Screaming Woman, Part 3 of 3
by Jason Stuart

Bree had it well figured that Sig would be getting himself up in his frock coat and cravat inside of his sheriff's office. She took the gamble on that drunk of a lawyer not being present but rather already halfway down a bottle in pre-celebration of the double nuptials. She'd held her own peace long as she was going to and was now to have it all out with the man one way or the other. She had her sight set hard on the other.

"Miss Finch, what are you — I — " Sig spit out when she burst through the door, locking it behind her. He was only one leg into his breeches and when she went at the hooks on the back of her dress, he began to gather additional concern. "What are you intending here?"

"You needn't catch that other leg in them pants, but go one more and drop 'em flat. I've had enough of your sallying around."

"Miss Finch, we're both set to be wed here in the hour and not to one another."

"And that's exactly it. We ain't neither one wed yet and since I reckon you're fool enough to go on with this damn fool charade, I guess I will, too. That dern lawyer better be right about my property. I guess a woman has her right to grapple with a man on her wedding day and I sure ain't aiming to do so with that black-breath Yankee. So, get stripped and lie down on that table yonder."

"Now just wait, now Just — "

Seeing he was to mealy-mouth it all the way, Bree just took him up in her arms and flattened him on the table herself and finished the dressing down of both persons, him fighting not terrible hard throughout the ordeal. In fact, once he got a good sight of her naked topside, he ceased animosities altogether. Bree got the rest of her trappings discarded, mounted up and went hard at it, Sig half wondering if he was to even survive the ordeal it was so rough. Not that he balked it.

Silas Olsen Boon stood at attention at the front of the newly restored Culloden County Courthouse-Town Hall and Voting Center in full union army regalia despite he'd never served a day in the War Between the States. He stood tall as a mast pole, nonetheless, along with his horde of blue.

"Now, where in this shit-piss of a hog-stinking burg is that woman?" he said, staring at Miss Alisha who was set to return to work for him as quick as she was done with her wifely duties to the Sheriff. Silas determined he ultimately had the greater claim on her time and efforts as he paid her fair wages for her efforts and only rarely expected coffee and bacon in return. And that, even, at his own expense.

"I think these affairs are a bag of sissified foolishness. It's fuckturd traditions like this that lost these people their goddamned war, you know. People in this world have got to learn that progress is the order of the day. We've no time for dilly-dally horseshit. Business has to run and mine's a waiting. No doubt those goddamn narrow-backs are robbing me blind every second I lose. I swear that woman had best produce herself so we can get to the essential aspects of this ridiculous ordeal. Goddamn Southern cunny — if she wasn't the looker she was, I'd have washed my hands of this stupidity by now. Goddamn."

It was only then Miss Alisha decided there was likely something amiss in the fact that both the tall yellow-haired woman was absent as well as her own promised Sheriff and lizard slayer, Sig Freeley. She tossed a glance at her boss and then back toward the other end of town and wondered where indeed that pair of participants in the day's affair had got to. Come to think of it, she never had cared for the way that woman talked friendly with her fiancé from the day she met her.

Back in the station, Bree had finally wore herself out on Sig and climbed down to gather up her gown and garters. Sig himself still lay mostly motionless on his Oakwood desk, rubbed raw from the ride he'd just got. He finally lifted his back up and fell straight back down again.

"Aw come on, I didn't work you that bad. I thought you were s'posed to be tough?"

Sig didn't respond but tried to rise again more slowly this time and reached for his trousers and boots. He wasn't entirely sure what the protocol was from here on out and desperately needed time he knew he didn't have to decide this whole thing through. There was no doubt he'd have plenty of use for this woman, but the fact he'd promised himself to Miss Alisha kept eating his brain on the matter.

"I 'spect we best get to the ceremony. Our true others'll be getting antsy by now I reckon," Sig said, trying to get his clothes put on right and keep from tipping over. He teetered like a punch-drunk idiot and couldn't remember ever having shot one off that hard. He'd not been with but two other women in his time and them both Virginia City sporting women and hadn't either pulled it out of him like this Finch woman just had. It was still an issue to consider.

