"Oh, Rhett," she whispered clasping his arm, "What would we ever have done without you? I'm so glad you aren't in the army!"

He turned his head and gave her one look, a look that made her drop his arm and shrink back. There was no mockery in his eyes now. They were naked and there was anger and something like bewilderment in them. His lip curled down and he turned his head away.

For a long time they jounced along in a silence unbroken except for the faint wails of the baby and sniffles from Prissy. When she was able to bear the sniffling noise no longer, Scarlett turned and pinched her viciously, causing Prissy to scream in good earnest before she relapsed into frightened silence. Finally Rhett turned the horse at right angles and after a while they were on a wider, smoother road. The dim shapes of houses grew farther and farther apart and unbroken woods loomed wall-like on either side.

"We're out of town now," said Rhett briefly, drawing rein, "and on the main road to Rough and Ready."

"Hurry. Don't stop!"

"Let the animal breathe a bit."

Then turning to her, he asked slowly: "Scarlett, are you still determined to do this crazy thing?" "Do what?" "Do you still want to try to get through to Tara? It's suicidal. Steve Lee's cavalry and the Yankee Army are between you and Tara." Oh, Dear God! Was he going to refuse to take her home, after all she'd gone through this terrible day?

"Oh, yes! Yes! Please, Rhett, let's hurry. The horse isn't tired."

"Just a minute. You can't go down to Jonesboro on this road. You can't follow the train tracks. They've been fighting up and down there all day from Rough and Ready on south. Do you know any other roads, small wagon roads or lanes that don't go through Rough and Ready or Jonesboro?" "Oh, yes," cried Scarlett in relief. "If we can just get near to Rough and Ready, I know a wagon trace that winds off from the main Jonesboro road and wanders around for miles. Pa and I used to ride it. It comes out right near the MacIntosh place and that's only a mile from Tara." "Good. Maybe you can get past Rough and Ready all right. General Steve Lee was there during the afternoon covering the retreat. Maybe the Yankees aren't there yet. Maybe you can get through there, if Steve Lee's men don't pick up your horse."

"I can get through?"

"Yes, you. You see, Scarlett, I'm-"

Suddenly he paused, eyes alert and head tipped as he listened to some sound.

Scarlett barely noticed; panic rised steadily in her chest as she pondered the meaning of his words, and her hands picked at his shirt front.

"Rhett," she whispered, the words catching in her dry throat, "Rhett, you're not leav-"

Before she could finish her sentence, Rhett grabbed her in his arms and covered her mouth with his hand. Surprised and alarmed, she struggled and tried to scream until he dragged her back to the wagon and whispered in her ear.

"Shush! You want the Yankees to get us? Help me move this cart!" Yankees! Stricken wordless with fear, she dragged the cart off the road and into the brushes on the side.

Melly gave a soft moan as the wagon bumped off the gravel into the soft, depressed mud on the side of the road, and Wade opened his mouth, too afraid at the sudden silence to call for his mother, as he had intended. Prissy said nothing, only rocked the baby in a frightened manner, ardently hoping it wouldn't awake from its slumber.

Rhett didn't let them stop until the wagon was deep in the cover of the bushes, a good distance from the road. There, in the middle of a particularly thick clump of weeds, he stopped the wagon, lifted Scarlett up and moved her carefully behind the horse, so she couldn't be seen. Wordlessly, he arranged himself beside her, his arm brushing hers. His breaths echoed in the silence, and Scarlett reached out a trembling hand to hold his arm again. In the darkness, she missed and put her hand instead on his chest, and felt, for a second, his muscles rising and falling her surprise, he caught her hand with his own larger ones and shifted them up his chest, to his heart, so she could feel it beat under her soft fingers. So enclosed in their tiny little world,

Scarlett hadn't noticed, until then, the growing rhythmic sound of tapping in the background, until the neighs of a horse resounded through the fields. Her grip tightened so on Rhett that she could feel her nails digging into his skin, and she turned her head and saw, dimly toward the direction of the road, the light of torches moving and glimpses of blue, carts laden with bags and bags of food, and the glint of rifles under the firelight. She didn't even dare to breath in those few minutes.

