India shot one more quick anguished look at Ashley,and,wrapping her cape about her,ran lightly down the hall to the back door and let herself out quietly into the night.
Scarlett,straining her eyes past Rhett,felt her heart beat again as she saw Ashley's eyes open.Melanie snatched a folded towel from the washstand rack and pressed it against his streaming shoulder and he smiled up weakly,reassuringly into her face.Scarlett felt Rhett's hard penetrating eyes upon her,knew that her heart was plain upon her face,but she did not care.Ashley was bleeding,perhaps dying and she who loved him had torn that hole through his shoulder.She wanted to run to the bed,sink down beside it and clasp him to her but her knees trembled so that she could not enter the room.Hand at her mouth,she stared while Melanie packed a fresh towel against his shoulder,pressing it hard as though she could force back the blood into his body.But the towel reddened as though by magic.
How could a man bleed so much and still live?But,thank God,there was no bubble of blood at his lips—oh,those frothy red bubbles,forerunners of death that she knew so well from the dreadful day of the battle at Peachtree Creek when the wounded had died on Aunt Pitty's lawn with bloody mouths.
“Brace up,”said Rhett,and there was a hard,faintly jeering note in his voice.“He won't die.Now,go take the lamp and hold it for Mrs.Wilkes.I need Archie to run errands.”
Archie looked across the lamp at Rhett.
“I ain't takin'no orders from you,”he said briefly,shifting his wad of tobacco to the other cheek.
“You do what he says,”said Melanie sternly,“and do it quickly.Do everything Captain Butler says.Scarlett,take the lamp.”
Scarlett went forward and took the lamp,holding it in both hands to keep from dropping it.Ashley's eyes had closed again.His bare chest heaved up slowly and sank quickly and the red stream seeped from between Melanie's small frantic fingers.Dimly she heard Archie stump across the room to Rhett and heard Rhett's low rapid words.Her mind was so fixed upon Ashley that of the first half-whispered words of Rhett,she only heard:“Take my horse ...tied outside ...ride like hell.”
Archie mumbled some question and Scarlett heard Rhett reply:“The old Sullivan plantation.You'll find the robes pushed up the biggest chimney.Burn them.”
“Um,”grunted Archie.
“And there's two—men in the cellar.Pack them over the horse as best you can and take them to that vacant lot behind Belle's—the one between her house and the railroad tracks.Be careful.If anyone sees you,you'll hang as well as the rest of us.Put them in that lot and put pistols near them—in their hands.Here—take mine.”
Scarlett,looking across the room,saw Rhett reach under his coat tails and produce two revolvers which Archie took and shoved into his waist band.
“Fire one shot from each.It's got to appear like a plain case of shooting.You understand?”
Archie nodded as if he understood perfectly and an unwilling gleam of respect shone in his cold eye.But understanding was far from Scarlett.The last half-hour had been so nightmarish that she felt nothing would ever be plain and clear again.However,Rhett seemed in perfect command of the bewildering situation and that was a small comfort.
Archie turned to go and then swung about and his one eye went questioningly to Rhett's face.
“Him?”
“Yes.”
Archie grunted and spat on the floor.
“Hell to pay,”he said as he stumped down the hall to the back door.
Something in the last low interchange of words made a new fear and suspicion rise up in Scarlett's breast like a chill ever-swelling bubble.When that bubble broke—
“where's Frank?”she cried.
Rhett came swiftly across the room to the bed,his big body swinging as lightly and noiselessly as a cat's.
“All in good time,”he said and smiled briefly.“Steady that lamp,Scarlett.You don't want to burn Mr.Wilkes up.Miss Melly—”
Melanie looked up like a good soldier awaiting a command and so tense was the situation it did not occur to her that for the first time Rhett was calling her familiarly by the name which only family and old friends used.
“I beg your pardon,I mean,Mrs.Wilkes....”
“Oh,Captain Butler,do not ask my pardon!I should feel honored if you called me ‘Melly'without the Miss!I feel as though you were my—my brother or—or my cousin.How kind you are and how clever!How can I ever thank you enough?”
“Thank you,”said Rhett and for a moment he looked almost embarrassed.“I should never presume so far,but Miss Melly,”and his voice was apologetic,“I'm sorry I had to say that Mr.Wilkes was in Belle Watling's house.I'm sorry to have involved him and the others in such a—a—But I had to think fast when I rode away from here and that was the only plan that occurred to me.I knew my word would be accepted because I have so many friends among the Yankee officers.They do me the dubious honor of thinking me almost one of them because they know my—shall we call it my ‘unpopularity'?—among my townsmen.And you see,I was playing poker in Belle's bar earlier in the evening.There are a dozen Yankee soldiers who can testify to that.And Belle and her girls will gladly lie themselves black in the face and say Mr.Wilkes and the others were—upstairs all evening.And the Yankees will believe them.Yankees are queer that way.It won't occur to them that women of—their profession are capable of intense loyalty or patriotism.The Yankees wouldn't take the word of a single nice Atlanta lady as to the whereabouts of the men who were supposed to be at the meeting tonight but they will take the word of—fancy ladies.And I think that between the word of honor of a Scallawag and a dozen fancy ladies,we may have a chance of getting the men off.”
There was a sardonic grin on his face at the last words but it faded as Melanie turned up to him a face that blazed with gratitude.
