanie at the top of the stairs, clad only in the ragged chemisewhich served her as a nightgown, her weak arm weighed down with Charles’ saber. Melanie’s eyestook in the scene below in its entirety, the sprawling blue-clad body in the red pool, the sewing boxbeside him, Scarlett, barefooted and gray-faced, clutching the long pistol.

　　In silence her eyes met Scarlett’s. There was a glow of grim pride in her usually gentle face,approbation and a fierce joy in her smile that equaled the fiery tumult in Scarlett’s own bosom.

　　“Why—why—she’s like me! She understands how I feel!” thought Scarlett in that long moment “She’d have done the same thing!”

　　With a thrill she looked up at the frail swaying girl for whom she had never had any feelings butof dislike and contempt. Now, straggling against hatred for Ashley’s wife, there surged a feeling ofadmiration and comradeship. She saw in a flash of clarity untouched by any petty emotion thatbeneath the gentle voice and the dovelike eyes of Melanie there was a thin flashing blade ofunbreakable steel, felt too that there were banners and bugles of courage in Melanie’s quiet blood.

　　“Scarlett! Scarlett!” shrilled the weak frightened voices of Suellen and Carreen, muffled by theirclosed door, and Wade’s voice screamed “Auntee! Auntee!” Swiftly Melanie put her finger to herlips and, laying the sword on the top step, she painfully made her way down the upstairs hall andopened the door of the sick room.

　　“Don’t be scared, chickens!” came her voice with teasing gaiety. “Your big sister was trying toclean the rust off Charles’ pistol and it went off and nearly scared her to death!” ... “Now, WadeHampton, Mama just shot off your dear Papa’s pistol! When you are bigger, she will let you shootit.”

　　“What a cool liar!” thought Scarlett with admiration. “I couldn’t have thought that quickly. Butwhy lie? They’ve got to know I’ve done it.”

　　She looked down at the body again and now revulsion came over her as her rage and frightmelted away, and her knees began to quiver with the reaction. Melanie dragged herself to the topstep again and started down, holding onto the banisters, her pale lower lip caught between herteeth.

　　“Go back to bed, silly, you’ll kill yourself!” Scarlett cried, but the half-naked Melanie made herpainful way down into the lower hall.

　　“Scarlett,” she whispered, “we must get him out of here and bury him. He may not be alone andif they find him here—” She steadied herself on Scarlett’s arm.

　　“He must be alone,” said Scarlett. “I didn’t see anyone else from the upstairs window. He mustbe a deserter.”

　　“Even if he is alone, no one must know about it. The negroes might talk and then they’d comeand get you. Scarlett, we must get him hidden before the folks come back from the swamp.”

　　Her mind prodded to action by the feverish urgency of Melanie’s voice, Scarlett thought hard.

　　“I could bury him in the corner of the garden under the arbor—the ground is soft there wherePork dug up the whisky barrel. But how will I get him there?”

　　“We’ll both take a leg and drag him,” said Melanie firmly.

　　Reluctantly, Scarlett’s admiration went still higher.

　　“You couldn’t drag a cat. I’ll drag him,” she said roughly. “You go back to bed. You’ll killyourself. Don’t dare try to help me either or I’ll carry you upstairs myself.”

　　Melanie’s white face broke into a sweet understanding smile. “You are very dear, Scarlett,” shesaid and softly brushed her lips against Scarlett’s cheek. Before Scarlett could recover from hersurprise, Melanie went on: “If you can drag him out, I’ll mop up the—the mess before the folks get home, and Scarlett—”

　　“Yes?”

　　“Do you suppose it would be dishonest to go through his knapsack? He might have something toeat.”

　　“I do not,” said Scarlett, annoyed that she had not thought of this herself. “You take theknapsack and I’ll go through his pockets.”

　　Stooping over the dead man with distaste, she unbuttoned the remaining buttons of his jacketand systematically began rifling his pockets.

　　“Dear God,” she whispered, pulling out a bulging wallet, wrapped about with a rag. “Melanie—Melly, I think it’s full of money!”

