The Yankee was shocked, "Mr. Haynes is a gentleman!”

"He score his bullet? Little ring cut into the bullet so it gobs when it hits. Inspected his bullet, did you, Yank?”

Young Jaffery repeated, "Mr. Haynes is a gentleman.”

"Sure as hell. Sure as hell. Gentleman don't score no bullet, no sir.

Gentlemen won't double-charge no pistol. Now, which of these here pistols did Mr. Haynes load?”

"I loaded the near pistol," John said.

A horn sounded in the woods, a long exuberant note, like fox hunters sighting their quarry. Seconds later, moisture streaming off its wheels, an open landau clattered onto the field. Two young sports stood between its seats, one with a coach horn at his lips, which he dropped to grab a seat back, else the stop would have pitched him headlong. "Hallooo! Hallooo!

Have we missed the fun?”

Their elderly driver cackled. "Told you I'd get us here in time," he said.

"Didn't Colonel Jack find these scamps?”

Colonel Ravanel had been a respectable rice planter until his wife, Frances, was killed. Whether Jack's subsequent dissipation was from grief or the absence of marital inhibitions was not known. In Charleston, where gentlemanly drunkenness was only forbidden clergy, Colonel Jack Ravanel was a drunk. In a city where every gentleman gambled, Jack was banned from respectable gambling clubs. Jack was a genius with horseflesh, and horse-mad Charleston forgave him much for that.

John Haynes stepped to the landau. "Gentlemen, this is an affair of honor. Decorum ...”

The young men wore short brocade jackets, bright ascots, and pants so tight, a codpiece was unnecessary. Although Jack Ravanel was old enough to be the young men's father, he was similarly garbed.

"Country wench gets one in the oven and that's an affair of honor?”

The horn blower sounded a blast. "Whooooa, Johnny Haynes. It's one of Rhett's damn jokes, that's what it is.”

John Haynes bristled. "Henry Kershaw, this is an affront. You are unwelcome here.”

Big Henry Kershaw was reeling. "You mean Cousin Rhett is going through with this? Damn me, Edgar, I'll settle tomorrow. Rhett, that you? Ain't you cold? We been drivin' through this damn swamp for hours. Colonel Jack says he used to own this ground, but he must have been sober at the time. Edgar Puryear, don't you hog that whiskey!”

Tom Jaffery asked, "Mr. Haynes. Is this regular?”

"You the Yankee we heard about?" Henry Kershaw asked.

"Yes, sir. From Amity, Massachusetts.”

"Man can't help where he's born. Say, you ain't one of them damned abolitionists, are you?”

Rhett Butler silenced John Haynes with a touch and asked in the quietest voice, "Edgar, Henry, Jack — have you come to see me die?”

Edgar Puryear pasted an apologetic expression on his face. "Jack promised this was a lark, Rhett; a lark! He said you'd never fight a man over...

over ...”

"A 'lark,' Jack? If my father discovers your part in this, he'll see you in the workhouse.”

"Dear Rhett! Do not speak cruelly to Old Jack!”

"Henry Kershaw is drunk — Henry will do anything when he is drunk.

Edgar Allan has come to watch. Edgar is a great watcher. But what dragged the aged reprobate out of his whore's warm bed on a cold morning?”

Jack Ravanel's smile was ingratiating. "Why, Rhett, old Jack's come to help you. I've come to talk sense! We'll all have a friendly drink and recall happier times. Rhett, have I told you how I admire Tecumseh? By God, there's a horse!”

For an instant, Rhett was stunned. Then his mouth twitched into a chuckle, which became a laugh, which became so hearty Rhett bent over laughing. This laughter infected the sports, who wore smiles on their faces, and the young Yankee chuckled.

Rhett wiped his eyes. "No, Jack, you shan't have Tecumseh. John, if I am killed, my horse is yours. Now, Watling. Choose your pistol.”

"God Almighty!" Henry Kershaw gaped. "Rhett means to go through with it!”

Colonel Jack's eyes narrowed. He lashed his team off the field.

Deep in the woods, a grouse drummed on a hollow log. The huge sun rose steaming out of the river, restoring yellows, blues, and pale greens to the land from which fog had exiled them.

John Haynes shut his eyes briefly in a wordless prayer. Then he said, "Gentlemen.”

Shad Watling had lost something to Rhett's great laughter. Something had got away from him. His prey had tripped the trigger but left the trap empty. Shad snatched a pistol, examining it as if it might be faulty. " 'Young Marster' Butler. Christ, how the niggers fawned over you!”

