The Siren's Tale (8 page)

One credible source
of the rumor was Rita Simmons, dressmaker and best friend of the shy bride, Clare Brighton. Rita was expected to marry handsome Jason Harrison, the merchandiser's son, when she turned seventeen. She claimed to have fixed Miss Brighton's blonde hair into a single braid in advance of the elopement. The rumor was traveling through Alta at the speed of light.

Much slower was the progress of a sheep wagon along the winding white road that ran along the furthest part of Hatter’s Field,
which was fairly deserted. Indeed, the only wayfarers on it were a young cart-driver and, just ahead, a much older man on foot.

Caleb Scattergood drove
his two shaggy ponies with the large cart trundling behind. As the dust from the road got into his teeth, he would spit occasionally, which appeared a useless exercise, as he was covered from head to foot in coal dust. Then he would get down and peer into the cart, with a solemn expression on his face.

The two men
traveling in the same direction soon met up, exchanged a few words, and went on their separate ways. 

Showing more agility than most his age
, the older man sprinted up the last incline to his home, a stone structure beside the small, banked pond at Mill’s Creek. There Captain Marcus Vye spotted his granddaughter. She was pacing, her red-gold curls flying freely in the wind. Why wasn't Cassandra out with young people from the village? Shaking his head, he strode through the door, which banged shut behind him.

When Cassandra came in, the Captain told her about meeting a coal miner on the road and hearing some surprising news
. “Contrary to public opinion, young Scattergood told me the wedding that was to have taken place in Corinthus 'may not have been.' Those were his exact words: 'the wedding, sir, may not have been.'“

Cassandra was attentive while her grandfather was speaking. She turned aside so he would not see her smile of pure triumph.

He added, “Even if the innkeeper ain't married tonight, he is taken. You might want to take a look at that coal miner. His father used to deliver ice to the district. Caleb Scattergood is a young man and almost as handsome as Curly Drake, under that coal dust.”

“
Ha! That will be day,” she scoffed. To herself, she added fiercely,
I'll never give up Curly. No matter what happens. Never!

The Captain sometimes teased Cassandra
about having taken his last name when she might change hers simply by marrying any of the local blokes—they were all in love with her; anyone with eyes could see that. But her unexplained action secretly pleased him, and he admired her streak of willful independence.

Much has been said
about the independence of Wyoming's female settlers, how they knew how to shoot a bear and got the vote in 1869, decades before the rest of the country. Less has been said about how a few were rigid enforcers of traditional prejudice against Eastern Progressivism, transcendentalism, and any other ism's that amounted to free thinking.

Indeed Alta's native women were not shy about letting
the Captain know he was giving Cassandra too much free rein by allowing her to wander about the rough terrain. Nor was it lost on them that their daughters did not compete with her in looks or spirit. Marriageable bachelors were few and far between, so scant that in 1890 Alta's mayor had signed into law an ordinance assessing unmarried men an additional $2.50 in taxes. It was considered unpatriotic to remain single, with the territorial population at a low level. The current pool of desirable bachelors contained only three with any property to speak of, and the most promising of those, the Widow Brighton's son, was living in San Francisco. There was no word of when Nicholas Brighton might return, if ever.

By ten o'
clock, as he had no interest in the festivities, Captain Vye was soundly asleep, oblivious to anything in his surroundings and dreaming he was back on the water, headed for Cape Horn. Cassandra continued to roam freely outside the stone home, which lay in a remote ground that was higher than the rest of Alta.

Once upon a time there was a working mill supplied by
a creek that fed into the Belle Fourche River. The mill had closed and the creek had dried, allowing foot access from the town and making the location less remote than before. Since the location was untamed and the stone building considered unsuitable as a home, Vye had purchased the property cheaply. Renovation during 1899 and the early part of 1900 under his grand-daughter's supervision had made the place semi-comfortable, though far from grand. 

Drafty and
oddly shaped, the large stone building provided plenty of space for the Captain to move around in. His household was compact and shipshape, four in number, including himself and Cassandra; Annie May, a girl from the Indian reservation, who came in to do the washing; and Mark Horatio Nelson, a strapping lad of twelve, who did odd jobs and chores when he could pull himself away from mooning after Cassandra.  

