My Calamity Jane

by Cynthia Hand

  She went straight to the livery. Nothing calmed Jane like the company of horses. She immediately spotted Mister Ed and Black Nell in a stall next to Bullseye’s, and the sight of them cheered her greatly. Bill was somewhere close by. And Frank. She took some time brushing all three horses down, checking their hooves, talking to them softly about how pretty they were and how much she’d missed them. Nell had a hot ankle on the back right, and Jane wrapped it in a poultice to leech out the heat. Then she stood for a long while petting Nell’s gleaming black neck.

  “Wooo,” she said softly to herself. “Woooooooooo.”

  She felt a bit silly for how much she’d fussed last night. It had been a dark night, surely. It had felt like the world was collapsing in on her. But today the sun was shining. It would be all right, somehow. Maybe. She hoped.

  She needed to clear things up with her ma.

  After a few hours with the horses, Jane decided that enough time had probably passed for Al to finish up whatever business had been occupying her, so she headed back to the Gem. She was almost there when something hit her in the back of the head.

  A rock.

  She touched her head and came away with a streak of blood.

  She didn’t even get a chance to look around before the second rock struck her in the back. This time she saw who did it: a little boy. Couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. He wasn’t wearing any shoes. Reflexively she reached into her pocket for some nickels, only she didn’t have nickels. And she didn’t have pockets.

  Women’s clothing sucked.

  And oh, yeah, he’d thrown a gawl-darned rock at her. “What’s your problem?” she yelled at him.

  The boy’s lip curled. “Get on out of here, you dirty rotten garou,” he sneered. “We don’t need the likes of you in this town.”

  Jane was speechless as she watched him run away. She glanced at the back of her hands to see if they were hairy. They weren’t. They were clean, actually, even under the nails. She checked for a mustache—nothing. So how had he known? And why did he care enough to throw a rock at her, when this town must be teeming with garou, all come for the cure? It didn’t make sense.

  That’s when she noticed the newspaper lying in the mud in front of her. She leaned over stiffly and picked it up.

  Now Jane couldn’t read, but she did know the shape of her own name. And she did know what her name on the front page of a paper meant, too. She’d known there was a story coming, after all. But she hadn’t guessed that it would be so soon.

  “Oh, Winnie,” she murmured. “Why’d you have to be that way?”

  A man stumbled out of the Gem and caught sight of her. His face broke into an ugly grin. “Hey, Calamity Jane! Ha-roo!” he howled at her. “Ha, ha-roo!”

  That got her bristles up in more ways than one. She bared her teeth and reached for her bullwhip, but she didn’t have it on her. Curse this female getup! The man skittered away, laughing.

  “Wooo,” Jane muttered to herself, and hurried into the Gem.

  Her mother still wasn’t available, on account of the cure-show going on.

  “She wants to talk to you, after,” a painted lady named Trixie informed Jane in such an ominous tone that Jane’s stomach became an instant pit of dread. “She said not to let you go anywhere.”

  Jane sat in the back to watch the show. Al was saying, “After many years of trial and error, I came up with a serum that will, once injected into the bloodstream, attach itself to the part of the person that has been corrupted into a wolf, and quickly disintegrate the connection between the man and his inner beast. Any man who wants to, can be cured.”

  That still sounded pretty good to Jane. It actually summed up her entire plan for the talk with her ma. “Give me the cure, if you please,” she’d say, and then the no-good writers could write about that and everything could return to normal.

  “The cure is for me,” she thought stubbornly, staring at her mother. “The cure is real.”

  Al turned to Ida. “Can you fetch Mr. Terminus for me, please?”

  Ida disappeared for a moment and then came back with a middle-aged man who walked with a cane. The man shuffled up to stand next to Swearengen. He was wearing a wide hat and a brown bushy beard, so that a person could hardly see his face.

  Al patted him on the shoulder. “It’s good to meet you, Mr. Terminus. Can you tell me about what ails you?”

  “Oh, Doctor, Doctor,” the man croaked like he had a throat full of gravel. “I don’t want to be a woof no more! Can you help me?”

