Free The Siren's Tale by Anne Carlisle Page B

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