Dilcey worked tirelessly,silently,like a machine,and Scarlett,with her back aching and her shoulder raw from the tugging weight of the cotton bag she carried,thought that Dilcey was worth her weight in gold.
“Dilcey,”she said,“when good times come back,I'm not going to forget how you've acted.You've been mighty good.”
The bronze giantess did not grin or squirm under praise like the other negroes.She turned an immobile face to Scarlett and said with dignity:“Thankee,Ma'm.But Mist'Gerald and Miss Ellen been good to me.Mist'Gerald buy my Prissy so I wouldn't grieve and I doan forgit it.I is part Indian and Indians doan forgit them as is good to them.I is sorry 'bout my Prissy.She mighty wuthless.Look lak she all nigger lak her pa.Her pa was mighty flighty.”
In spite of Scarlett's problem of getting help from the others in the picking and in spite of the weariness in doing the labor herself,her spirits lifted as the cotton slowly made its way from the fields to the cabins.There was something about cotton that was reassuring,steadying.Tara had risen to riches on cotton,even as the whole South had risen,and Scarlett was Southerner enough to believe that both Tara and the South would rise again out of the red fields.
Of course,this little cotton she had gathered was not much but it was something.It would bring a little in Confederate money and that little would help her to save the hoarded greenbacks and gold in the Yankee's wallet until they had to be spent.Next spring she would try to make the Confederate government send back Big Sam and the other field hands they had commandeered,and if the government wouldn't release them,she'd use the Yankee's money to hire field hands from the neighbors.Next spring,she would plant and plant....She straightened her tired back and,looking over the browning autumn fields,she saw next year's crop standing sturdy and green,acre upon acre.
Next spring!Perhaps by next spring the war would be over and good times would be back.And whether the Confederacy won or lost,times would be better.Anything was better than the constant danger of raids from both armies.When the war was over,a plantation could earn an honest living.Oh,if the war were only over!Then people could plant crops with some certainty of reaping them!
There was hope now.The war couldn't last forever.She had her little cotton,she had food,she had a horse,she had her small but treasured hoard of money.Yes,the worst was over!
Chapter 27
On a noonday in mid-November,they all sat grouped about the dinner table,eating the last of the dessert concocted by Mammy from corn meal and dried huckleberries,sweetened with sorghum.There was a chill in the air,the first chill of the year,and Pork,standing behind Scarlett's chair,rubbed his hands together in glee and questioned:“Ain'it 'bout time fer de hawg killin',Miss Scarlett?”
“You can taste those chitlins already,can't you?”said Scarlett with a grin.“Well,I can taste fresh pork myself and if the weather holds for a few days more,we'll—”
Melanie interrupted,her spoon at her lips,“Listen,dear!Somebody's coming!”
“Somebody hollerin',”said Pork uneasily.
On the crisp autumn air came clear the sound of horse's hooves,thudding as swiftly as a frightened heart,and a woman's voice,high pitched,screaming:“Scarlett!Scarlett!”
Eye met eye for a dreadful second around the table before chairs were pushed back and everyone leaped up.Despite the fear that made it shrill,they recognized the voice of Sally Fontaine who,only an hour before,had stopped at Tara for a brief chat on her way to Jonesboro.Now,as they all rushed pell-mell to crowd the front door,they saw her coming up the drive like the wind on a lathered horse,her hair streaming behind her,her bonnet dangling by its ribbons.She did not draw rein but as she galloped madly toward them,she waved her arm back in the direction from which she had come.
“The Yankees are coming!I saw them!Down the road!The Yankees—”
She sawed savagely at the horse's mouth just in time to swerve him from leaping up the front steps.He swung around sharply,covered the side lawn in three leaps and she put him across the four-foot hedge as if she were on the hunting field.They heard the heavy pounding of his hooves as he went through the back yard and down the narrow lane between the cabins of the quarters and knew she was cutting across the fields to Mimosa.
For a moment they stood paralyzed and then Suellen and Carreen began to sob and clutch each other's fingers.Little Wade stood rooted,trembling,unable to cry.What he had feared since the night he left Atlanta had happened.The Yankees were coming to get him.
“Yankees?”said Gerald vaguely.“But the Yankees have already been here.”
“Mother of God!”cried Scarlett,her eyes meeting Melanie's frightened eyes.For a swift instant there went through her memory again the horrors of her last night in Atlanta,the ruined homes that dotted the countryside,all the stories of rape and torture and murder.She saw again the Yankee soldier standing in the hall with Ellen's sewing box in his hand.She thought:“I shall die.I shall die right here.I thought we were through with all that.I shall die.I can't stand any more.”
Then her eyes fell on the horse saddled and hitched and waiting for Pork to ride him to the Tarleton place on an errand.Her horse!Her only horse!The Yankees would take him and the cow and the calf.And the sow and her litter—Oh,how many tiring hours it had taken to catch that sow and her agile young!And they'd take the rooster and the setting hens and the ducks the Fontaines had given her.And the apples and the yams in the pantry bins.And the flour and rice and dried peas.And the money in the Yankee soldier's wallet.They'd take everything and leave them to starve.
“They shan't have them!”she cried aloud and they all turned startled faces to her,fearful that her mind had cracked under the tidings.“I won't go hungry!They shan't have them!”