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 that 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.