Wild at Heart

by Layce Gardner

  Wild at Heart:

  The Un-told Story of Calamity Jane

  by

  Layce Gardner

  This is a work of fiction; names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author‘s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Square Pegs Ink

  Text copyright © Layce Gardner

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without the author‘s permission.

  Cover designed by Lemon Squirrel Graphics

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  Wild at Heart

  Stories usually begin at the beginning or thereabouts. This story doesn’t. It begins at the end. Specifically, it begins on the last day of the end. It was a day that was to become infamous over the next few decades. It was the day that Wild Bill Hickok was shot and killed. It was also the same day that Calamity Jane died.

  It was a day that love was lost, love was found, people were killed and legends were born.

  That day was August 2nd, 1876.

  You won’t find my name in any history books or newspaper accounts. You won’t even find me in any of the fictionalized books that were written about that day. But, I can assure you, I was there. I am putting pen to paper to document the story how I remember it. Already thirty years have gone by, and the tale has grown larger with each passing year. I want to set the record straight before I shuffle off this mortal coil. Of course, you understand that my record of the events as I remember them already has a sheen to it. What I mean to say is how I remember that day is tainted by my unique perception. Having said that, I will delve into my memories and offer them up as best I can.

  Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Charles Buttercup Engleman. Engleman is a Jewish name. I am a lost member of that tribe and have no feelings about the name one way or another. Charles was my paternal grandfather’s name. Buttercup was my maternal grandmother’s surname and as much as I admired the old woman, that name has caused me no end of trouble.

  I am a dwarf.

  I had made my home in the town of Deadwood in what was then known as the Dakota Territory. I had been living there for almost two years by 1876. I had alighted in that small town not to follow the gold rush but to empty the gold dust out of the pockets of the men who panned the rivers and mined the veins in the Black Hills. To that end, I purchased a dilapidated old saloon sitting on the end of the main street. It didn’t have a name, as the previous owner was a drunkard and never was sober long enough to paint a shingle. I christened my new saloon The Globe. Readers of Shakespeare will recognize at once the origin of the name. Nobody in Deadwood was acquainted with the writings of Shakespeare, hence, they didn’t once remark on the unusual moniker.

  I am an avid and voracious reader of books, as you shall soon see. I devour books like a gambler drinks whiskey, which is to say, more than is good for him. How can books be bad for a gentleman, you ask? They stretch a man’s imagination. They make him reconsider bygone eras and anticipate those yet to arrive. It may come as no surprise to a few of you that when a government wants absolute control over its people, the first thing it does is burn all books. Books exacerbate free-thinking, you see, and free-thinking is the burr under the saddle of any government.

  Books are a form of time travel. I shall explain that crude thought: I am writing in the year 1906 about things that happened thirty years ago. When you read it in your own time, whenever that is, you will be transported back to 1876 and experience for yourself the events that took place then. Is that not time travel?

  I digress. I meant to tell you how books have been both my salvation and my tragic flaw. I used books and the stories therein to transport myself to other worlds. I used books like an addict uses opium—as an escape hatch into the worlds of Dickens, Shakespeare and Hugo. In these story-worlds, I was always of average height and quite the dandy and ladies’ man. You can imagine the consternation I felt each time I read those familiar words The End and found myself back in my own body, three foot six inches tall with bristly hair, eyes as dull in color as Mississippi mud and a nose that would make Cyrano blush.

  Despite these limitations, I have always striven to carry myself with great aplomb and dignity. It was my habit at the time this story takes place to wear a somber suit of black broadcloth with a dark blue silk vest stitched with red embroidery. It had been tailored for a boy of seven or eight and, with minor alterations, fit me perfectly.

  My only other area of vanity was my delicate hands, which I inherited from Grandmother Buttercup. They were hands that had never thrown a punch, wielded a hammer or gripped a plow, but I could do more with my nimble fingers than most men ever chanced to dream. That was my secret, the ace up my sleeve.

  One last note on my appearance: As a dwarf I was accustomed to being invisible to most of the population. (The exception was children and dogs, which, much to my chagrin, followed me about town like I was the Pied Piper.) This invisibility usually worked out to be in my favor. I was privy to conversations and saw things that a man of average height could not.

  It has always been my custom to earn my living in the easiest way possible. In other words, to do as little as I can to earn as much as I can. That is why on this particular day I was nearing my forty-fifth year of life and standing behind the polished bar of The Globe with my large nose firmly embedded in the pages of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha.

  First, a word about The Globe. (If you do not wish to read all the hooptedoodle that describes the setting, skip the next few paragraphs. Do not worry, it will not hurt my feelings.) As I was saying, the dressing of the set upon which these players were soon to strut their final performances was minimal. The walls were planks with knotholes that wind and dust blew through at will. Hanging overhead were hurricane lanterns which provided the dimmest of light once the sun had set. I had a rod with a hook on the end that allowed me to reach their heights and bring them down for lighting.