  Jane leaned forward. Something about the way he said the word woof struck a warning chord in her. “No,” she whispered.

  Al nodded gravely. “Yes, I can help you, sir. But this life-changing procedure can only work if you truly believe it will. Do you believe, Mr. Terminus? Do you desire with all your heart and soul to change?”

  “I believe!” The old man handed Al a heavy bag of coins that contained what Jane assumed was a hundred dollars, which Al handed to Ida.

  Jane stared hard at the man as they put him into the cage and proceeded exactly as they had with the old lady she’d seen in the earlier show. They whipped and poked him until he turned into a garou, they gave him the injection, Al counted off the time with a pocket watch, and then Mr. Terminus became a man again. Al unlocked the cage and gave him a robe to wear, scooping up his hat so the man could put it on.

  “Oh, thank you, thank you,” wheezed Mr. Terminus, smoothing his beard back into place.

  “You’ve only got yourself to thank,” Al said. “Well, all right if you insist, you’re welcome.”

  They did the color test with the handkerchiefs. Mr. Terminus passed with flying, er, colors.

  “Well done, sir,” Al said, clapping him on the back.

  Mr. Terminus smiled and smiled.

  Jane realized she was standing up. She was walking forward, her eyes fixed on the man who’d been cured. And his smile. “I know you!” she said. “It’s you! And it was you in the first show, too! It was you all along!”

  “Uh, time for you to rest now,” Al said quickly, catching sight of Jane. Ida and the man calling himself “Mr. Terminus” glanced at each other and then practically ran off the stage, so quickly that the man forgot his cane. But then he no longer seemed to need it. Because he no longer had a limp.

  Jane was standing right below the stage now, staring up at her mother with wide eyes.

  Al cleared her throat. “What you’ve seen today is a miracle,” she said, looking deliberately away from Jane. “I beseech you, if you have a family member or a friend who’s a garou, tell them about what you’ve seen here today. Spread the word. And wolf by wolf we shall . . . ahem . . . cure this great land.”

  The crowd was clapping. Jane found herself clapping, too, at the sheer audacity of what she’d just witnessed, at how easily she’d been duped.

  It was true, she realized, all that Frank had said. The cure was fake.

  Al was sitting at her desk reading that gawl-darned newspaper article when Jane rushed in, breathless with outrage and shock. Her mother didn’t pause in her reading when Jane arrived; she simply said, “Sit,” in such a cold authoritative voice that Jane plopped into a chair, and then, after what felt like the longest five minutes of Jane’s life, Al lowered the newspaper, folded it carefully, and laid it on the desk.

  “Well, this story about you is troubling,” Al said. “But nothing we can’t deal with.”

  “Why would you do it?” Jane asked. “Why would you tell people you’ve got a cure if you don’t? What do you stand to gain by lying about it?”

  “Money,” Al answered. “And control. There are two types of people in this world, you see, sweetie, the weak and the strong. Even among the garou, this is true. The strong follow me of their own volition. They understand that the wolf in their blood makes them superior to human beings in every way. They recognize that they are the future. We’re going to make this a country of our own, you see. A country of garou. Through the moon I
call the wolves, and when they arrive I give them a task to prove their loyalty, and once they’ve proven themselves, they are welcomed as part of the Pack.”

  “The Pack?” Jane repeated hoarsely. Shoot. She wished she could run straight to Frank and Bill, wherever they were now. She’d tell them she’d figured out who the leader of the Pack was. She’d finally solved the mystery. But she doubted they’d be pleased, seeing the mess it left them in. Especially her. “So what about the cure?” she asked.

  Al scoffed. “The weak ones come to me and desire to be as they were before: insignificant, puny humans. To these people, I offer the cure, at a price, of course. And then I give them the serum, which compels them to obey me. If they insist that what I am is a disease, I cannot help them. I can only make use of them in other ways.”

  A shiver ran down Jane’s spine. She thought about all those men along the trail to Deadwood, the ones who would disappear during the full moon, making their way here to such a fate, so full of hope, as she had been until tonight.

  There was a gentle knock at the office door. “May I come in now?” said a familiar voice, and Al said, “Yes, come,” and just like that, Jack McCall was standing before them, smiling his creepy smile.

