“Hello!”
Prissy clawed at her in a frenzy of fright and Scarlett, turning, saw that her eyes were rolling in her head.
“Doan holler, Miss Scarlett!
Please, doan holler agin!” she whispered, her voice shaking.
“Dey ain’ no tellin’ WHUT mout answer!”
“Dear God!” thought Scarlett, a shiver running through her.
“Dear God!
She’s right.
Anything might come out of there!”
She flapped the reins and urged the horse forward.
The sight of the MacIntosh house had pricked the last bubble of hope remaining to her.
It was burned, in ruins, deserted, as were all the plantations she had passed that day.
Tara lay only half a mile away, on the same road, right in the path of the army.
Tara was leveled, too!
She would find only the blackened bricks, starlight shining through the roofless walls, Ellen and Gerald gone, the girls gone, Mammy gone, the negroes gone, God knows where, and this hideous stillness over everything.
Why had she come on this fool’s errand, against all common sense, dragging Melanie and her child?
Better that they had died in Atlanta than, tortured by this day of burning sun and jolting wagon, to die in the silent ruins of Tara.
But Ashley had left Melanie in her care.
“Take care of her.”
Oh, that beautiful, heartbreaking day when he had kissed her good-by before he went away forever!
“You’ll take care of her, won’t you?
Promise!”
And she had promised.
Why had she ever bound herself with such a promise, doubly binding now that Ashley was gone?
Even in her exhaustion she hated Melanie, hated the tiny mewing voice of her child which, fainter and fainter, pierced the stillness.
But she had promised and now they belonged to her, even as Wade and Prissy belonged to her, and she must struggle and fight for them as long as she had strength or breath.
She could have left them in Atlanta, dumped Melanie into the hospital and deserted her.
But had she done that, she could never face Ashley, either on this earth or in the hereafter and tell him she had left his wife and child to die among strangers.
Oh, Ashley!
Where was he tonight while she toiled down this haunted road with his wife and baby?
Was he alive and did he think of her as he lay behind the bars at Rock Island?
Or was he dead of smallpox months ago, rotting in some long ditch with hundreds of other Confederates?
Scarlett’s taut nerves almost cracked as a sudden noise sounded in the underbrush near them.
Prissy screamed loudly, throwing herself to the floor of the wagon, the baby beneath her.
Melanie stirred feebly, her hands seeking the baby, and Wade covered his eyes and cowered, too frightened to cry.
Then the bushes beside them crashed apart under heavy hooves and a low moaning bawl assaulted their ears.
“It’s only a cow,” said Scarlett, her voice rough with fright.
“Don’t be a fool, Prissy.
You’ve mashed the baby and frightened Miss Melly and Wade.”
“It’s a ghos’,” moaned Prissy, writhing face down on the wagon boards.
Turning deliberately, Scarlett raised the tree limb she had been using as a whip and brought it down across Prissy’s back.
She was too exhausted and weak from fright to tolerate weakness in anyone else.
“Sit up, you fool,” she said, “before I wear this out on you.”
Yelping, Prissy raised her head and peering over the side of the wagon saw it was, indeed, a cow, a red and white animal which stood looking at them appealingly with large frightened eyes.
Opening its mouth, it lowed again as if in pain.
“Is it hurt?
That doesn’t sound like an ordinary moo.”
“Soun’ ter me lak her bag full an’ she need milkin’ bad,” said Prissy, regaining some measure of control.
“Spec it one of Mist’ MacIntosh’s dat de niggers driv in de woods an’ de Yankees din’ git.”
“We’ll take it with us,” Scarlett decided swiftly.