At Will's pistol shot, Scarlett's horse reared and her hat flew off. She dragged the reins with both hands. Her horse backed frantically until its hindquarters crashed into the oak fence. Men were yelling; steers were bawling.
Josie drawled, "Well, I'll be a son of a bitch if you ain't kilt Archie Fiytte. I swear to Christ, I never thought Archie could be kilt!”
Scarlett was looking down at Will, at Will's sweat-stained hat. Over the bellowing steers, she heard Will's voice clear as day, "For God's sake, don't!
I've got two children.”
"Well, don't you think of Archie mighta had some children? You ever think to ask him that?”
The second shot was louder than the first had been, and Scarlett's ears rang. Will groaned, but it wasn't a groan living men make.
Rosemary was steadying Scarlett's horse as Josie said, "Uncle Isaiah, I got to skedaddle. I ain't gettin' nowhere in this line of work. Leastways with Jesse and Frank, when you shoot somebody, you get paid for it.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Rain
Calloused hands tenderly laid Will and Ashley on feed sacks in the wagon bed. They covered Will's still form with a horse blanket. Rosemary knelt in the wagon, bathing the unconscious Ashley's face.
Some who escorted Scarlett and Rosemary home were farmers who had known Will Benteen or the O'Haras for years, but most were loafers with nothing better to do.
"After he kilt Will, that Josie came toward me with his gun still smokin'. You bet I got out of his way. Spect I'd have give him my horse if he'd asked.”
"They had horses, Charlie. A roan gelding and a bay mare.”
"Hank, I know they had horses. Weren't I there when Josie Watling bought the mare from Mr. Petersen? Weren't I?”
"Well, they wouldn't have wanted your horse, would they?”
Their inanities fell like dull blows on Scarlett's febrile mind. Why had Will and Ashley come? Scarlett hadn't told them about her plan; she'd claimed she and Rosemary were going into Atlanta. "Bankers," she'd lied.
God knows how the men had discovered her true intention and come to their rescue.
When the entourage reached Tara's lane, Suellen and Dilcey came running, and Suellen screamed when she saw Will's riderless horse. "Will! Oh no! Not my Darling Will!" She dashed to the wagon, lifted the blanket from her husband's face, and fainted. If Dilcey hadn't caught her, Mrs. Benteen would have fallen to the ground.
Men quit jabbering to help the new widow into the house. Children and servants gathered helplessly on the porch. Prissy wailed.
A farrier — he'd shod Gerald's horses in the old days — advised Scarlett, "They ought to pay for this. Miss Scarlett, you just say the word!”
A rage at male idiocy blinded Scarlett for a moment. Tight-lipped, she managed, "Thank you. Thank you for your kindness. Mammy, take the children into the house. Prissy, stop your nonsense! Prissy!”
Mammy gathered the children like a mother hen gathers chicks.
"Gentlemen, if you'll take our horses to the barn, and could you four please ... carry this gentleman — Mr. Wilkes — into the parlor.”
"His ankle's smashed, Miss Scarlett," the farrier observed. "Reckon it hurts like the devil.”
"I reckon," she snapped.
They carried Will to the springhouse and laid him out on the cool stones beside the milk cans. "No, gentlemen, no. We'll not be needing more help, thank you. You've done too much already.”
Unwilling to see their adventure ended, they milled about for another twenty minutes before they departed.
Scarlett and Rosemary made up a bed for Ashley on the parlor floor.
Rosemary said, "Prissy! Find an old sheet and tear it into strips, about" — Rosemary held her hands four inches apart — "so wide. Dilcey, fetch warm water and soap.”
When she and Rosemary were alone, Scarlett said, "What did they think they were doing?”
Rosemary said, "Some of Ashley's ribs are cracked and his throat is swelled nearly closed. I believe his ankle is broken.”
After Mammy got Suellen to take a dose of laudanum and put the widow to bed, she and Prissy washed Will's body and dressed him in his Sunday suit.