  The bar itself was imported from the East Coast. I was told that in its previous life it had held up elbows at an establishment in Richmond. (It was rumored to be the very place where Edgar Allan Poe had tippled and scribbled his poems. That may or may not be the truth, but I prefer to believe it.) The bar was opulent, bedecked in shiny brass with gargoyles etched in its trim. I polished the cherry wood daily. The brew taps had gold-plated lions’ heads as handle pulls. I had built up a floor behind the bar so that I could stand eye to eye with the patrons; on more than one occasion I served a man all through the night without him guessing my true height. Four tall stools with the seats covered in cowhide graced the front of the bar. I hung mirrors against the back wall and a shelf of glasses and bottles across the length of it. The mirrors’ purpose was two-fold: They made the space seem larger and they also gave me a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the place no matter where my sizable nose was aimed.

  The rest of my saloon was utilitarian at best. There were four tables, all with one leg shorter than the other three, and seven chairs in varying states of disrepair. Unlike in the saloons down the street, the walls were bare with no paintings or art work to gaze upon (except for the row of “Dead or Alive” posters pasted to the far wall.) The plank floor was strewn with sawdust to sop up spills, blood and vomit, all of which were plentiful on Saturday nights.

  A staircase led to the upstairs and the only room with a door. Behind the door resided Belle Buchannon, the resident working girl. She paid me ten percent of her ear
nings to stay in the room. She treated me more like a servant than a landlord, expecting me to fetch and step her meals, empty her chamber pot and supply her with fresh water in her pitcher. It was an arrangement I didn’t mind. I suppose I would have done most anything for Belle.

  The Globe was not the best or nicest saloon in town. It may have even been the worst. The Number Ten Saloon next door was where most men chose to congregate. There was a hotel across the dirt street where meals, a bed and a warm bath could be bought for a half dollar. There was a mercantile at the far end of the street where a man could purchase a gun, feed for his horse, grub for his campfire and stake for his claim and outfit his entire person head-to-toe on a single visit. Horses were hitched outside on the street next to watering troughs, and the pole corral was at the edge of town next to the blacksmith tent. Lengths of rope were strung across the street from rooftop to rooftop and hung with lanterns. Come nightfall the lanterns were lit. It had been hoped that this illumination would cut down on the rate of murders; however, the light only improved the drunken shooting and increased the number of dead come sun-up. The coffin maker had a lively business, pun intended.

  At the time of this story Deadwood was between sheriffs. Lawmen had a fatal habit of collecting bullets soon after pinning the tin to their shirts.

  Being a barkeep or saloon owner was also a dangerous vocation. It was easy to end up on the business end of the gun barrel. I have outlived all the other barkeeps several times over. I think that was because no man wanted to shoot a dwarf. The ridicule would have tailed him like a shadow for the rest of his life.

  Hence, with no further ado, here is the untold story of Calamity Jane.

  ***

  Tuesday, August 2, 1876, two o’clock in the afternoon, found me standing behind the bar of The Globe, reading Don Quixote. I licked my finger and turned a page. A fly lit on my nose and I shooed it away with a flip of my hand.

  The fly flitted around the dim saloon, landed on a tipsy table, then a chair with one broken leg, next a coiled bullwhip hanging from a peg on the wall and then came to a stop on a wanted poster of Calamity Jane. Mr. Fly sat on Calamity’s nose openly, daring the photo to come to life and swat it away. I lazily turned another page of the book. The fly buzzed contentedly, grooming its front legs, happy with its new perch.

  I licked my finger and—

  —boots clomped down the board walk outside the saloon.

  The fly took flight and buzzed from wall to wall before lighting on my book. I froze with my page-turning finger poised in mid-air and my ears cocked. I hoped the boots would pass on by and go next door. My saloon did a piss-poor business except on weekends, which is the way I liked it, and boots clomping through my doors in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, meant a stranger was in town. Strangers almost always gave rise to bullet holes and broken chairs and spilled whiskey and fisticuffs, and if there was one thing I detested, it was chaos.

  The fly flitted and buzzed about my head. I swatted at it and kept my eyes and ears peeled. After more clomps, a pair of boots stopped right outside the batwing doors at the entrance. I squinted over the rim of my spectacles. Under the doors I saw a pair of pants tucked into dusty boots. Above the doors I saw the creased top of a sweat-stained felt hat. It was obvious, at least from the parts I could see, that the owner of the boots was short and bowlegged.

  The doors swung open. I sighed with relief. It was only Pete Weston.

  I re-licked my finger and turned the page, going back to the comic tale of the man who reads too many chivalric novels and fights windmills.

  Pete walked in, brushed the dust from his shoulders, took off his hat and ran his fingers through his red curls. He was cursed with both freckles and buck teeth, but it was his short stature that seemed to bother him the most. In fact, his lack of height bothered him so much that he wore cowboy boots with three-inch heels in an effort to stand taller. His hat added another three, bringing him up to a total of five foot five inches when fully clothed. He made up for what he considered his deficiency in height by filling himself full of bluster and false bravado. In reality he was just a funny looking twenty-six-year-old cowboy who had herded a string of cows to the end of the trail and was then hired on as a hand with the Flying M Ranch just east of town.