The other long-barreled pistol hung loose in Rhett's hand; his smile was so big, it traveled down his naked arm to the muzzle, as if the pistol, too, were smiling.

In the river morning, a thick, angry man stood back-to-back with a half-naked, smiling man.

Each would step off twenty-five paces. When the sun cleared the horizon, John Haynes would give the command to turn and fire.

The duelists stepped off twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five paces... The sun clung to the horizon.

"They'll never believe this in Amity," Tom Jaffery whispered.

The sun strained upward until a white space opened between its rim and the riverbank. In a clear voice, John Haynes called, "Gentlemen! Turn! Fire!”

Rhett Butler's hair lifted to a wind gust off the river. Butler pivoted, presenting a fencer's profile as his pistol rose.

Shad Watling fired first, an explosion of white smoke at the muzzle when the hammer struck home.

Nine years earlier.

At his father's impatient gesture, Langston Butler's elder son prepared for his caning. He removed his shirt and folded it over a straight-backed chair.

The boy turned and set his palms flat on his father's desk. The fine leather surface gave infinitesimally under his weight. He fixed his eyes on his father's cut-glass inkwell. There can be a world of pain in a cut-glass inkwell. The first searing blow caught him by surprise. The inkwell was half-full of blue-black ink. Rhett wondered if this time his father might not be able to stop. When the boy's sight blurred, the inkwell seemed to float in a mist of tears.

This time, too, his father did stop.

Hands curled in frustration, Langston Butler hurled his cane to the floor and shouted, "By God, boy, if you weren't my son, you'd feel the bullwhip.”

At twelve years of age, Rhett was already tall. His skin was darker than his father's and his thick jet black hair hinted at Indian blood.

Although the boy's back was a mosaic of livid stripes, he hadn't begged.

"May I dress, sir?”

"Your brother, Julian, is dutiful. Why must my elder son defy me?”

"I cannot say, sir.”

Langston's office was as spare as Broughton's family quarters were opulent.

The broad desk, a straight-backed chair, inkwell, blotter, and pens were its entire furnishings. No engravings or paintings hung from the picture rail. Ten-foot-tall undraped windows offered an unimpeded panorama of the plantation's endless rice fields.

The boy took his white chambray shirt from the chair and with a just perceptible wince draped it over his shoulders.

"You refuse to accompany me when the legislature is in session. When prominent men meet at Broughton, you vanish. Wade Hampton himself asked why he never sees my elder son.”

The boy was mute.

"You will not drive our negroes. You refuse to learn to drive negroes!”

The boy said nothing.

"Indeed, it is safe to say you reject every proper duty of a Carolina gentleman's son. Sir, you are a renegade." With his handkerchief, Langston wiped sweat from his pale forehead. "Do you think I relish these punishments?”

"I cannot say, sir.”

"Your brother, Julian, is dutiful. Julian obeys me. Why won't you obey?”

"I cannot say, sir.”

"You cannot say! You will not! Nor will you accompany your family to Charleston. Instead, you swear you'll run away.”

"Yes, sir, I will.”

The angry father stared into the boy's eyes for a long time. "Then, by God, let the fevers have you!”

Next morning, the Butler family departed for their Charleston town house without their elder son. That night, Dollie, the colored midwife, rubbed salve into the welts on the boy's arm. "Master Langston, he a hard man," she said.

"I hate Charleston," Rhett said.

On the river plantations, the rice seed was clayed and planted in April and trunk gates were opened for the sprout flow. The rice would be flooded three more times before harvest in September. Maintenance and operation of the great and lesser trunk gates were so vital to the crop that Will, Broughton Plantation's trunk master, ranked in the slave hierarchy second only to Hercules.

Although Will obeyed Master Langston and Isaiah Watling, he obeyed no other man, including Shad Watling, the overseer's twenty-year-old son.

Will had a cabin to himself. He owned a table, two chairs, a rope bed, and three cracked Spanish bowls that Louis Valentine Butler had taken from the Mercato. A decent year after Will's first wife died, Will jumped the broomstick with Mistletoe, a comely girl of fifteen.

Fearing the deadly fevers, Low Country planters shunned their plantations during the hot months. When Langston came out from the city to inspect his crop, he arrived after daybreak and departed before dark.

Barefoot and shirtless, his son hunted, fished, and explored the tidal marshes along the Ashley River. Young Rhett Butler was educated by alligators, egrets, osprey, rice birds, loggerheads, and wild hogs. The boy knew where the negro conjure man found his herbs and where the catfish nested.