As Captain
Vye slept, young Horatio was still in attendance on his restless mistress. Her topaz eyes glowed feverishly. After returning from her walk to the Hat, she ordered him to build a small bonfire, despite her grandfather's express words to the contrary.

The other bonfire
s had already died out when the one at Mill's Creek soared into the sky. Cassandra clapped in delight. Grabbing Horatio by his bare hands with her gloved ones, she danced him around the fire.

When Horatio gazed into Cassandra's eyes, he might have been in balmy Eden instead of shivering in the dark on a cold mountainside.

I looked at our bonfire, then at my grandfather's
pocket-watch. It was very late, and my signal fire was only one pinpoint on the vast mountainside. But through the bonfire I was exerting the power of my will and luring my lover to my side.

A bonfire represents the siren nature in its
purest form. In my life as a siren in human form, I sought sensations as all consuming as those flames. Not for me courtship on a porch swing, followed by a drab, tedious domestic life. My idea was to have a life as exciting as sex, one in which intensity was the norm, not a fleeting passion.

“
Widow Brown says if I stay out after midnight on a Fire Night, the devil will get me and take me away to hell,” the lad said at eleven o'clock. “My mother will beat me if I don't get home before twelve.”

“
I'll be right back,” I said, slipping the spyglass into my coat pocket. “Don't you dare leave, Horatio, or I'll tan your hide worse than your mother would.”

I picked up the lantern and was on my
way to a spot near the Hat, to which I had walked back and forth a dozen times already. It was a deserted spot on a hillock past grandfather's juniper trees, affording a direct view onto the white ribbon of road between Mill's Creek and the Plush Horse, which was a mile away.

Through the spyglass, I could see anyone traveling on the road. I was looking for Curly Drake.
Though Curly had arranged to marry Clare Brighton today, I was not a weak, jealous human. I loved him fiercely and without reservation. If he would come to me tonight of all nights, then he was worth the effort. Whether my lover was married or not was immaterial to me. I wanted to have passionate sex with him, not play house.

After we had first met in the
Bulette graveyard, Curly and I began to meet at a rendezvous spot near the Hat. Later, we used his private quarters at the back of the inn or a workman's cabin in Bulette he rented for this purpose. Driven by our passion, we met quite often, even after his engagement.

I fiercely enjoyed
the scratchiness of his moustache as he put his mouth on my silken bush. He would tease my clitoris out from her hiding place and make her sing like a siren on the rocks. I would come and come and come. Then, when I could barely move, paralyzed with pleasure, he would heave himself into my body and have his way with me repeatedly. Sometimes he would haul me up by the heels, kneel, and thrust his cock into me. Other times he would slap my buttocks until they stung. The pain would make me feel fully alive, all the way from my scalp to my toes. 

“
Will you play for me, Miss?” asked the lad.

I took up my zither and began to play,
“I Can't Tell Why I Love You But I Do.” Despite my anxiety about Curly, I was quite enjoying myself. I felt most like my true self on Fire Nights, which from my perspective were the district's only enjoyable social events. How much gayer had Saratoga Springs society been!

The October Fire Night—the natives called it
“First Fire Night”—held a special luster. In November and December, it would be too brutally cold on the mountain to linger once the fires went out. But in late October, if the weather was mild, as it was on this night, lovers like ourselves would be staying out on Hatter's Field after creeping out of sight of the elders, who had gone down to their warm beds in their cabins by ten o'clock. The lovers' laughter and more guttural sounds would not be heard by the sharp ears of village busybodies, thanks to the ever-present wind that blows off the Black Hills.

The grimmest of the gossips
was native grandmother Widow Brown and her two mannish sisters. They insisted formal courtship must be done on a front porch in full view of the parents sitting inside. The banns of marriage had to be read three times in church without an objection, before a couple could so much as kiss in public. “It is as if the century had not turned in these hinterlands,” Curly complained to me.  

He had been cruelly embarrassed when Widow Brighton forbade the banns. The native wags assembling
at Bottomly's Butcher Shoppe entertained themselves by shouting “I forbid it!” whenever the phrase was even remotely pertinent. I laughed at him as well. Little did I know I, too, would soon become a target for the natives' ugly superstitions and their hatred of outsiders.

In time, Widow Brighton had relented, and this night was to have been Clare's wedding night. If her bridegroom answered to my siren's call, it would be a true test both of my powers and the intensity of our passionate bond, which was all I lived for.

