JACK WILLIAMS WAS GIVING me one of the most extreme examples of Expression No. 4 I had ever seen. “You are a girl?”

“Yes!” I cried. “Now stop it, please!”

Jack nodded to Violetta, who must have pushed the lever back, for everything went quiet.

“Say that again?” Jack Williams brought his face too close.

“I am a girl,” I confessed. “My parents thought I would be safer growing up dressed as a boy.”

Jack Williams stared at me for a moment. Then he commenced groping me all over with his big calloused hands in a way I do not like to recall. Thankfully he did not feel the need to strip me to check every detail.

“God d-mn,” he said at last. “It is a girl.” He looked at Violetta. “Did you know about that?”

“I knew there was something not quite right about her,” said Violetta. She put on her gloves. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. I’ve got some business to finish in Carson and then I will come and join you in Virginia City.”

“What about this?” growled Jack Williams, holding up the piece of paper she had wanted him to sign.

Violetta took it from him and tore the paper into confetti. “Forget about that,” she said, letting the pieces flutter to the ground. Then she put her arms around him and kissed him for a long time.

“I don’t know what I was thinking, dear Jacky,” she said in her little-girl voice. “There could never be anybody for me but you.”

Jack smiled an ugly smile. “What about her?” he said, indicating me. “We just gonna leave her?”

“She is of no consequence,” said Violetta, and turned to me. “If we let you live, will you promise to go far away and never show your face in Nevada Territory again?”

“Yes!” I cried. “I promise. Please don’t kill me.”

Jack Williams was looking at me with his hooded snake eyes.

“Turn it back on,” he said. “I don’t care if she is a girl. She is a half-Injun misfit and the world is better off without her.”

Violetta hesitated for a moment. Then she shrugged. “All right,” she said. “But let’s get out of here. That way nobody will connect us with her death.”

I do not like having to beg for mercy but this was a desperate situation. “Please!” I cried. “Have mercy on me. Do not saw me in half.”

But Violetta had pulled the lever. Once again I was juddering towards the certain death of being sawed in two.

“HELP!” I shouted with all my strength. “Somebody, help! I have been tied to a log and am about to be sawed in half!”

I knew it was futile for I was in the middle of a pine forest on the land of a man who expelled any workers found toiling on the Sabbath.

Jack Williams’s ugly face filled my vision & he took out his kerchief, all stiff with mucus & gray with dirt. Then he balled it up & forced open my mouth with rough, calloused fingers & stuffed it in as a gag. It was disgusting.

“That should shut you up,” he said.

I struggled & squirmed & tried to spit it out. I managed to say, “Mmmmph!” Jack Williams silenced me with a stinging slap to the cheek that made my ears ring.

Then he leered down at me.

“I reckon you are half girl and half boy anyway,” he said. “So being sawed in half is a fitting demise.”

Once again I cried, “Mmmmph!” but they had gone.

I started squirming & struggling again. But the harder I struggled the tighter my bonds seemed to be.

I lifted up my head to look at the relentlessly approaching saw. It was only about half a foot from my nether regions.

Movement at the corner of my eye made me eagerly turn my head.

Someone was peering in the window. Was it a rescuer?

No. It was only Jack Williams on horseback, bending down to laugh at me one more time before spurring his horse on to Virginia City.

I never cry, but scalding tears of fear & anger were filling my eyes and spilling over.

The noise of that saw prevented me from thinking straight. All I could think of was how much it would hurt. And also, in the Resurrection of the dead, would the angels have to stick me together again?

I struggled & struggled.

It was one of the lowest moments of my sad and miserable life.

I know I will soon freeze to death out here in the blizzard, but at least this way I will have a Good Death. That other would have been an awful way to die.

For as you have probably guessed, I was not sawed in half but, rather, I got rescued.

And you will never guess who done it.