Chloe feels like Hamlet, about to stage a play with an explosive hidden agenda. Dressed in a long white nightgown, her amber eyes glittering, the scientist/rationalist looks like the siren that she knows herself to be.
She says to Marlena, “Comfy, dear?”
Marlena's stocking feet dangle across the open end of the one-armed divan. As she lays back, her burnished hair fans out in a crinkly, red-gold halo against the pillowed, rounded arm. The divan, which once belonged to Cassandra, was refurbished in 1969. Marlena replaced the dark, skinny legs with four butternut wooden balls and covered the curvy silhouette in a light gray silk fabric lined with thin stripes of lavender and pale peach.
She pulls the fur afghan tightly around her neck and sighs contentedly.
“Perfetto.”
The window curtains shift, the plinking sounds cease, and the long-awaited tale begins.
PART II
THE SIREN'S TALE
Chapter Five
The Bonfire
October 27, 1900
Mill's Creek
With the tip of one gloved finger, Cassandra Vye traced two sets of initials on the cold, wet casement window in her bedroom: CV + CD. She put her grandfather's spyglass to one topaz eye and scanned the empty, vast immensities of Hatter's Field. To her view, it appeared barren and immovable, as if nothing had ever changed here since the days of the glaciers, when woolly mammoths roamed the arid plain.
She often stood so, looking out the window and playing on her zither, meanwhile envisioning herself driving away from Alta—far, far away. With the exception of the time spent in her lover's arms, this year seemed the dreariest of her twenty years on the planet.
The promontory of the Hat was within easy walking distance along Hatter's Field. From the vantage point of the Hat and with the help of her grandfather's spyglass, she would be able to see activities at the hotel and in the village. She put on her bonnet and pulled on her gloves, too restless not to venture out again. Tonight, more than ever before, she wanted her lover to respond to her siren's song.
At last twilight was approaching, and the gas lamps of Alta’s settlers were coming on. The stars sprinkled across the sky and the home fires in the little mountain town appeared to converge in the emptiness where mountains end and the high plain begins. The scene was reminiscent of her arrival a year before, just rounding the bend in the road from the south in a small brown surrey, how she had strained forward with great excitement to catch a first glimpse of Alta, where she would soon be seen in her best lace-fringed bonnet. She was unaware it would be hanging unused, day after day, on a crude nail by a raw wooden door.
Progress had been slow behind the tired, single horse plodding along the lonely, narrow road past Hatter's Field. On each side of the muddy thoroughfare were frozen sheets of snow, layer upon layer, as far as the eye could see, and a dark, brooding mountain towering over the town like a pitiless, ancient god. The terrain she saw for the first time was constituted in a way so wild and resistant that even back in the greedy old homesteading days, no one had ever made a move to tame or claim it. The land had irregularities not caused by plows and pickaxes, but rather by the geology of the last climate change.
Flourishing into young womanhood in the more densely populated East, Cassandra was a Progressivist in her political opinions and a restless spirit by virtue of her siren nature. As the short days turned bitterly cold, her initial enthusiasm for her new environment quickly waned. She could see how horribly isolated the town was under that endless, dark, unforgiving sky, and how reticent and backward the pious villagers were. Was there anyone here worthy of a siren's tricks, much less her passionate love?
The native biddies were quick to pick up on Cassandra's aloofness, and almost immediately, the dazzling beauty became a target for malicious gossip. People are apt to be suspicious of an exotic creature who sets herself apart from others, and there was no hiding herself from public scrutiny in such a tiny settlement.
In 1900, even the largest Western towns consisted of no more than a thousand men, women, and children living hand to mouth in pine cabins or frame clapboards. A handful of shops provided the necessities: saddle and leather goods, hardware, dry goods, barber-dentist, cobbler, blacksmith, and butcher. As a rule, there were thirteen bars, one busy local jail, and sometimes a church.
However, Wyoming was destined to be an exception to the rule. For one thing, it was a vast place that travelers crossed rather than staked claims to. In 1870, two years after the Wyoming Territory was carved out of the Dakota, Utah, and Idaho territories, the entire population reported by the census was 9,118. Wyoming's northeastern-most district was exceptionally tiny, with a population of no more than 200 in the three villages combined.
