I hates niggers--Yankees too."

He shifted his wad of tobacco to the other cheek and, without

waiting for an invitation, sat down on the top step. "I ain't

sayin' I like drivin' women aroun', but Miz Wilkes been good to me,

lettin' me sleep in her cellar, and she sont me to drive you."

"But--" began Scarlett helplessly and then she stopped and looked

at him. After a moment she began to smile. She didn't like the

looks of this elderly desperado but his presence would simplify

matters. With him beside her, she could go to town, drive to the

mills, call on customers. No one could doubt her safety with him

and his very appearance was enough to keep from giving rise to

scandal.

"It's a bargain," she said. "That is, if my husband agrees."

After a private conversation with Archie, Frank gave his reluctant

approval and sent word to the livery stable to release the horse

and buggy. He was hurt and disappointed that motherhood had not

changed Scarlett as he had hoped it would but, if she was

determined to go back to her damnable mills, then Archie was a

godsend.

So began the relationship that at first startled Atlanta. Archie

and Scarlett were a queerly assorted pair, the truculent dirty old

man with his wooden peg sticking stiffly out over the dashboard and

the pretty, neatly dressed young woman with forehead puckered in an

abstracted frown. They could be seen at all hours and at all

places in and near Atlanta, seldom speaking to each other,

obviously disliking each other, but bound together by mutual need,

he of money, she of protection. At least, said the ladies of the

town, it's better than riding around so brazenly with that Butler

man. They wondered curiously where Rhett was these days, for he

had abruptly left town three months before and no one, not even

Scarlett, knew where he was.

Archie was a silent man, never speaking unless spoken to and

usually answering with grunts. Every morning he came from

Melanie's cellar and sat on the front steps of Pitty's house,

chewing and spitting until Scarlett came out and Peter brought the

buggy from the stable. Uncle Peter feared him only a little less

than the devil or the Ku Klux and even Mammy walked silently and

timorously around him. He hated negroes and they knew it and

feared him. He reinforced his pistol and knife with another

pistol, and his fame spread far among the black population. He

never once had to draw a pistol or even lay his hand on his belt.

The moral effect was sufficient. No negro dared even laugh while

Archie was in hearing.

Once Scarlett asked him curiously why he hated negroes and was

surprised when he answered, for generally all questions were

answered by "I reckon that's my bizness."

"I hates them, like all mountain folks hates them. We never liked

them and we never owned none. It was them niggers that started the

war. I hates them for that, too."

"But you fought in the war."

"I reckon that's a man's privilege. I hates Yankees too, more'n I

hates niggers. Most as much as I hates talkative women."