Young Dr. Bryan was establishing his practice, and he made a point of noting that, although a native Georgian, he'd studied medicine in Richmond. He set Ashley's ankle and made a wintergreen poultice for his throat.
Diffident while doctoring, he was assertive with his reckoning.
"Ten dollars? My goodness, Doctor. Where did you serve in the War?”
"Mrs. Butler," the doctor replied, "I was thirteen when the War ended.”
At twilight in Tara's little graveyard, Pork dug Will Benteen's grave.
Scarlett said, "It isn't deep enough. Pork, you're the only man left. Dig deeper.”
When Scarlett returned to the house, Suellen Benteen was waiting for her. Scarlett's sister's face was raw from crying. "When my Will told me you were coming home to Tara, I told Will we should go away. 'Tara will be Scarlett's,' I said. 'It won't be our home anymore.' I begged my Will to leave. I told him, 'My sister Scarlett has never been anything but trouble.' You stole Frank Kennedy from me and you got Frank killed. Now you got my Will killed, too." She burst into anguished sobs. "What am I going to do without Will? Dear God, what will I do?”
Scarlett went upstairs, where, still dressed in rumpled finery, she fell on her bed and slept dreamlessly until her eyes snapped open in the stark light of morning and everything came flooding back.
In later years, Scarlett remembered only fragments of the next days: the coffin maker rattling up the drive with his toe pincher bouncing in the wagon; the children whispering past Suellen's closed bedroom door. Neighbor women brought food nobody wanted to eat and neighbor men did Will's chores.
Rosemary tended Ashley behind the parlor's closed door while mourners trooped through the dining room, where Will Benteen was laid out.
An expressionless Suellen O'Hara Benteen received those who would have consoled her. At her side, Scarlett understood vital bonds had been severed; henceforth, she and Suellen would be sisters in name only.
It was hot. The roses heaped on Will's coffin in such profusion didn't entirely disguise the smell.
Will Benteen had been a lapsed Baptist, but since Jonesboro's only Baptist church was the African Baptist, he was buried by the Methodist preacher, who afterward invited Scarlett to next Sunday's service.
"I'm a Catholic," Scarlett replied.
"That's all right," the preacher said cheerfully. "We welcome every sinner!”
After the burying, Suellen Benteen and her children left for Charleston, where'd they'd bide with Aunt Eulalie. As their wagon rattled down the lane, Scarlett went to the horse barn to feed the horses.
With the leather feed bucket Will and Sam had used for so many years, she poured feed into the long trough.
Sleek dark heads bent and chewed as if nothing at all had happened.
Scarlett whispered, "How can Tara live without Will?" One horse lifted its head, as if trying to understand. He twitched his tail and went back to eating.
Silent, hot tears streamed down Scarlett's face until she could see nothing — nothing at all.
After Ashley's fever broke, he was too weak to go home. He spoke quietly when spoken to, volunteered nothing, and never asked about Will. Rosemary sat with him in the dim, quiet parlor and fed him broth and weak tea. For reasons Rosemary never fathomed, she told Ashley things. In her quiet, calm voice, meticulously identifying the year, month, and circumstances, Rosemary Butler Haynes Ravanel told Ashley Wilkes about walking out the back door of the little house in Franklin, Tennessee, knowing the body lying in the frozen garden was her husband John. "I only loved him after it was too late," Rosemary said. She spoke about her darling Meg; how Meg had loved horses and been betrayed by a horse. "Tecumseh was afraid. How can you blame a horse for being afraid?" Rosemary told Ashley about finding Andrew's bloody boots. They were English boots and Andrew had once been proud of them. She told the silent Ashley things she had never told anyone — not Melanie, not even her brother Rhett. She told him how lonely she'd been growing up at Broughton. She told him how much she'd missed her brother Rhett. She told Ashley about her pony, Jack.