Rhett Butler's people by Donald McCaig

Author:Donald McCaig [McCaig, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York : St. Martin's Press, 2007
Published: 2011-10-13T06:55:20+00:00

Why?

Why?

If Scarlett hesitated, if she lost heart, if she once -- as she sometimes wished to -- broke down and wept, everything would be lost.

Pork ambled off on a vague search for some kind of grease for the windlass.

Gerald O'Hara's thousand-acre plantation had shrunk to a hundred-foot kitchen garden and one five-acre cotton patch. Scarlett squinted so she wouldn't see the brambles and blackberry bushes encroaching.

Scarlett did servant's work and she ate servant's food: chickweed, dry land cress, dandelion greens, and wild mustard. Scarlett stooped in the shade of a live oak where the poke hadn't bolted yet. They'd have poke greens for supper.

A stranger was riding up their lane on a donkey so small, the rider's boot tips brushed the ground. His ill-fitting green civilian coat was new, his beard was short, and his whitish blond hair a stubble. He had more flesh on him than the paroled soldiers who came to Tara. At the foot of the final rise, his donkey stopped, stretched its neck, pointed its muzzle to the skies, and brayed. The rider waited, slack-reined, until the donkey exhausted its complaints.

Judging by his new coat, the man was a Carpetbagger; though not a prosperous one.

Though the rider might have made quicker progress leading his donkey, he rode the disgruntled beast to Scarlett's feet. "Nice morning," he observed.

"If you're a Carpetbagger, sir, you are not welcome."

This jerked a startled laugh from him. "Carpetbagger, ma'am? Madam, I have sinned grievously, but that particular sin has eluded me. Might I water my steed?"

Scarlett pointed to the well.

The ungreased windlass squealed when the man turned the crank. "Then you must be a Scalawag," Scarlett decided. "Nobody else wears new clothes."

246

He poured water into a bucket for his donkey. "Your windlass needs lard," he said.

He peeled off his new coat and hung it on the windlass handle. With a quick jerk, he ripped a sleeve off. Broken threads fringed an empty armhole. He stuffed the sleeve into his pocket before redonning his coat. "A 'Scalawag,' ma'am? One of those Southerners who were secret Union sympathizers -- keeping their opinions to themselves until the Yankees were victorious? No, ma'am, I'm a convict released from the Ohio Penitentiary, issued these clothes and ten dollars, with which I bought this noble steed, Chapultapec." He patted the animal's haunch.

"That's a mighty fancy name for a donkey."

His face was transfigured by his grin. "I am an incurable romantic. You don't recognize me?"

Scarlett frowned. "No ... I'm afraid I don't."

"Perhaps if I wore a cavalry officer's hat with an egret plume? If I had a banjo player accompanying me? Surely, Miss Scarlett, you didn't have many callers who brought their own orchestra."

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