　　Melanie said nothing but abruptly sat down on the floor and leaned back against the wall.

　　“You look,” she said shakily. I’m feeling a little weak.”

　　Scarlett tore off the rag and with trembling hands opened the leather folds.

　　“Look, Melly—just look!”

　　Melanie looked and her eyes dilated. Jumbled together was a mass of bills, United Statesgreenbacks mingling with Confederate money and, glinting from between them, were one ten-dollar gold piece and two five-dollar gold pieces.

　　“Don’t stop to count it now,” said Melanie as Scarlett began fingering the bills. “We haven’ttime—”

　　“Do you realize, Melanie, that this money means that we’ll eat?”

　　“Yes, yes, dear. I know but we haven’t time now. You look in his other pockets and I’ll take theknapsack.”

　　Scarlett was loath to put down the wallet. Bright vistas opened before her—real money, theYankee’s horse, food! There was a God after all, and He did provide, even if He did take very oddways of providing. She sat on her haunches and stared at the wallet smiling. Food! Melanieplucked it from her hands—“Hurry!” she said.

　　The trouser pockets yielded nothing except a candle end, a jackknife, a plug of tobacco and a bitof twine. Melanie removed from the knapsack a small package of coffee which she sniffed as if itwere the sweetest of perfumes, hardtack and, her face changing, a miniature of a little girl in a goldframe set with seed pearls, a garnet brooch, two broad gold bracelets with tiny dangling goldchains, a gold thimble, a small silver baby’s cup, gold embroidery scissors, a diamond solitaire ringand a pair of earrings with pendant pear-shaped diamonds, which even their unpracticed eyes couldtell were well over a carat each.

　　“A thief!” whispered Melanie, recoiling from the still body. “Scarlett, he must have stolen all ofthis!”

　　“Of course,” said Scarlett. “And he came here hoping to steal more from us.”

　　“I’m glad you killed him,” said Melanie her gentle eyes hard. “Now hurry, darling, and get himout of here.”

　　Scarlett bent over, caught the dead man by his boots and tugged. How heavy he was and howweak she suddenly felt. Suppose she shouldn’t be able to move him? Turning so that she backedthe corpse, she caught a heavy boot under each arm and threw her weight forward. He moved andshe jerked again. Her sore foot, forgotten in the excitement, now gave a tremendous throb thatmade her grit her teeth and shift her weight to the heel. Tugging and straining, perspirationdripping from her forehead, she dragged him down the hall, a red stain following her path.

　　“If he bleeds across the yard, we can’t hide it,” she gasped. “Give me your shimmy, Melanie,and I’ll wad it around his head.”

　　Melanie’s white face went crimson.

　　“Don’t be silly, I won’t look at you,” said Scarlett “If I had on a petticoat or pantalets I’d usethem.”

　　Crouching back against the wall, Melanie pulled the ragged linen garment over her head andsilently tossed it to Scarlett, shielding herself as best she could with her arms.

　　“Thank God, I’m not that modest,” thought Scarlett, feeling rather than seeing Melanie’s agonyof embarrassment, as she wrapped the ragged cloth about the shattered face.

　　By a series of limping jerks, she pulled the body down the hall toward the back porch and,pausing to wipe her forehead with the back of her hand, glanced back toward Melanie, sittingagainst the wall hugging her thin knees to her bare breasts. How silly of Melanie to be botheringabout modesty at a time like this, Scarlett thought irritably. It was just part of her nicey-nice way ofacting which had always made Scarlett despise her. Then shame rose in her. After all—after all,Melanie had dragged herself from bed so soon after having a baby and had come to her aid with aweapon too heavy even for her to lift. That had taken courage, the kind of courage Scarlett honestlyknew she herself did not possess, the thin-steel, spun silk courage which had characterizedMelanie on the terrible night Atlanta fell and on the long trip home. It was the same intangible,unspectacular courage that all the Wilkeses possessed, a quality which Scarlett did not understandbut to which she gave grudging tribute.