Two hours earlier and a mile distant, two wooden signboards were flapping in the strong wind. They seemed about to tear off and endanger two women standing at the front door to the Plush Horse. On the newest wooden board, “The Plush Horse Saloon & Inn” was newly painted, and beneath it “Augustus Drake, Esquire, Attorney at Law & Proprietor.” The older sign, a remnant from past ownership, depicted a faded maiden in distress; her hands were clasped and her eyes were turned heavenward. 

Clare
Brighton wondered miserably if Curly Drake thought of her when he looked at the meek maiden. He had frequently said she needed to show more spirit, particularly when it came to standing up to her formidable aunt and guardian.

Widow Brighton now
stood uprightly beside Clare, grimly primed to do battle with Drake once again. The moon was shining hard and bright. There was a garden to the side that overlooked the tributary of the Belle Fourche River. From the one window facing front, a sole gas lamp beamed out. Given the lateness of the hour, she deduced it must be the innkeeper's.

The older woman was keenly aware of a great indignity she had just suffered. She and her niece had been deposited on Drake's doorstep from the sheep van of a coal miner, Caleb Scattergood. Earlier in the day, he had been collecting payments for his employer in
Corinthus. He had spotted Clare walking there aimlessly, ten miles from home. She begged him not to take her to the Grange. But in Alta, waiting on the hillside, he saw Clare's guardian walking toward the bonfire crowd. He prevailed on Mrs. Brighton to enter his wagon and see to Clare, who was fast asleep after her ordeal.

“
It is very late, Aunt. Don't you think it better if we go to the Grange?” said Clare, thinking how furious her betrothed would be when he saw the Widow. 

“
That isn't to our purpose. We won’t be five minutes, and then we will trouble Mr. Drake for a buggy and take ourselves home. At times like these, I wish my Nicholas were here. Thanksgiving won't come soon enough for me!” 

S
he tapped at the window. The wide back and powerful shoulders of a man arose between the fire and where they stood. Clare gasped at the sight of her bridegroom.

Drake blinked, trying to make out who was there. He
appeared Spanish because of his rakish black moustache and dark, curly hair, which furled in Napoleonic fashion along his high forehead, giving him a feathery cap of curls that women found charming and had given him his nickname. Drake's people hailed from Glasgow, as indicated by the fair, freckled skin, blue eyes, and slight brogue. Born in Linlithgow, the birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots, Drake had lived in Scotland for the first fourteen years of his life. His father, after migrating from Scotland, had become president of the Colorado Silver Exchange. Norman Drake was a gambling man; he made three fortunes and lost them all because of his addiction. After the final loss, he died, so the family said, of “heartbreak.” The death certificate reported it as death from the ingestion of cyanide.  

The gambler’s son was medium short but long in the torso and
appeared taller than he was. He moved with an air of easy grace, a nonchalant stroll that had been acquired at Heriot School in Edinburgh. He wore his dark curls long, and his eyes were a flinty shade of blue. His black eyebrows were so thick they nearly met, and he had a habit of looking aslant at others rather than directly. The thin, sensual lips appeared petulant, even cruel, but nonetheless Drake was very handsome, in a manly way. He appeared on this night unshaved and bleary-eyed, and was dressed in a rumpled suit.

Seeing he had female company, he stretched
his mouth into a wide, engaging smile, strode to the door, and ushered the ladies in. As he attempted, unsuccessfully, to shake hands with the enemy, he said heartily: “Well, to what do I owe the unusual honor of your visit at this late hour, Widow Brighton?”

Discerning his drooping
bride, he quickly added, “Why, darlin’, 'tis you! In God's name, why did you leave me standin' out there on the road like a frozen jackrabbit?” 

Drake turned to the Widow.
“'Twas useless to argue with her, ma'am. She insisted on going, and she would go alone. I have been worried ever since.” 

“
As you should be,” said Widow Brighton indignantly. “I have had my niece delivered to me in a sheep wagon by a coal miner. What's the meaning of this disgrace?”

He pulled
at his chin. “Why, no more a disgrace than earlier this year, ma'am, when you stood up in church and forbade our banns. Please, sit down.”  

