第171章

“You couldn’t drag a cat. I’ll drag him,” she said roughly. “You go back to bed. You’ll kill yourself. Don’t dare try to help me either or I’ll carry you upstairs myself.”

Melanie’s white face broke into a sweet understanding smile. “You are very dear, Scarlett,” she said and softly brushed her lips against Scarlett’s cheek. Before Scarlett could recover from her surprise, Melanie went on: “If you can drag him out, I’ll mop up the—the mess before the folks get home, and Scarlett—”

“Yes?”

“Do you suppose it would be dishonest to go through his knapsack? He might have something to eat.”

“I do not,” said Scarlett, annoyed that she had not thought of this herself. “You take the knapsack and I’ll go through his pockets.”

Stooping over the dead man with distaste, she unbuttoned the remaining buttons of his jacket and systematically began rifling his pockets.

“Dear God,” she whispered, pulling out a bulging wallet, wrapped about with a rag. “Melanie—Melly, I think it’s full of money!”

Melanie said nothing but abruptly sat down on the floor and leaned back against the wall.

“You look,” she said shakily. I’m feeling a little weak.”

Scarlett tore off the rag and with trembling hands opened the leather folds.

“Look, Melly—just look!”

Melanie looked and her eyes dilated. Jumbled together was a mass of bills, United States greenbacks mingling with Confederate money and, glinting from between them, were one ten-dollar gold piece and two five-dollar gold pieces.

“Don’t stop to count it now,” said Melanie as Scarlett began fingering the bills. “We haven’t time—”

“Do you realize, Melanie, that this money means that we’ll eat?”

“Yes, yes, dear. I know but we haven’t time now. You look in his other pockets and I’ll take the knapsack.”

Scarlett was loath to put down the wallet. Bright vistas opened before her—real money, the Yankee’s horse, food! There was a God after all, and He did provide, even if He did take very odd ways of providing. She sat on her haunches and stared at the wallet smiling. Food! Melanie plucked it from her hands—“Hurry!” she said.

The trouser pockets yielded nothing except a candle end, a jackknife, a plug of tobacco and a bit of twine. Melanie removed from the knapsack a small package of coffee which she sniffed as if it were the sweetest of perfumes, hardtack and, her face changing, a miniature of a little girl in a gold frame set with seed pearls, a garnet brooch, two broad gold bracelets with tiny dangling gold chains, a gold thimble, a small silver baby’s cup, gold embroidery scissors, a diamond solitaire ring and a pair of earrings with pendant pear-shaped diamonds, which even their unpracticed eyes could tell were well over a carat each.

“A thief!” whispered Melanie, recoiling from the still body. “Scarlett, he must have stolen all of this!”

“Of course,” said Scarlett. “And he came here hoping to steal more from us.”

“I’m glad you killed him,” said Melanie her gentle eyes hard. “Now hurry, darling, and get him out of here.”

Scarlett bent over, caught the dead man by his boots and tugged. How heavy he was and how weak she suddenly felt. Suppose she shouldn’t be able to move him? Turning so that she backed the corpse, she caught a heavy boot under each arm and threw her weight forward. He moved and she jerked again. Her sore foot, forgotten in the excitement, now gave a tremendous throb that made her grit her teeth and shift her weight to the heel. Tugging and straining, perspiration dripping from her forehead, she dragged him down the hall, a red stain following her path.

“If he bleeds across the yard, we can’t hide it,” she gasped. “Give me your shimmy, Melanie, and I’ll wad it around his head.”

Melanie’s white face went crimson.

“Don’t be silly, I won’t look at you,” said Scarlett “If I had on a petticoat or pantalets I’d use them.”

Crouching back against the wall, Melanie pulled the ragged linen garment over her head and silently tossed it to Scarlett, shielding herself as best she could with her arms.

“Thank God, I’m not that modest,” thought Scarlett, feeling rather than seeing Melanie’s agony of embarrassment, as she wrapped the ragged cloth about the shattered face.

By a series of limping jerks, she pulled the body down the hall toward the back porch and, pausing to wipe her forehead with the back of her hand, glanced back toward Melanie, sitting against the wall hugging her thin knees to her bare breasts. How silly of Melanie to be bothering about modesty at a time like this, Scarlett thought irritably. It was just part of her nicey-nice way of acting which had always made Scarlett despise her. Then shame rose in her. After all—after all, Melanie had dragged herself from bed so soon after having a baby and had come to her aid with a weapon too heavy even for her to lift. That had taken courage, the kind of courage Scarlett honestly knew she herself did not possess, the thin-steel, spun silk courage which had characterized Melanie on the terrible night Atlanta fell and on the long trip home. It was the same intangible, unspectacular courage that all the Wilkeses possessed, a quality which Scarlett did not understand but to which she gave grudging tribute.

“Go back to bed,” she threw over her shoulder. “You’ll be dead if you don’t. I’ll clean up the mess after I’ve buried him.”

“I’ll do it with one of the rag rugs,” whispered Melanie, looking at the pool of blood with a sick face.

“Well, kill yourself then and see if I care! And if any of the folks come back before I’m finished, keep them in the house and tell them the horse just walked in from nowhere.”

Melanie sat shivering in the morning sunlight and covered her ears against the sickening series of thuds as the dead man’s head bumped down the porch steps.