Rhett Butler's people (71 page)

"Scarlett, I feel like a horse is running away with me. Tell me what you're planning. Please! I beg you!"

So Scarlett told her.

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First thing Monday morning, Dilcey heated water and they bathed in the kitchen -- Scarlett first, then Rosemary while Scarlett toweled herself and dried her hair. Field-work grime turned their bathwater gray. Mammy ironed petticoats as they sat side by side, wrapped in towels, while Dilcey braided and coiled their hair.

Mammy was torn between dismay at what Scarlett might be up to and delight in their transformation.

The men had been exiled from the house, and after their hair was done, in their shifts, the ladies searched Scarlett's trunks for clothing. When Scarlett unfolded a pink watered-silk dress, a receipt fluttered to the floor: "Mme. Frere, Bourbon Street."

"Dear me," Scarlett said. "Rhett bought this in New Orleans." She held the dress up to Rosemary. "It flatters your complexion."

"The bodice? Scarlett, I am not so well endowed...."

"Dilcey will take a tuck in it." Scarlett chuckled. "Did Rhett ever tell you how he and I attended the

notorious

Quadroon Ball?"

As the ladies prepared, Pork bridled Tara's handsomest saddle horses. He rubbed them down, picked loose hair, and clipped their manes and tails before tying them to the hitch rack for Prissy's attentions. In the tack room, he found two dusty sidesaddles and patted the smaller one reverently. "Miz Ellen," Pork said. "Everything's changed at Tara. Not for the better, neither."

As she plaited manes and tails, Prissy chattered. "They sure gonna look nice, ain't they? Is Miss Scarlett 'n' Miss Rosemary goin' to a barbecue? Way they fixed up, I bet that's where they goin'. Reckon we goin', too?" She took a step back to admire her work. "I puttin' ribbons in the manes and tails. Pork, what color do you reckon?"

"Miss Scarlett's be green," Pork pronounced authoritatively.

The Jonesboro market shared its siding with the slaughterhouse and Maclver's cotton warehouse. During the harvest, cotton was auctioned here, and throughout the year, Clayton County farmers came to buy and sell livestock. The market's pens and rough shelters butted against the tracks. At the south end of the market, sale animals were delivered, weighed, numbered, and penned until they were driven down the market's

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wide aisles, gates slamming behind them, into a hundred-foot sale ring enclosed by a horse-high, bull-stout oak fence. On market days, negroes perched on this fence, while whites enjoyed the relative comfort of an open wooden grandstand. Under the grandstand, two dour women in the sales office accepted payments, deducted the market commission, and issued the ticket that let the successful bidder claim his beast. Beside the sales office, a colored woman had a wooden booth where she sold ham slices and corn bread. Out of respect for the Baptists, she kept her demijohn of white liquor beneath the counter.

The market was loud with the bawling, squealing, baaing, whinnying, clucking, and hee-hawing of mules, horses, hogs, geese, ducks, and chickens.

That particular Monday morning, parched grass crunched underfoot and red dust filmed cattle, corrals, and the grandstand. Men's hat brims were tinged red. The dust smelled of dried manure.

Order buyers making up consignments for Atlanta butchers wore linen suits and affixed their ties with gold stickpins. But most here today were poor men who'd brought in a hog or sought a milk cow with a few more seasons left in her. Some men were shoeless.

By one o'clock, the market was humming. Livestock came into the auction ring, the auctioneer cried his singsong, and the dust hung in the air like red fog.

When the two ladies appeared, startled farmers nudged one another. One simpleton rubbed his eyes and whistled. "Golly!"

Fringed silk parasols protected the ladies' delicate complexions; elbow-length gloves protected their delicate hands.

Rosemary smiled graciously. "Why, thank you, sir." The young farmer who opened the gate had never heard a sweeter voice.