The “district,” as Alta, Bulette, and Corinthus were known collectively, also claimed the distinction of being an exception to the rule in regard to the aforementioned drinking establishments. Each village had a church, but among the three hamlets, only Alta, the tiniest of them, had a single combined inn and saloon. A society where church-going women dominated the social order rather than the saloon-keepers was an anomaly in the old West. In Alta, the natives' piety was particularly pronounced, a tradition passed down from a severely strict, “low” sect among the original homesteaders. Descendants of the original families who remained were the Brightons, Fairwells, Bottomlys, Harrisons, Simmonses, Hawkers, and Browns. They were a tightly knit group and as deeply resentful of outside influence as the Boxers in China.
Zelda Parker Brighton, the largest landowner by virtue of being sole proprietor of the Brighton Grange and its ten thousand acres, was held in the highest respect, and she intended to keep it that way. Widow Brighton was a proud descendent of Reverend Samuel Parker, a famous missionary in the territory. Her great-aunt was Esther Morris, a woman from South Pass who, for the first time ever in human history, was made a female justice of the peace. Widow Brighton came by her scrupulous pride honestly.
Because of the strictness of the Methodist denomination, the structure of Alta's church was plain and had no steeple. The itinerant pastor was a quiet man with a plain wife and three small, solemn children.
Not fifty yards from the graveyard of the church stood The Plush Horse Inn & Saloon. A ten-foot music box in one drafty corner also made it the district's sole entertainment center. Innkeeper/owner Augustus “Curly” Drake was a newcomer. Initially viewed with suspicion and alarm, he was duly reported to have attended a prestigious school in Scotland, and his deceased father, it was said, was once president of the Colorado Silver Mines.
As the handsome bachelor held a law degree and owned property, the outsider became a subject of intense interest among the unmarried native daughters. However, in the eyes of the original homesteaders, Drake's eligibility was marred by an inexpugnable black mark. He never attended church in Alta and rarely mixed with his own Scottish denomination in Bulette. Every citizen was expected to attend church on Sundays. The sole exceptions were the native sons who were having their hair cut by Harold Fairwell.
Fairwell, by trade a busy cobbler, performed the barbering service free of charge, regardless of the weather, on the first Sunday of each month. Fairwell claimed Sunday was the only day of the week he could afford to make his services available. Wives grumblingly looked the other way as their husbands used the excuse, once every month, to miss church and catch up on gossip.
Men and women alike had a legitimate need for gossip, as news traveled very slowly in the district. Sometimes not knowing social trends back East led to outright disaster. For example, the Western trappers were unaware of the decline in fashion of the beaver hat among Eastern gentlemen, a societal change which decimated the fortunes of most mountain men in the 1840’s. The assassination of President McKinley in Buffalo the following September would not be heard of in Alta until Christmas, because a telegraph line was down. And when the state legislature passed an anti-gambling bill late in 1901, no one in the back room of the Plush Horse Saloon would pay
any attention whatsoever until 1906, when the inn was sold to an out-of-town interest.
To get the news of the day and a free cup of coffee, Fairwell and other men of business congregated each morning at Bottomly's Butcher Shoppe. For the purposes of gossip and news dissemination, however, there was nothing better than a series of evening bonfire celebrations held at the end of October, on Thanksgiving, and on Christmas night. Fire Nights, as they were called, were the time-honored, surefire occasions to find out who was traveling south to Casper or east to Rapid City, and whose husband had been spotted making cow eyes at Diane, the buxom barmaid at the Plush Horse.
The bonfire tradition went back a century or more to rituals of the local tribes, first the Shoshone, and later the Lakota Sioux. They used the base of the Hat—an elevated portion of Hatter's Field that looked like a miniature version of Devil's Tower—as a place to worship their nature gods. The Indians would set ablaze pine logs and sagebrush, dancing solemnly around the bonfires in a pattern that gave pause to white settlers who knew of the Ghost Dancers. But by the dawn of the twentieth century, the wars between the Indians and the whites had died out. Now the practice of lighting bonfires was an excuse among the pious white homesteaders for a rare night of debauchery.