  “Hullo, Jane,” he said.

  She felt like she was going to be sick. “Hullo, Jack.”

  “You recognized me this time. I wondered if you would, seeing as we’re such good friends. I was a bit offended, the first time you saw the show.”

  “Yeah, well, sorry,” Jane said numbly. “You’re a pretty good playactor, Jack. You sure had me fooled.”

  “Thank you, kindly, miss,” he said, and gave a bow. “And now you’re reunited with your ma. Ain’t that something to celebrate?”

  “That’s something, all right,” Jane agreed.

  “Yes, Jack, thank you,” said Al. “For helping my daughter find her way, I am forever grateful. Now you may go. We’ve much to catch up on, she and I.”

  Jack’s smile faded, but he nodded briskly and shuffled out.

  “He helped me find my way?” Jane asked, her jaw tightening.

  “Jack McCall is one of my most loyal and dedicated disciples,” Al said. “He believes in the way of the wolf. I have never given him the true serum, for all the ‘cures’ he’s taken for me on stage. But even without the serum, he’s always followed my orders to the letter, without question. He’s my Beta, in fact.”

  “He’s your what now?”

  “It’s the Greek alphabet,” Al explained. “I am the Alpha, which means I’m the first, the boss, the leader of the Pack, and the second in line is called the Beta.”

  Jane shook her head in awe of what a fool she had been.

  “I’d like that to change, though, now that you’re here,” her mother added.

  Jane stared at her. “Huh?”

  “I’d like you to be my Beta,” Al said. “That’s why I sent Jack to find you and to bite you, so I could call you to me. This way—don’t you see—we can rule this new country together, as mother and daughter. We can be together always. I’ll even send for your siblings, once we’re better established. We’ll be one big happy family again, as we were meant to be. And we will unleash hell on this sad world and come out shining like stars.”

  Jane was frankly getting a bit sick of her mother’s metaphors. She’d never been one to enjoy purple language. She rubbed a hand over her eyes. “Ma,” she said. “Come on, now. You had Jack McCall bite me? Couldn’t you have—I don’t know—sent a message? I would have come if you’d asked me to.”

  “I cannot make an exception for you, however,” Al went on seamlessly, as if Jane hadn’t spoken. “You will have to prove yourself, same as the others.” She stopped and gazed at Jane with a calculating gleam in her eyes.

  “What do you want, Ma?” Jane asked wearily.

  Al folded her hands in her lap. If she’d had an evil cat, she would have been stroking it. “I’ve recently been informed that a particular garou hunter has arrived in town—the one I told you about, that odious man who chased me for a thousand miles and tried to end me at every turn, but I outsmarted him. There is nothing I wish so much as to kill this man, to gut him first, to see him suffer and squirm and know that I have beaten him, at last. I’d do it with my bare hands, if I could.”

  Jane swallowed. She knew who her mother was referring to. She’d known for a while, she realized. She could feel the choice she was about to be asked to make roaring toward her like a runaway freight train, and she did not want to make it. “What—what does this hunter have to do with me?”

  Al smiled. “He has everything to do with you. He’s the reason we’ve had to be apart all these years. He killed your father.”

  “I know,” said Jane. “He—”

  “And that’s not the worst of it,” Al snarled. “Then he sought you out—he as good as kidnapped you, and then he made you his lackey. He tried to mold you into a hunter, too, to harass your own kin. And he put you on a stage for people to gawk at. My daughter, a laughingstock. But no more. No more, I say.”

  Jane couldn’t breathe. “Ma— You can’t mean—”

  “You’re going to kill him,” Al said, lunging forward suddenly and pinning Jane’s hand under her own on top of the desk. “I’d do it myself, gladly, easily, with a snap of my fingers—he’s really so weak now, it’s pathetic, it’ll hardly be a challenge, but there’s justice in you being the one. I knew, the instant I recognized you in the papers, standing right there next to my greatest enemy, that you would be the one to bring him down.”

  “Ma, no,” Jane begged.

  Al squeezed her hand so hard it hurt. “You have always been strong. You’ve always been loyal. You will do this, to become part of the Pack. To become my Beta. To fulfill your destiny.”