God, she prayed, please let us get through this and I promise I'll never do anything bad again! I'll never read Melly's mail anymore! In her fear, she kept on blabbering childishly in her mind. I'll never be hateful to Suellen and tease Careen, and I'll never ignore mother or hide my food under the bed when I don't want to eat it. Tears streamed down her face, but she continued. I'll never fall asleep at Mass or deceive Mammy to spend more time on the porch! I'll- "Scarlett!" Rhett whispered to her, holding her shoulders in the darkness. She realized then that she was trembling all over and that her hand was no longer on his chest.
"Scarlett! Come on! We've got to go. They're gone." She looked up at him. "But, we can't go if they've taken the road." She cursed silently. Those damn Yankees!
Rhett looked thoughtfully off into the distance, at the place where they had been stopped when the Yankees had sprung upon them. "If I go now, it'll make me a murderer. I didn't realize there were so many of them." He bit his lip and looked off into the distance, a burning of regret in his eyes that Scarlett couldn't understand.
She picked at his sleeve again. "Rhett? Rhett, what are you thinking?" He looked at her again, and there was a bitterness in the smile he flashed her. "That I'm a coward," he answered acidly. Then he looked again at the sunken wagon, and held the bridle of the half-dead horse. "Come on, we have to risk the road. I won't kill Mrs. Wilkes by jostling her over this ground."
For the rest of the way, he was mostly silent, but Scarlett didn't mind in the least. It was enough for her that he was by her, that he led the horse and helped her to hide the wagon in the underbrush whenever troops came by, for meeting either the blue or the gray uniforms would mean certain death. From time to time she would reach out to touch his arm reassuringly, and when she was frightened to pieces, she would grab him so tightly the blood would flow out of her fingers.
"Good God, Scarlett!" He cried after the third time of this brutal treatment, "Don't you ever cut your nails?"
But she forgave him this comment, and every jeering word he said to her that night. She wasn't graced with a particularly strong intellect, even when not crazed with fear, so she couldn't see the impotency in the way he clenched his fists or his anger at himself in the way he looked longingly back at the road. She couldn't see the blood lust that ran thickly in his veins as Rhett whipped the horse, but even she could feel the deadliness that hung in the still air around him, and felt sorry for any man that should approach them.
"There's the Rough and Ready up ahead," Rhett said softly beside her, and she led the horse in a wide circle until the campfires of Lee's men faded into a glimmer behind them. They provided the only light in the dark night, besides the faint shine of the stars above them.

Scarlett remembered little of the rest of the night except that it seemed surreal, with her sweaty palms clutching uselessly at the seat beside her until it became quite clear that they were lost, and she was forced to get out and look for the wagon trail on foot. When she couldn't find it, she began to cry, and she remembered hazily that Rhett had snapped at her, before getting out and looking with her.

When they finally found it, the moon had emerged from behind a cloud. The bedraggled horse, feeling the soft dirt on its hooves, fell to the ground with a soft "neigh" and Rhett refused to whip it any more. Instead, he moved the wagon to the side of the road.

"Get some rest," he told Scarlett roughly. Scarlett needed no second urging; she immediately put her legs in the wagon, next to Melly, and fell into a deep and dreamless slumber.

When she woke in the morning, the sunlight gleamed in her eyes and nearly blinded her. For a moment, she couldn't remember where she was or what had happened the last night.

Then her eyes fell on Melly, deathly pale, her limbs skewed at odd angles. A sudden shock struck her heart as she remembered what had transpired last night. Oh god! They had killed Melly with their bumping over trees and rocks and dirt! It had been too much for her frail body and she had died! Then Scarlett saw the irregular rise and fall of her chest and realized that Melly was alive.

Stretching her legs, she walked to the front of the wagon, where Rhett was spread out, half on and half off the seat, his legs strewn apart and Melly's baby lying incongruously on his chest, next to his hat. Sleeping, Scarlett pondered, took some of the mocking lines from Rhett's face, making his features less swarthy and softer, happier. His dark eyelashes rested against his tanned, lean cheeks and the hard lines his muscles made against his white shirt rose and fell under her green, rather absent minded gaze. She wondered if she should wake him up or let him sleep longer, and decided eventually to look around. Parting the shrubs behind which they had rested, she looked out at the road ahead of her.

"It's the Mallory Place!" She realized joyfully, her heart beating more normally at the thought of being back among people who could help her. But then she noticed the ruin of the driveway, the trees torn from the ground, and the eerie billowing of the smoke rising from the black ruins where the house used to be. Her heart gave a great pang and she swallowed abruptly to clear the lump in her throat. Would Tara be like this?

She couldn't think about that now! Instead, she walked over to Rhett and poked him softly, lifting the baby off his chest.

"Rhett!" There was no response from him except a faint change in the way he held his mouth. She tried impatiently with one hand to brush the unruly strands of hair out of her eyes, and tried again. "Rhett! Rhett! Cap'n Butler!"

"Hmmm?" At this last, he stretched softly under the sunlight and smiled, his eyes squinting up at her. "Call me Rhett."

Scarlett was too tired to explain that she just had. "Well, whatever you're called, wake up." Her back ached terribly and her clothes were damp with sweat and water. The mewling cries of the baby filled the air, even as she tried to rock him back to sleep. "We've got to get to Tara before this baby dies. Or before Melly does."

Rhett stood up and bowed exaggeratedly, his every movement screaming mockery.

"At your service, Madam."

A/N: The Beginning part in Italics is STRAIGHT FROM GWTW, to give you some intro of where exactly in the story I am. The part NOT in Italics is where I start.