"You're just that much a fool, you still aim to go through with this idiocy?"

"I give my word on it," Sig said.

"And what we just done don't violate that already?"

"I reckon a little, but doubling down on it won't amend the sin. And I ain't yet vowed forsakin' all others but I had promised her my hand. I owe it to her and she's a good woman."

"I ain't?"

"Well, no, not really, I don't think. Good at it, maybe."

"And her? How's she?"

"Well, she's a sight more proper."

"You soft-headed idiot. You don't buy a horse without checking its feet and mouth. Where was you raised?"

"What? I don't even know how to talk to you. I have to go."

"Fine, you fool. I guess if you're this stinkin' stubborn I'll go marry that dern Yankee myself. Maybe them Camerons'll settle up with him soon and alleviate me of the chore."

"I ought not hear such things, woman. I am a lawman."

"Oh horseshit. You slap a drunk with a pistol once a week and take free coffee at the eating-house. Most law you ever done was ending that bog-lizard, a feat mind you, but mostly you're a layabout. You ain't shut that gang in the woods down yet."

"Well, that's a separate matter. You got to see that — "

"Oh shut it, and let's go get hitched."

The wedding went off as well as could be. The preacher said his words while onlookers gawked at the oddity of it all. Bree and the sheriff deliberately sought not to look at each other, a feat not unnoticed by Miss Alisha who'd begun to put some things together in her mind if Boon hadn't. Boon, in fact, stared more at his pocket watch through the affair than he did anything else.

When the preacher called them all married, those soldiers went to firing rifles and caused many more frowns and scowls than it inspired felicity. A banjo band was soon picking thereafter but few danced and those that did only one or two. The new Mrs. Silas Olsen Boon did not even complete the whole of the after-affair before being whisked off to the mining camp boarding house.

"You can bathe and be waiting naked for me when I return. I have to go inspect my output. Knowing these slack-jawed layabouts, they've slowed to a crawl in my absence and they'll have hell to pay, now I'm back to oversee. Not a damn worker amongst the lot of them. I ought to haul more damn Chinamen out here. Those people know how to put in work. Or a nigger. Where are all the damn niggers, anyway? I thought this country was crawling with 'em? Anybody's better than these cracker hillbilly idiots. They'd as soon sit all day strumming a goddamn fiddle than earn an honest dollar. Hell, why earn it when you can steal it? Goddamn."

Boon took his leave then and Bree sat on the squeaky bed she was to be performing on at some later hour in the evening, whenever the man decided to return. It was altogether quite an odd day for her. She essentially had two men in no particular hurry to have at her. One, she'd forced down herself and took what she aimed at. The other, she was well satisfied to leave be. With any luck he'd wear himself out cussing and kicking his mineworkers and crash down asleep once back.

She'd certainly done herself a good one this time. Bree sat there and stewed on it long enough nearly to gray her hair over the deal. She had no more desire to be wife to this creature than she had to get her eyes pecked out by a hen. He was just so dern foul. It was some miracle somebody hadn't landed a pickaxe in his back yet. Had anyone a decent rifle, he'd be done for in no time.

And as sure as she thought on that a while, she come up with it. By damn, she was now his wife. If he was to meet with a serious accident, then she'd take over ownership of his dealings. She'd own the whole damn mine and however much of the rest of the county the fiend had bought up for no better purpose than strip down and leave bare. That's what all these reconstructing sons of bitches were about anyhow. They'd blast the hills into rubble to dig out their little black rocks to run their trains through creation, torturing the air with their smoke and then lay waste to the timber. No doubt they'd have the whole of the Black Woods sawed down before the end of it. Bree's land was right on the northern edge of that area. She'd always liked the way those big trees stood staring down at the world. Like they owned it.

Then she got her plan. That very place was where she'd arrange the black deed. She'd unbeknownst to herself laid the seed that very day and couldn't sing her own praise enough for doing it. She was itching hard as she could go now to get that man back to her so she could work it all out. She'd sing on it.

Boon boxed her face a good one when she fessed to being had by the sheriff the very day of her vows to him. Despite her reflex to return his strike with interest, she cowed down and took it to keep up her appearances.