They were the perfection of Southern womanhood -- the ladies their own wives, worn by toil and childbirth, could never be. Of course they weren't dusty -- no fleck of dust would dare light on them. Their eyes passed over the man beating a sick cow to its feet, three-day-old veal calves bleating for their mothers, and a market worker lashing a reluctant bull into a pen. Ladies never noticed such things. They were too fine to notice such things. Men took off their hats and smiled as they passed.

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A man who had been the Tarletons' overseer in happier days sang out, "Mornin', Miss Scarlett," and accepted her nod as from a monarch.

News of the ladies' arrival sped through the sprawling market and men started toward the auction ring as if some unusually valuable horse or bull was to be sold. Drovers who'd been inspecting a jenny's hooves turned her loose, and negroes slopping market hogs put their buckets down.

In the grandstand, the Atlanta buyers sat on cushions, at eye level with the auctioneer on the far side of the ring.

High above, in the top row, Isaiah Watling dozed in the sun while his nephew Josie read Ned Buntline's dime novel

The Scouts of the Plains

and thought the Plains were exactly where Josie Watling ought to be. In Bunt-line's book, Buffalo Bill dropped a hostile redskin a mile away with a single shot. Josie Watling scratched his head. He'd never shot anybody so far off.

Jesse and Frank James were robbing trains. Josie'd never robbed a train. Josie Watling worried he'd been Back East too long and maybe when he got West again, he wouldn't be able to kill a man a mile away, and maybe he'd be no account at train robbing. How did a man rob a train anyway? How did you get it to stop to be robbed?

His snoring uncle Isaiah had a spit bubble at the corner of his mouth. Most of the time, Isaiah was just another old coot. Only thing kept Isaiah going was Rhett Butler. Josie reckoned that after they planted Butler, Isaiah Watling could die in peace.

It had been Archie Flytte's notion to hound Mrs. Butler until she brought her husband home. Archie hated the Butlers like poison. Uncle Isaiah had been too damn holy for the meat house, too holy to scare niggers, and too holy for the damn yappy dog, but when they torched that big house in Atlanta, Josie'd had to drag the old fool away. He'd been staring into the flames like they was his destination.

Josie went back to his book. Buffalo Bill was strolling into the Comanche Saloon, where bad hombres were dividing loot from a holdup. "There was gunplay in the air," Ned Buntline wrote.

In the dusty sale ring, Archie Flytte was chivvying cattle while the auctioneer cried, "Hundred, hundred, one bid takes all. Mr. Benson's steers. Put a little fat on these boys and they'll make you money. Do I hear a hundred?"

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Nervous steers swirled through the dust while Archie kept them moving, turning them this way and that for prospective buyers.

Dust hung in the air. Steers bawled. Their hooves thumped the dirt, Archie cried, "Soo cow! Soo cow! Huh! Huh!" and the auctioneer chanted his chant. Two ladies trotted their beribboned horses right into the sale ring.

"Archie Flytte," Scarlett sang out. "We would speak to you and your ... accomplices."

Archie frowned, mistepped on his wooden leg, and just caught his balance. Absent Archie's attentions, the steers retreated to the far end of the ring.

"Ladies!" the auctioneer called. "Please, ladies. You're interrupting our sale."

Amused by the man's effrontery, Scarlett replied, "Don't distress yourself, sir. We shan't keep you long. Terrible wrongs have been done us, and I'm sure that you, as a Christian gentleman, would wish to see matters put right."

She searched the grandstand and ventured a wave to men she recognized. "Many of you know me by my maiden name, Scarlett O'Hara, others as Mrs. Rhett Butler. My sister-in-law" -- her gloved hand indicated Rosemary -- "Mrs. Ravanel, is the widow of Colonel Andrew Ravanel, whose name is familiar to every Southern patriot.

"Isaiah Watling, is that you lurking up there? And you, sir, you must be Josie Watling. I've heard rather too much about you."

Stepping from seat to seat, the Watlings descended the grandstand and climbed over the barrier into the ring. The auctioneer wanted to protest but held his tongue when an Atlanta buyer shook his head.