  Jane managed to yank her hand away and pull it to her chest. She shook her head wildly. “Ma, don’t ask me to kill Bill. I can’t.”

  Al stood up. She was a tall woman, as tall as Jane, but imposing in a way Jane would never be. Her eyes glowed in the lamplight. “You can. You must. You will kill Wild Bill Hickok. And then you will be free.”

  Jane’s eyes closed. It was like time stopped, the world gone silent and still, awaiting her decision.

  She could picture exactly what Al Swearengen was offering: Jane would never have to worry about being alone again. She’d always have nice clothes and good food and the respect of the people around her. No one would laugh at her anymore, because they wouldn’t dare. Her brother and sisters would be with her at last: Lena in a fancy dress with curls in her hair, being treated right. Elijah in shiny shoes, his hair combed. Hannah and Sarah Beth laughing and playing and wanting for nothing.

  Jane could have everything she’d ever really wanted.

  But Bill. Bill was the price. She remembered the regret in his kind blue eyes when he’d confessed to her that he’d been the one to kill her father. She thought about the way he’d looked after her, even though he’d had nothing to gain by taking her in.

  Jane’s shoulders straightened. Her eyes opened again. She gazed solemnly at her mother.

  “No,” she said.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Frank

  “I can’t believe she didn’t believe me,” Frank said for the hundredth time. He glared into the shot of whiskey on the bar in front of him. “After all these years together, you’d think she’d trust me by now.”

  Beside him, Bill grunted. “People can be peculiar when it comes to family.”

  Frank was still having trouble with that idea, too. “Al Swearengen is not Jane’s family,” he insisted. “She’s never been there when Jane’s needed her, but we have.”

  “Well, that’s complicated.”

  “I don’t see what’s so complicated about it.”

  Bill turned and studied Frank’s face. Then he signaled to the barkeep at the No. 10 Saloon to pour him another whiskey. He threw back the shot and wiped his beard. “Frank, did you ever wonder why I took Jane in?”

/>   “I thought you just picked up strays, like me. I thought it was kind of your thing.”

  Bill shook his head. “A few years back, when I was hunting full-time, and you were staying with the Browns, I was on the trail of the most vicious garou I’d ever come across. It stayed in wolf form for months on end, biting people indiscriminately, killing some, looting and robbing, and tearing places apart. It seemed dead set on bloodthirsty chaos. I was determined to find that monster and bring it down.”

  Frank had heard his father tell many a tall tale on the stage, but this was different. He’d never heard this story.

  “At one point, I caught up with it in Cheyenne,” Bill continued in a melancholy tone. “Townsfolk were running down the street, shouting about a garou attack at the butcher shop. When I got there, the garou had the butcher and his wife cornered. The garou was toying with them. It had already cut up the poor wife’s face with its claws, to mar her and terrify her. The butcher was begging the garou to stop. The garou made like it was backing off, but then it raised its arm to strike the butcher down. I drew my pistols, but the garou knocked me over with a slab of beef.”

  Frank raised his eyebrows. “Beef, huh?”

  Bill pshawed. “It was a big slab of beef. Once I was down, the wolf came over the counter at me, teeth snapping, but I got a shot off. Not a killing one—just through the shoulder—but enough to make it think twice about eating me. It dropped to the floor, yelping and whimpering, like a hurt dog. Then it went quiet. I figured it knew its time was up.” He paused, his eyes troubled. “I took aim to shoot it, through the heart this time, but right then, the garou began to change back to a human, and I saw it was a woman.”

  “A woman?” Frank echoed.

  Bill nodded grimly. “I admit that I hesitated. I’d never shot a woman. She was beautiful, too, tall, dark of hair, proud. She stood up and held out her hand. There was blood on her fingers from where I’d shot her. She said, ‘This is the only blood you’ll ever get from me, Wild Bill Hickok.’ I didn’t know what to say to that, but it didn’t matter. Faster than any garou I’ve ever seen, she was a wolf again and gone through the window. But first, she left me this.” Bill tugged aside the collar of his shirt.