"I'll have him done for, that vile shit-licker. I can't even look at you now. Not 'til this business is settled. You brought this shame down on yourself and now me. You taunted him to it, likely. You treacherous southern sluts are all that way. You've no dignity, no reserve."

Seeing him worked up so over the deal, and nursing her own bruised cheek, Bree was swelling full of fire and knowing better than turn his cheek for him, she did the next best thing and hooked him with her leg down onto the bed with her and then she was on him. She hadn't really wanted to at the outset, but she'd only whetted herself earlier in the office and somehow having all those dirty words shot at her had the opposite of their intent. Or she was just excited at the idea her scheme had a hope of working itself out.

Boon complained even less than the sheriff.

The idea was a fine one, that Boon accompany the sheriff out into the Black Woods to supervise the tracking down of the road agents that lifted a company payroll from the train depot the week earlier. There actually was no such robbery. Then, once well into the thick of it, Boon would draw down on the sheriff, forcing the man's hand to do the deed of dispatching the Yankee once and all. But then the black coward just went on and shot Sig right in the back while bent over catching a sip of creekwater.

Bree might have known it would turn out so. She had thought to warn the sheriff of the deal, but then he'd have figured a way to circumvent the violence. She'd painted herself into dirty corner and to beat all she was now well past due her bleeding time. She had decided she was singing all the wrong songs.

Odds were it was Boon's, the rate she'd had him vastly outweighing the one time in the sheriff's office. She never figured herself for such a Yankee lover but she hadn't been able to help herself. Now, the sheriff shot, and the prospect of rearing a half-breed all the while being lorded over by a carpet-bagged backshooter was too much. Her stomach turned over and over and not just from the thing growing inside it.

The loss of Sig was a hard blow not only to herself, but one felt around the county. As for the fabricated story of road agents in the wood, the fiction soon became reality. The sheriff's wife had since disappeared as well and Boon was wiring daily enquiring as to when and whether he could requisition additional soldiers to keep watch over his financial endeavors.

Determined not to have the whole of her machinations foiled, Bree set herself to mending the situation as best she may. Even without any sort of established law, Bree felt it best not to resort to any direct bloodletting and instead recalled where a certain wild toadstool grew that her Oldma had told her never to eat as it makes you crazy.

Every night after the event with the sheriff, Bree and Boon had sat in silence in each other's company. Bree sat the food down on the table with steel in her eyes and the Yankee shoveled it off his plate without looking up.

"I'm to have a child," Bree said at length. She'd held her tongue on the affair for the longest while but felt the man might like to know he had progeny before she sent him to the next world.

"Whose?" was all he asked without looking up.

"Well, I put about twenty to one says it yours," she said. "But it don't matter anyway, I reckon."

"Well it damn well matters to me. If I find it looking like him, I'll club it in the head and pitch it in the river. I ought to do the same with you, you evil woman. I can't understand why I was fool enough to wed you. You've authored this whole affair, I wager, you vile cunt. I spit at you. I — what are you doing?"

She was singing some black music. Something straight out a black African hell. Boon couldn't quite make it out, but it appeared to him the woman he was cussing had just turned dark purple. Then she spilled onto the table like water.

"What in God's name? I've a devil! You've put a devil in me, Cunt! Cunt!"

A lot of folks there that evening would recall when they saw the Yankee miner run out of his rooming house screaming "She put a devil in me!" They say he ran all the way out to the mine and clawed his eyes out with a rock hammer. Then he bled himself to death hollering nonsense at the night sky while those nearby made off with his boots and fancy coat and vest. They say the yellow-haired woman stood at the balcony window staring after the whole affair, the look of death in her, singing a bad song.

It might have all even worked out for her in the long run, had that woman clerk sheriff's widow not took up with the Cameron gang and put the whole business together, and late of an evening dispatched them to drag her out to the Witch Creek Swamp — where the Cherokees had drowned all those supposed witches long before — south of the mine and dump her in an old hollow stump with her legs clubbed useless and let her own kind have at her. After that, the Camerons walked on down that Indian trail toward Liberty with Bree Finch screaming after them all the way, which is how that road got its name.