The First Fire Night of October 27, 1900, was very special indeed, since it marked the first of the new century. The highpoint would be fiddle music and dancing after the first bonfire was lit at the base of the Hat.
As was customary, the exact locations and times for the firings were announced in church. The order was strictly followed, a throwback to earlier notions about appeasing a nature god. By sunset the male citizens of Alta, Bulette, and Corinthus had already collected brush and bundled faggots in all the outlying hamlets and neighborhoods.
The men would use a firing technique that resembled a modern telephone chain, lighting the first bonfire at the Hat at precisely nine o'clock. The first would be quickly answered by a second, a third, and so forth, until all the fires were raging.
Sometimes there were as many as thirty, sometimes as few as eight, depending on the bitterness of the weather. The quickness of the teams in firing up would be a matter for bragging rights, as was the size of a particular fire, its color, and its visibility from miles away. The bonfires would be manned for several hours by boys and men, attracted by virtue of a foolish willingness to risk their lives to keep up the longest fire. Lightning strikes were very common up at the Hat and along Alta Mountain.
As to the color, it was generally agreed the prettiest fire to be seen was at Mill's Creek Pond, which was graced by a large grove of junipers. What a disappointment, then, when Captain Vye announced he was declining to participate!
“There will be no bonfire at Mill's Creek Pond tonight,” Captain Marcus Vye intoned. It was four o'clock, and the men had gathered at Bottomly's to escape the bustle of activities and nagging voices of their wives. General hissing and groaning ensued.
He held up his hand, then explained that his treasured supply of juniper logs was being saved for another occasion. At the third Fire Night on Christmas evening, he planned to host a ball in honor of his granddaughter Cassandra, who had graced his bachelor residence since fall of 1899. He wanted his Christmas bonfire to be the longest fire ever seen in the district.
None believed him, as the Captain had never yet played the host at his stone home. Later and to a select few, Captain Vye offered a different reason for refusing to participate. He confessed an ancestress had been hastily tried and then burned at the stake in Salem, Massachusetts for the crimes of adultery and witchcraft. She was burned at sunset on the Feast of All Hallowed Souls’ Eve. “I swear to you,” he said, “her only sin was unusual beauty, which excited the jealousy of the local matrons.”
“To honor her memory,” the Captain said solemnly, “I vowed there would never be fires set on Vye property at Halloween, for fear of arousing a vengeful ghost. I don't mind, though, if the young people want to caper around the bonfire at the Hat, or if my pretty granddaughter wants to dance among 'em. You've never seen anyone dance better.”
The native grapevine buzzed with that story, and not a few had a laugh at his expense. Everyone knew Vye's granddaughter was a standoffish snob, that the outsider's beauty and consummate musical skill were not the virtues valued in a native woman; those were community spirit, self sacrifice, and fervent religious piety. Others assumed the story about a Salem witch in the Captain's family was a tall tale meant to compete with their stories in Halloween ghoulishness.
However, those who took the tale at face value buzzed the loudest and the longest. Thenceforth, these natives believed the name of Vye was associated with witchcraft.
At sundown, young and old alike were fighting for turns in the bathtub. The soaking was followed by the braiding or slicking of hair, and then began the arduous process of layering on clothing that would both hold up against the chilly night air and also fit the occasion. A gaily-colored ribbon was added to a bonnet, or a fringed leather jacket was put on over breeches and homespun cotton shirts. Young children donned skeleton masks and ghoulish capes, and small boys smeared soot on their faces, brandishing wooden swords, pitchforks, and broomsticks as they went out the door for a night of fearsome revelry.
The older settlers looked forward to a full night of gossip. The weather was sure to be a major topic of conversation, but the choicest of all morsels to chew over would be the secret wedding—nothing more savory!
Word had gotten out that the long delayed union between the innkeeper and the widow's niece had taken place that morning in Corinthus, the furthest north of the three villages that were strung like beads along the high neckline of tall, brooding Alta Mountain.
It was a stunning report. Six months before, Widow Brighton had stood up in church and forbidden the banns on the grounds Drake was not a practicing Christian. Since then, Curly Drake had been the butt of the native sons' jokes.
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, unde
r 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.
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