“Yes.”
“Well, he can have it,” said the sergeant, who was satisfied enough with the jewelry and trinkets tied up in his handkerchief.
“But it’s got a solid-gold hilt,” insisted the little trooper.
“We’ll leave her thet to remember us by,” grinned the sergeant.
Scarlett took the sword, not even saying “Thank you.”
Why should she thank these thieves for returning her own property to her?
She held the sword against her while the little cavalryman argued and wrangled with the sergeant.
“By God, I’ll give these damn Rebels something to remember me by,” shouted the private finally when the sergeant, losing his good nature, told him to go to hell and not talk back.
The little man went charging toward the back of the house and Scarlett breathed more easily.
They had said nothing about burning the house.
They hadn’t told her to leave so they could fire it.
Perhaps—perhaps-The men came rambling into the hall from the upstairs and the out of doors.
“Anything?” questioned the sergeant.
“One hog and a few chickens and ducks.”
“Some corn and a few yams and beans.
That wildcat we saw on the horse must have given the alarm, all right.”
“Regular Paul Revere, eh?”
“Well, there ain’t much here, Sarge.
You got the pickin’s.
Let’s move on before the whole country gets the news we’re comin'.”
“Didja dig under the smokehouse?
They generally buries things there.”
“Ain’t no smokehouse.”
“Didja dig in the nigger cabins?”
“Nothin’ but cotton in the cabins.
We set fire to it.”
For a brief instant Scarlett saw the long hot days in the cotton field, felt again the terrible ache in her back, the raw bruised flesh of her shoulders.
All for nothing. The cotton was gone.
“You ain’t got much, for a fac', have you, lady?”
“Your army has been here before,” she said coolly.
“That’s a fac'.
We were in this neighborhood in September,” said one of the men, turning something in his hand.
“I’d forgot.”
Scarlett saw it was Ellen’s gold thimble that he held.
How often she had seen it gleaming in and out of Ellen’s fancy work.
The sight of it brought back too many hurting memories of the slender hand which had worn it.
There it lay in this stranger’s calloused dirty palm and soon it would find its way North and onto the finger of some Yankee woman who would be proud to wear stolen things. Ellen’s thimble!
Scarlett dropped her head so the enemy could not see her cry and the tears fell slowly down on the baby’s head.
Through the blur, she saw the men moving toward the doorway, heard the sergeant calling commands in a loud rough voice.
They were going and Tara was safe, but with the pain of Ellen’s memory on her, she was hardly glad.
The sound of the banging sabers and horses’ hooves brought little relief and she stood, suddenly weak and nerveless, as they moved off down the avenue, every man laden with stolen goods, clothing, blankets, pictures, hens and ducks, the sow.
Then to her nostrils was borne the smell of smoke and she turned, too weak with lessening strain, to care about the cotton.
Through the open windows of the dining room, she saw smoke drifting lazily out of the negro cabins.
There went the cotton.
There went the tax money and part of the money which was to see them through this bitter winter.
There was nothing she could do about it either, except watch.
She had seen fires in cotton before and she knew how difficult they were to put out, even with many men laboring at it.
Thank God, the quarters were so far from the house!
Thank God, there was no wind today to carry sparks to the roof of Tara!
Suddenly she swung about, rigid as a pointer, and stared with horror-struck eyes down the hall, down the covered passageway toward the kitchen.