I spend enough money on their food to make them fat as hogs. The

flour and pork alone cost thirty dollars last month. What are you

giving them for supper?"

She stepped over to the cook shack and looked in. A fat mulatto

woman, who was leaning over a rusty old stove, dropped a half

curtsy as she saw Scarlett and went on stirring a pot in which

black-eyed peas were cooking. Scarlett knew Johnnie Gallegher

lived with her but thought it best to ignore the fact. She saw

that except for the peas and a pan of corn pone there was no other

food being prepared.

"Haven't you got anything else for these men?"

"No'm."

"Haven't you got any side meat in these peas?"

"No'm."

"No boiling bacon in the peas? But black-eyed peas are no good

without bacon. There's no strength to them. Why isn't there any

bacon?"

"Mist' Johnnie, he say dar ain' no use puttin' in no side meat."

"You'll put bacon in. Where do you keep your supplies?"

The negro woman rolled frightened eyes toward the small closet that

served as a pantry and Scarlett threw the door open. There was an

open barrel of cornmeal on the floor, a small sack of flour, a

pound of coffee, a little sugar, a gallon jug of sorghum and two

hams. One of the hams sitting on the shelf had been recently

cooked and only one or two slices had been cut from it. Scarlett

turned in a fury on Johnnie Gallegher and met his coldly angry

gaze.

"Where are the five sacks of white flour I sent out last week? And

the sugar sack and the coffee? And I had five hams sent and ten

pounds of side meat and God knows how many bushels of yams and

Irish potatoes. Well, where are they? You can't have used them

all in a week if you fed the men five meals a day. You've sold

them! That's what you've done, you thief! Sold my good supplies

and put the money in your pocket and fed these men on dried peas

and corn pone. No wonder they look so thin. Get out of the way."

She stormed past him to the doorway.

"You, man, there on the end--yes, you! Come here!"

The man rose and walked awkwardly toward her, his shackles

clanking, and she saw that his bare ankles were red and raw from

the chafing of the iron.

"When did you last have ham?"

The man looked down at the ground.

"Speak up."

Still the man stood silent and abject. Finally he raised his eyes,

looked Scarlett in the face imploringly and dropped his gaze again.

"Scared to talk, eh? Well, go in the pantry and get that ham off

the shelf. Rebecca, give him your knife. Take it out to those men

and divide it up. Rebecca, make some biscuits and coffee for the

men. And serve plenty of sorghum. Start now, so I can see you do

it."

"Dat's Mist' Johnnie's privut flour an' coffee," Rebecca muttered

frightenedly.

"Mr. Johnnie's, my foot! I suppose it's his private ham too. You

do what I say. Get busy. Johnnie Gallegher, come out to the buggy

with me."

She stalked across the littered yard and climbed into the buggy,

noticing with grim satisfaction that the men were tearing at the

ham and cramming bits into their mouths voraciously. They looked

as if they feared it would be taken from them at any minute.

"You are a rare scoundrel!" she cried furiously to Johnnie as he

stood at the wheel, his hat pushed back from his lowering brow.

"And you can just hand over to me the price of my supplies. In the

future, I'll bring you provisions every day instead of ordering

them by the month. Then you can't cheat me."

"In the future I won't be here," said Johnnie Gallegher.

"You mean you are quitting!"

For a moment it was on Scarlett's hot tongue to cry: "Go and good

riddance!" but the cool hand of caution stopped her. If Johnnie

should quit, what would she do? He had been doubling the amount of

lumber Hugh turned out. And just now she had a big order, the

biggest she had ever had and a rush order at that. She had to get

that lumber into Atlanta. If Johnnie quit, whom would she get to

take over the mill?

"Yes, I'm quitting. You put me in complete charge here and you

told me that all you expected of me was as much lumber as I could

possibly get out. You didn't tell me how to run my business then

and I'm not aiming to have you start now. How I get the lumber out

is no affair of yours. You can't complain that I've fallen down on

my bargain. I've made money for you and I've earned my salary--and

what I could pick up on the side, too. And here you come out here,

interfering, asking questions and breaking my authority in front of

the men. How can you expect me to keep discipline after this?

What if the men do get an occasional lick? The lazy scum deserve

worse. What if they ain't fed up and pampered? They don't deserve

nothing better. Either you tend to your business and let me tend

to mine or I quit tonight."

His hard little face looked flintier than ever and Scarlett was in

a quandary. If he quit tonight, what would she do? She couldn't

stay here all night guarding the convicts!

Something of her dilemma showed in her eyes for Johnnie's

expression changed subtly and some of the hardness went out of his

face. There was an easy agreeable note in his voice when he spoke.

"It's getting late, Mrs. Kennedy, and you'd better be getting on

home. We ain't going to fall out over a little thing like this,

are we? S'pose you take ten dollars out of my next month's wages

and let's call it square."

Scarlett's eyes went unwillingly to the miserable group gnawing on

the ham and she thought of the sick man lying in the windy shack.

She ought to get rid of Johnnie Gallegher. He was a thief and a

brutal man. There was no telling what he did to the convicts when

she wasn't there. But, on the other hand, he was smart and, God

knows, she needed a smart man. Well, she couldn't part with him

now. He was making money for her. She'd just have to see to it

that the convicts got their proper rations in the future.

"I'll take twenty dollars out of your wages," she said shortly,

"and I'll be back and discuss the matter further in the morning."

She picked up the reins. But she knew there would be no further

discussion. She knew that the matter had ended there and she knew

Johnnie knew it.

As she drove off down the path to the Decatur road her conscience

battled with her desire for money. She knew she had no business

exposing human lives to the hard little man's mercies. If he

should cause the death of one of them she would be as guilty as he

was, for she had kept him in charge after learning of his

brutalities. But, on the other hand--well, on the other hand, men

had no business getting to be convicts. If they broke laws and got

caught, then they deserved what they got. This partly salved her

conscience but as she drove down the road the dull thin faces of

the convicts would keep coming back into her mind.

"Oh, I'll think of them later," she decided, and pushed the thought