  Pete blew the dust off the brim of his hat and screwed it back down on his head. He hiked up his gun belt. He wore the holster strapped to his thigh gunslinger-style. I suppose that made him feel taller too. He looked across the dim room at me and said in an overly loud voice, like a man who was used to being ignored, “I’m parched, Charlie. Draw me a brew.”

  I didn’t like taking orders from no man, even if he was paying me. So I frowned in concentration at my book and held up one finger, signaling for Pete to wait a minute. That was just my way of evening the playing field.

  Pete hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and strutted around the empty saloon, enjoying the sound of his spurs jangling. “Place sure looks bigger when it’s empty, don’t it?” he said. When I didn’t reply as quickly as he wanted, he sniffed the air like a hound dog catching a scent. “Smells better too.”

  I chose not to respond to that slight on my establishment.

  Pete’s curiosity led him to the southern wall where Mr. Fly had been roosting only moments before. He read off the names of the outlaws on the wanted posters, “Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Jesse James, Black Bart…” He paused before the last poster. It wasn’t as faded as the others and was obviously newer. I had pasted it up only two days before. He read the caption out loud, “Wanted Dead or Alive. $5,000 Reward.” He whistled between his teeth. “I wouldn’t mind collecting that dinero. A sum that big sure could set a man up for life.”

  “I’m trying to read here,” I muttered. I didn’t want to get drawn into a long-winded conversation about hypothetical rewards and unattainable dreams. Pete was full of ballyhoo and could prattle for hours if you let him.

  He continued on anyway. “I never seen this poster before. It new?”

  I raised the book in front of my face like a shield.

  Pete stood on tippy-toe and took a closer look at the blurry black-and-white picture. “Why he ain’t nothing but a whippersnapper. Still between hay and grass. Can’t be but twelve years of age.” He chuckled. “Looks like he ain’t even growed into his teeth yet.” He rocked back on his heels. “I guess that’s why he’s called Billy the Kid.” He chuckled some more and wandered toward me. I turned a page of the book. He veered off and sat down at a table smack dab in the middle of the room. He leaned back in the chair and threw his boots on top of the table, crossed his ankles and put his hands behind his neck. He waited all of five seconds before he said in a holier-than-thou tone, “You open for business or not? I’m drier than the Rio Grande in August.”

  I didn’t cotton to his superior attitude. I slammed my book shut and poked a hole in his inflated ego by saying, “Get your spurs off my table. You know how I loathe gouge marks.”

  “You sound like an old woman.” He plunked his boots on the floor. “You sure ain’t making it easy to spend my money.”

  “You’re not paying me enough to make it easy.”

  I took a mug off the clean stack on the shelves and held it under the tap. I situated the mug straight up so as to get a good head on it. When the foam ran over the sides of the glass, I ran my wooden paddle across it, scraping off the excess. I set the beer down on the bar for Pete to collect. I went back to my book. I was just getting to an exciting part in the story and didn’t feel the compulsion to walk it out to him.

  He sulked a bit but came over and grabbed the mug. He looked at the glass, then looked at me. “You’re a cheap cuss, ain’t you? This glass ain’t but half full. Mostly all foam.”

  “It’s called a head. All good beers have a head of foam on them. The head releases the natural aroma and makes the beer appeal to both the sense of smell and the sense of taste.” I waved both hands in a shoo-fly gesture toward Pete’s nose. “Smell th
at aroma.”

  Pete scooted the beer glass away from my flapping hands. “I ain’t paying to smell beer, dammit. I want to drink it.” To prove his point, he tipped back the glass and drank half of it down in one long swallow. He set the glass down, oblivious to the foam mustache under his nose.

  I longed to point this out but thought it best to collect payment first.

  We had a little Mexican stand-off between us. Pete wanted more beer and I wanted payment for what he had just drunk. We stared at each other for a long moment. Finally, I reasoned that the only way to win was to give him what he wanted so I could have what I wanted. I sighed loud enough to make my displeasure plain, took the mug and held it back under the tap. This time I tilted the glass as I filled it to the top. It came out flat with hardly any foam to speak of. There’s no accounting for taste.

  Before I handed over the mug, I extended my hand, palm up.

  Pete sighed like an old man, dug in his trouser’s pocket and extracted a gold coin. Ignoring my outstretched hand, he dropped the coin on the counter, grabbed the beer and sauntered back to the table, saying, “Keep ’em coming my way. I’ve worked up a powerful thirst.”

  I held the coin up to a shaft of sunlight and squinted at it over the rim of my spectacles. It looked like the genuine article, but I’d been fooled before.

  Pete sat, leaned back in the chair, and said, “Lordy, this place is deader than dead. You feel like a game of cards?”

  I bit the coin with my front teeth, then studied it for tooth marks.

  Pete said testily, “That coin is simon pure.”

  Satisfied that indeed it was, I slipped the coin into the pocket of my pants.

  “You got a deck of cards around here?”

  “No.”

  “Sure you do. You’re just so stingy you don’t want to give me a chance to win my money back.”

  I slapped the book shut. It was more than apparent he wasn’t going to let me read in peace so I might as well make friendly. “As a rule, I don’t gamble. It doesn’t agree with me.” I pulled a dishcloth from my belt loop and swiped at the counter. “How’d you lose your job? You get discharged?”