Wild at Heart

by Layce Gardner

  The big Swede let loose with a war cry and ran at McCall. McCall stood his ground, aimed and shot the Swede twice in the chest. The Swede crumpled to his knees and cursed in his native tongue.

  McCall threw his saddle on the Swede’s horse and rode off, leaving the man and his wife to the fate of the circling vultures.

  By this time Calamity was hot on McCall’s trail. She found his dead horse and followed his tracks toward the chimney smoke.

  She found the Swede and his wife. She saw the tracks in the dirt and conjectured what had transpired. She saw the path of blood from where the Swede had been shot leading up to where he now lay next to his wife. He had used the last moment of his life to crawl next to his true love. His hand was gripping hers and his face was buried in her neck when he drew his final breath.

  Calamity thought about that. About how the woman risked her life for the man she loved. How he had refused to die until reunited with his wife. She ran into the cabin and fetched a blanket. As she was spreading the blanket over the bodies, she was thunderstruck with an idea.

  Calamity shucked off her clothes. She peeled the clothes off the dead woman. She dressed the woman as herself and put on the woman’s dress. She drug the bodies apart and arranged the scene to tell a different story. By the time the posse arrived, all she had to do was appear hysterical and relate how the man with the black beard had shot her husband. She gestured to the dead woman and told how Calamity Jane had been gunned down.

  She pointed her finger in the direction McCall had ridden and the posse was gone amid a thundering of hooves and shouts of an eye for an eye.

  Calamity watched the cloud of dust following in the wake of the posse until it became a speck. She bowed her head over the dead couple and whispered a prayer. She never thought she’d be praying twice in the same day.

  She gave the Swede a decent burial and toted “Calamity’s” body back to town to be buried beside Wild Bill. She rented a room for a week under her real name, Martha Jane Cannary. Using every cent she had, she bought a wagon and outfitted it with a team of horses, guns and ammunition and enough grub for a long journey.

  Then she walked across the street to The Globe, where she found me taking breakfast up to Belle.

  ***

  I knocked on Belle’s door. She called out in a weak voice, “I’m not hungry, Charlie.”

  I answered, “There’s somebody out here to see you.”

  She said, “I’m retired. Tell him to go away.”

  “This is somebody you’ll want to be seeing.”

  “Who?” she asked.

  I didn’t answer and after a minute, the door opened and Belle emerged. She was pale, like all the blood had been leeched out of her body. She was thin too and looked like she had aged twenty years in the past week.

  She looked at me and I nodded to the saloon below. Belle’s eyes followed mine. When she caught sight of Martha, she gasped and placed her hand over her mouth. I put a steadying hand on her waist for fear she was going to topple over.

  When she finally found her voice, she said, “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  “Calamity’s dead, that’s true enough. But I’m alive and heading out to San Francisco.”

  “What do you want?” Belle whispered.

  Martha walked halfway up the stairs and stopped. “I am not here to ask you to go with me, Olivia. I know you can never forgive me. But I did want to appeal to your heart to ask you to listen to me. For one minute. Let me explain what happened on that morning…that morning I never showed up.”

  Belle’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t try to stop her.

  Martha took hold of the stair railing. “I had everything ready for our departure just like we’d planned. I was there early—sunrise was still an hour away. I had the horse. I had all my money. All I needed was you. I was looking out the stable door, looking for you, when a man appeared out of nowhere. He put a knife to my throat. Told me how I was going to leave town. Leave without you and never look back. He said he’d kill me if I tried to take you away. He was a hired killer and was following the doctor’s orders.”

  Martha looked away, shook her head. When she looked back, she was trying not to cry. “So I did what he wanted. I got on my horse and left.”

  “I waited on you,” Belle said. “I was there at sunrise and I waited, but you never showed.”

  “I’m not going to mince words, Olivia, I have no excuse. I was a coward. I thought maybe you’d be better off without me. All I could give you was a life of running. Always one step ahead of that man. But that was just an excuse for my cowardice, I know that now. I rode off and left you behind with that evil man and I told myself I didn’t really love you. And I tried not to love you, I did…but I just can’t help myself. You’re everywhere I look. I look at the ocean and it reminds me of you. I look at the hills and am reminded of you. I rode across this country and back and cannot shake you from my mind. You are my sunrise and my sunset and everything in between.”

  Martha swiped at her cheeks. “That’s my piece, Olivia. I want you to know that I love you and I hope that someday you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me.” She turned and walked down the stairs.

  She was halfway to the doors when Belle stopped her by saying, “Martha?”

  Martha stopped and looked up her.

  “I love you too,” Belle said.

  “You do?” Martha asked.

  Belle picked up her skirts and ran down the stairs. Martha met her at the bottom of the staircase and scooped her into her arms. “I do,” Belle answered.

  Martha twirled Belle in a circle, then kissed her like there was no tomorrow.

  It looked like I got my happy ending after all.

  ***

  A week went by, then two, then a month. Things ironed out as things always do. About six months later, some Yankee fellow came riding through Deadwood, handing out money like it was candy and trying to pry information out of everyone about the last days of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane. He was pale and thin, balding and looked like he spent his days in the dark. I supposed that what writers look like.

  I had come to the realization that people wanted to believe in the legends of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane. People wanted heroes to look up to. They wanted to believe that there are larger-than-life people out there living the life they always imagined. So, I regaled the pale stranger with the exploits of Calamity Jane. I told him about the seventeen men she killed (not counting Injuns), the bear she wrestled and strangled with her bare hands and about how she killed Jack McCall with her .44 as vengeance for Wild Bill’s death. I sprinkled a little sugar on top by hinting that Calamity and Wild Bill were illicit lovers. He ate up the whole thing. He went back home and wrote one of those dime store novels about it all. It became an instant sensation.

  Some time later I was hunched over my bar, reading the book—it was entitled Shootout in Deadwood—when who should walk through the doors but Pete Weston. He had a United States mail bag slung over his shoulder. He had found himself a good job riding for the Pony Express. He told me he had married a little redheaded gal from Kansas and they had a little boy.

  I gave him a free beer.

  He handed me an envelope, dirty and smudged. It had a return address of General Delivery, San Francisco.

  After Pete left, I opened the letter and read.

  Charlie,

  We made it! The first thing I did was take off my shoes and walk in the ocean. The water is colder than you would think. We started up a café here as there are many people in town, travelers and prospectors and the like, who need some good home cooking. Martha hired some Chinese fellows to erect us a two-room building on Front Street just like I had always dreamed. We live in the back room and the café is in the front. I spend my days cooking and serving. Martha takes care of the books and the money end of things. We make quite the pair. If you ever get out this way, stop in and visit for a spell. This is an exciting city and I think you would like it. There’s all types here and nob
ody looks at you twice.

  I am happy, Charlie.

  I think of you often as does Martha. She told me to tell you not to take any wooden nickels.

  Sincerely,

  Olivia Buchannon

  I folded the letter and placed it in my inside coat pocket next to my heart. That’s where it has stayed for the last thirty years.

  Charles Buttercup Engleman

  May 10th, 1906

  The End

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  Author’s Bio

  Layce Gardner is a screenwriter, a novelist, and a playwright. Her plays have been performed around the world and she is the recipient of The Los Angeles Drama Logue Award for Best Playwrighting. She has written screenplays for every major television network and her movie “Prison of Secrets” was Lifetime’s highest rated movie. She is the Goldie award-winning author of the novel,Tats. She is one half of a dynamic comedy writing duo with her wife, Saxon Bennett. Together, they have written over 45 novels and short stories.

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