Drawing forth
two bentwood chairs from beside the trestle table, he seated his guests by the fire. After a time he said, “Mrs. Brighton, 'twas nothing but a stupid mistake. I swear it by Saint Mungo's whiskers.”

This morning at dawn, he relat
ed, the couple had, as secretly planned, gone over to Corinthus to get married. But the pastor denied them the service because of an irregularity in the license. It was written for Drake's Presbyterian church in Bulette and therefore was useless in the Corinthus church, which was Episcopalian.      

“
You had been staying in Corinthus, you say?”

“
No, I was in Bulette until yesterday.” 

“
And exactly what were you doing in Bulette?” 

“
Well, ma’am, that is not to the point. I had business to attend to in Bulette, and I had the marriage license written there, intending to marry Miss Brighton at my own church. When I came to fetch her this morning, she asked if we might go to Corinthus instead.”

“Corinthus has such a pretty church, aunt,” chimed in Clare. “Since I wasn’t to be married in our church, I wanted the ceremony to be in that dear little brown one.” For one moment, Clare looked again the wide-eyed, blushing bride of the morning.

Drake continued in a careless tone,
“I didn’t care one way or t'other. I never thought of the license having a different town on it until the pastor refused us. By then, we reckoned it was too late to go over and make arrangements in Bulette.” 

He then glanced at his bride
meaningfully. “I begged Miss Brighton to come home with me and get the wedding done first thing Monday in Bulette. Instead, she ran off.”

“
As she should have,” said the Widow huffily.

“
I am sure you are correct, madam,” he said drily. “Your niece remains as untouched as when I came to fetch her at dawn.”

Widow Brighton drew herself up like an adder
poised to strike. 

“
But Aunt,” Clare said, wringing her little hands in her torn gloves, “don't you see it was all my fault?”

The Widow spoke sternly.
“It is a shame you couldn’t manage to have a wedding, sir, without dragging our name in the mud.” 

“
Nonsense,” said Drake, with a sharp tap of his boot that made his bride jump. “It was only a simple mistake, nothing more. I swear it on Saint Mungo’s head.” 

“
I wonder who this heathen saint is you swear by so frequently.”

Now Clare moved forward and physically interjected
herself between the two. She reached out her hand to Drake. “Oh, Curly!”

With her hair undone and her shoes scratched fro
m walking, she looked more like the victim of a prairie storm than a bride. Drake felt sorry for her. At that moment, he was prepared to grasp her hand and repeat his intentions to marry her on Monday in Bulette. However, before he could do so, they were all distracted by a great noise and banging from outside.

“
Now what?” asked Widow Brighton peevishly.  

As it turned out, the noise came from revelers at the bonfires who, having heard of the supposed union,
headed to the inn, led by Mayor Theodore Hawker. They were at the door with the drunken intention of serenading the couple.

“
God bless the newlyweds!” they roared.

“
Luckily, they are at the back door,” said Drake, “and not a sober one among 'em.  Hurry, ladies, come this way. My gig is out front, and I suggest you make your way home in it. I will have it picked up tomorrow.”

To avoid being seen by the neighbors, the women were forced to flee, regrettably, from the Widow's
point of view, because she had failed in her mission of obtaining a specific date for another wedding. Having given her consent to it, she was now determined the wedding must take place. Otherwise the Brighton name would be stained, an object of idle gossip.

It
was nearly midnight when Drake ejected the last tipsy singer from the inn. He found he was in no mood to be alone or go to bed. After locking the doors, down the crude dirt lane he went, his horse clopping along quietly through the sleeping village. He was headed for the Simmons' cabin with a bottle of wine tucked under his arm for Mr. Simmons, to whom he had lost a bet on the date of his marriage. 

H
e was hoping to find Rita Simmons there. The thought of her twinkling eyes and bulging breasts made his loins stir. But he was greeted only by the sound of snoring from the couple's bedroom and the smell of liniment.

He put the bottle on the kitchen table and went ou
tside.

His glance then traveled upward and focused on a
solitary light from the hillside where Mill's Creek lay. It was the only fire left in the dark sky.

“
Still waiting on me, are you, lass?” he murmured, then scratched his head.  

He leaned against his horse
, staring moodily at the solitary light.  Then he stood up, breathing harder.  He was overcome by an urge so strong it almost knocked him over.

“
I must go to her. Yes, I will answer her signal this one last time.”