“There isn’t any,” and gone to sleep before the words were out of her mouth.
Now it was morning and the world was still and serene and green and gold with dappled sunshine.
And no soldiers in sight anywhere.
She was hungry and dry with thirst, aching and cramped and filled with wonder that she, Scarlett O’Hara, who could never rest well except between linen sheets and on the softest of feather beds, had slept like a field hand on hard planks.
Blinking in the sunlight, her eyes fell on Melanie and she gasped, horrified.
Melanie lay so still and white Scarlett thought she must be dead.
She looked dead.
She looked like a dead, old woman with her ravaged face and her dark hair snarled and tangled across it. Then Scarlett saw with relief the faint rise and fall of her shallow breathing and knew that Melanie had survived the night.
Scarlett shaded her eyes with her hand and looked about her.
They had evidently spent the night under the trees in someone’s front yard, for a sand and gravel driveway stretched out before her, winding away under an avenue of cedars.
“Why, it’s the Mallory place!” she thought, her heart leaping with gladness at the thought of friends and help.
But a stillness as of death hung over the plantation.
The shrubs and grass of the lawn were cut to pieces where hooves and wheels and feet had torn frantically back and forth until the soil was churned up.
She looked toward the house and instead of the old white clapboard place she knew so well, she saw there only a long rectangle of blackened granite foundation stones and two tall chimneys rearing smoke-stained bricks into the charred leaves of still trees.
She drew a deep shuddering breath.
Would she find Tara like this, level with the ground, silent as the dead?
“I mustn’t think about that now,” she told herself hurriedly.
“I mustn’t let myself think about it.
I’ll get scared again if I think about it.”
But, in spite of herself, her heart quickened and each beat seemed to thunder:
“Home!
Hurry!
Home!
Hurry!”
They must be starting on toward home again.
But first they must find some food and water, especially water.
She prodded Prissy awake.
Prissy rolled her eyes as she looked about her.
“Fo’ Gawd, Miss Scarlett, Ah din’ spec ter wake up agin ’cept in de Promise Lan'.”
“You’re a long way from there,” said Scarlett, trying to smooth back her untidy hair.
Her face was damp and her body was already wet with sweat.
She felt dirty and messy and sticky, almost as if she smelled bad.
Her clothes were crushed and wrinkled from sleeping in them and she had never felt more acutely tired and sore in all her life.
Muscles she did not know she possessed ached from her unaccustomed exertions of the night before and every movement brought sharp pain.
She looked down at Melanie and saw that her dark eyes were opened.
They were sick eyes, fever bright, and dark baggy circles were beneath them.
She opened cracking lips and whispered appealingly:
“Water.”
“Get up, Prissy,” ordered Scarlett.
“We’ll go to the well and get some water.”
“But, Miss Scarlett! Dey mout be hants up dar. Sposin’ somebody daid up dar?”
“I’ll make a hant out of you if you don’t get out of this wagon,” said Scarlett, who was in no mood for argument, as she climbed lamely down to the ground.
And then she thought of the horse.
Name of God!
Suppose the horse had died in the night!
He had seemed ready to die when she unharnessed him.
She ran around the wagon and saw him lying on his side. If he were dead, she would curse God and die too.
Somebody in the Bible had done just that thing.
Cursed God and died.
She knew just how that person felt.