didn't think they'd hang Captain Butler because the Yankees think he does know where the
money is and just won't tell. They are trying to make him tell."
"The money?"
"Didn't you know? Didn't I write you? My dear, you have been buried at Tara, haven't you? The town simply buzzed when Captain Butler came back here with a fine horse and carriage and his pockets full of money, when all the rest of us didn't know where our next meal was
coming from. It simply made everybody furious that an old speculator who always said nasty things about the Confederacy should have so much money when we were all so poor. Everybody was bursting to know how he managed to save his money but no one had the courage to ask him--
except me and he just laughed and said: 'In no honest way, you may be sure.' You know how hard it is to get anything sensible out of him."
"But of course, he made his money out of the blockade--"
"Of course, he did, honey, some of it. But that's not a drop in the bucket to what that man has really got. Everybody, including the Yankees, believes he's got millions of dollars in gold belonging to the Confederate government hid out somewhere."
"Millions--in gold?"
"Well, honey, where did all our Confederate gold go to? Somebody got it and Captain
Butler must be one of the somebodies. The Yankees thought President Davis had it when he left Richmond but when they captured the poor man he had hardly a cent. There just wasn't any
money in the treasury when the war was over and everybody thinks some of the blockade runners got it and are keeping quiet about it."
"Millions--in gold! But how--"
"Didn't Captain Butler take thousands of bales of cotton to England and Nassau to sell for the Confederate government?" asked Pitty triumphantly. "Not only his own cotton but government cotton too? And you know what cotton brought in England during the war! Any
price you wanted to ask! He was a free agent acting for the government and he was supposed to sell the cotton and buy guns with the money and run the guns in for us. Well, when the blockade got too tight, he couldn't bring in the guns and he couldn't have spent one one-hundredth of the cotton money on them anyway, so there were simply millions of dollars in English banks put there by Captain Butler and other blockaders, waiting till the blockade loosened. And you can't tell me they banked that money in the name of the Confederacy. They put it in their own names and it's still there… Everybody has been talking about it ever since the surrender and criticizing the blockaders severely, and when the Yankees arrested Captain Butler for killing this darky they must have heard the rumor, because they've been at him to tell them where the money is. You see, all of our Confederate funds belong to the Yankees now--at least, the Yankees think so. But Captain Butler says he doesn't know anything… Dr. Meade says they ought to hang him anyhow, only hanging is too good for a thief and a profiteer--Dear, you look so oddly! Do you feel faint?
Have I upset you talking like this? I knew he was once a beau of yours but I thought you'd fallen out long ago. Personally, I never approved of him, for he's such a scamp--"
"He's no friend of mine," said Scarlett with an effort. "I had a quarrel with him during the siege, after you went to Macon. Where--where is he?"
"In the firehouse over near the public square!"
"In the firehouse?"
Aunt Pitty crowed with laughter.
"Yes, he's in the firehouse. The Yankees use it for a military jail now. The Yankees are camped in huts all round the city hall in the square and the firehouse is just down the street, so that's where Captain Butler is. And Scarlett, I heard the funniest thing yesterday about Captain Butler. I forget who told me. You know how well groomed he always was--really a dandy--and they've been keeping him in the firehouse and not letting him bathe and every day he's been insisting that he wanted a bath and finally they led him out of his cell onto the square and there was a long, horse trough where the whole regiment had bathed in the same water! And they told him he could bathe there and he said No, that he preferred his own brand of Southern dirt to Yankee dirt and--"
Scarlett heard the cheerful babbling voice going on and on but she did not hear the words.
In her mind there were only two ideas, Rhett had more money than she had even hoped and he was in jail. The fact that he was in jail and possibly might be hanged changed the face of matters somewhat, in fact made them look a little brighter. She had very little feeling about Rhett being hanged. Her need of money was too pressing, too desperate, for her to bother about his ultimate fate. Besides, she half shared Dr. Meade's opinion that hanging was too good for him. Any man who'd leave a woman stranded between two armies in the middle of the night, just to go off and fight for a Cause already lost, deserved hanging… If she could somehow manage to marry him while he was in jail, all those millions would be hers and hers alone should he be executed. And if marriage was not possible, perhaps she could get a loan from him by promising to marry him when he was released or by promising--oh, promising anything! And if they hanged him, her day of settlement would never come.