"Archie Flytte. I am glad you've finally found suitable employment. You were miscast as Melanie Wilkes's baby-sitter. I shudder to think of someone like you alone with innocent children. Isaiah Watling, how ever did you drive Big Sam off? What threats did you employ?"

"Isaiah!" Rosemary nudged her horse forward. "Shooting horses? Frightening negroes? Murdering a poor dog? You? What would ... what would my mother, Elizabeth, have thought of this ... this

wretchedness!"

When the old man straightened, the years dropped away and his eyes

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flashed like a goshawk's. "Your brother murdered my only son. Rhett Butler condemned Shadrach Watling to eternal hellfire."

"You're a liar, Isaiah Watling," Rosemary declared. "Your son fought Rhett Butler on the field of honor. How does that justify tormenting innocent widows and children?"

Scarlett appealed to the crowd. "Sirs, these sorry creatures shot two nursing mares, drove off our field hands, vandalized our property, and -- for a joke -- murdered our faithful watchdog." Scarlett pointed a finger. "Tell us a lie, Watling. Before man and God, claim you are innocent!"

"Give 'em hell, Miss Scarlett," a man in the grandstand cried. When Josie turned to identify the speaker, many men met his eye. Some stood. Their muttering was a gathering storm.

Rosemary paced her horse in front of the grandstand, "Gentlemen, while I have been in Mrs. Butler's home, we have been besieged and terrified by night riders. What cowards stoop to frightening women, children, and negroes? What will they do next? Will they murder my child -- Colonel Andrew Ravanel's son?"

Two young farmers dropped from the grandstand into the auction ring.

"My son, Shadrach, he -- "

"Overseer Watling," Rosemary snapped, "you forget yourself! Shadrach Watling was a bully and a brute."

"Tell 'em, Mrs. Ravanel. Don't let 'em get away with nothin'!" A strongly built farmer clambered into the arena. Men reached for stock whips and stockmans' canes. Josie Watling fingered his holster.

"Oh!" Isaiah cried out. "Oh! You are so high-and-mighty! You Butlers stand so much prouder than anybody else! You bankrupt who you wish, shoot who you want, insult who you feel like insulting, and ride away without a care! You own everything." He aimed an accusing finger. "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth!"

In that frozen moment, with spittle glistening on Isaiah Watling's lips, Ashley Wilkes and Will Benteen strode into the auction ring.

Rosemary gasped.

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Scarlett cried, "Go away! Please! We're managing! We are taking care of this!"

Ashley Wilkes marched across the hard red clay like the Confederate Major he'd been. His riding whip dangled from his right hand. "It's all right now, Scarlett," Ashley said. "We'll straighten things out!"

"Oh no, Ashley, we -- "

Ashley slashed his whip across Flytte's face. "Scoundrel, you will stay away from Tara! You will! Or by God, I'll..."

Archie barely had time to raise his arm before the whip landed again.

"You damn rogue! You

will keep

away from us!"

The lash coiled around Archie's upraised arm. He clamped his arm to his chest, and when Ashley jerked to free the whip, Archie came with it, crashing into his assailant. "You will never trouble decent folks again!" Ashley gasped.

"Oh, trouble you!" Archie stomped his wooden peg on the arch of Ashley Wilkes's foot, and when Ashley tripped, the old rooster rode him down into the dirt.

The ladies' horses tried to not step on the men rolling under their hooves, but Rosemary's wheeling horse landed a hind hoof on Ashley's ankle. Panicked steers stampeded and farmers jumped for their lives.

Archie clenched his fingers around Ashley's throat.

Although Ashley pummeled Flytte's back, Archie's hard hands were tightening. When Ashley tried to buck, attempted to roll to his knees, the older man stayed with him. As Ashley pried at Archie's hard fingers, Will Benteen circled, shouting, "I'm gonna put a bullet in you, Flytte. Let go of him or, by God, I'll shoot you!"