　　“Go back to bed,” she threw over her shoulder. “You’ll be dead if you don’t. I’ll clean up themess after I’ve buried him.”

　　“I’ll do it with one of the rag rugs,” whispered Melanie, looking at the pool of blood with a sickface.

　　“Well, kill yourself then and see if I care! And if any of the folks come back before I’m finished,keep them in the house and tell them the horse just walked in from nowhere.”

　　Melanie sat shivering in the morning sunlight and covered her ears against the sickening seriesof thuds as the dead man’s head bumped down the porch steps.

　　No one questioned whence the horse had come. It was so obvious he was a stray from the recentbattle and they were well pleased to have him. The Yankee lay in the shallow pit Scarlett hadscraped out under the scuppernong arbor. The uprights which held the thick vines were rotten and that night Scarlett hacked at them with the kitchen knife until they fell and the tangled mass ranwild over the grave. The replacing of these posts was one bit of repair work Scarlett did notsuggest and, if the negroes knew why, they kept their silence.

　　No ghost rose from that shallow grave to haunt her in the long nights when she lay awake, tootired to sleep. No feeling of horror or remorse assailed her at the memory. She wondered why,knowing that even a month before she could never have done the deed. Pretty young Mrs. Hamilton,with her dimple and her jingling earbobs and her helpless little ways, blowing a man’s face toa pulp and then burying him in a hastily scratched-out hole! Scarlett grinned a little grimlythinking of die consternation such an idea would bring to those who knew her.

　　“I won’t think about it any more,” she decided. “It’s over and done with and I’d have been aninny not to kill him. I reckon—I reckon I must have changed a little since coming home or else Icouldn’t have done it.”

　　She did not think of it consciously but in the back of her mind, whenever she was confronted byan unpleasant and difficult task, the idea lurked giving her strength: I’ve done murder and so I cansurely do this.”

　　She had changed more than she knew and the shell of hardness which had begun to form abouther heart when she lay in the slave garden at Twelve Oaks was slowly thickening.

　　Now that she had a horse, Scarlett could find out for herself what had happened to theirneighbors. Since she came home she had wondered despairingly a thousand times: “Are we theonly folks left in the County? Has everybody else been burned out? Have they all refugeed toMacon?” With the memory of the ruins of Twelve Oaks, the Macintosh place and the Slatteryshack fresh in her mind, she almost dreaded to discover the truth. But it was better to know theworst than to wonder. She decided to ride to the Fontaines’ first, not because they were the nearestneighbors but because old Dr. Fontaine might be there. Melanie needed a doctor. She was notrecovering as she should and Scarlett was frightened by her white weakness.

　　So on the first day when her foot had healed enough to stand a slipper, she mounted theYankee’s horse. One foot in the shortened stirrup and the other leg crooked about the pommel in anapproximation of a side saddle, she set out across the fields toward Mimosa, steeling herself to findit burned.

　　To her surprise and pleasure, she saw the faded yellow-stucco house standing amid the mimosatrees, looking as it had always looked. Warm happiness, happiness that almost brought tears,flooded her when the three Fontaine women came out of the house to welcome her with kisses andcries of joy.

　　But when the first exclamations of affectionate greeting were over and they all had trooped intothe dining room to sit down, Scarlett felt a chill. The Yankees had not reached Mimosa because itwas far off the main road. And so the Fontaines still had their stock and their provisions, butMimosa was held by the same strange silence that hung over Tara, over the whole countryside. Allthe slaves except four women house servants had run away, frightened by the approach of theYankees. There was not a man on the place unless Sally’s little boy, Joe, hardly out of diapers, could be counted as a man. Alone in the big house were Grandma Fontaine, in her seventies, herdaughter-in-law who would always be known as Young Miss, though she was in her fifties, andSally, who had barely turned twenty. They were far away from neighbors and unprotected, but ifthey were afraid it did not show on their faces. Probably, thought Scarlett, because Sally andYoung Miss were too afraid of the porcelain-frail but indomitable old Grandma to dare voice anyqualms.............