by Cynthia Hand
At least that’s what the owner kept prattling on about.
“That there’s the Wild Bill Hickok,” Mr. Cuny whispered excitedly as the man in the long black coat jangled his way into the lobby. “It’s said he’s killed a hundred men in gunfights, but never a one who didn’t deserve it.”
Martha had heard of Wild Bill Hickok, of course. She angled to get a better look at the man. There wasn’t much wild about him that she could see. Even so, she felt a flash of excitement when he sauntered up next to her at the front desk. She’d never been up close to a celebrity before.
He tipped his hat to Mr. Cuny. “I’d like a room.”
“Yessir, Mr. Hickok, sir,” Mr. Cuny stammered. “It’s an honor to serve a man of your quality.”
Wild Bill and the owner began to chat about the weather, but Martha had stopped paying attention. She was staring at the matching pair of Colts strapped to Wild Bill’s hips. Had this man really kilt a hundred men? He didn’t look like a killer. He had kind eyes, she thought.
“All right, now, boy,” Mr. Cuny was saying, “Take his bags up, won’t ya?”
She nodded and grabbed a bag in each hand. It was a heavy burden, but she was used to it. She was strong. “This way,” she said, and led Wild Bill up the stairs.
“Thank you,” Wild Bill said when they arrived at the best room the hotel had to offer. “What’s your name, kid?”
She blushed. The Wild Bill Hickok. Speaking to her.
“Son?” Bill said.
Oh right. Her name. What had she been saying her name was again? “Johnny,” she remembered.
“Just Johnny?”
“Doe. John . . . Doe.”
He gave her a silver coin. “You been working here long?”
“No, sir. A few weeks, is all. I don’t mean to stay on long, neither,” she admitted.
“Oh no? What do you mean to do? You want to be a soldier up at the fort?”
She shook her head. “I, uh— I’m going to be a scout.”
He smiled. “A scout? You can’t be older than fifteen, I reckon?”
Her chin lifted. “I’m seventeen, sir.” (She was fourteen, remember, but lying about her age was a habit by now.) “Old enough to do anything you can. I reckon.”
Wild Bill’s kind eyes crinkled up at the edges. “Is that so?”
“That’s so.”
“Well, thank you for the help, John,” said Wild Bill.
“Good day to you, sir.” She pocketed the coin and went back downstairs, where there were dishes waiting to be washed. It was some time later, when she went to take out the trash, that she got jumped by a boy named Adam Pontipee and his six brothers. This bunch was always causing her trouble—thought they could just take what they wanted, off anybody. Lately, her.
“Lookee here, if it ain’t little Johnny,” sneered Adam. He was taller than Martha, which was saying something. All the Pontipee brothers were tall and redheaded, each named after letters of the alphabet, starting with Adam, then Benjamin, then Caleb, then so on. (This was actually how Martha learned her letters A through G, after which she always winged it.) Adam was the tallest and the meanest.
“This here’s our trash barrel,” he said.
She scoffed. “It belongs to the hotel.”
“It belongs to us right now,” said the bully. “If you want to dump your trash here, you’re going to have to pay a toll.”
“Uh-huh.” Martha decided the toll she’d pay would be her fist to Adam’s freckly nose. Then he was bleeding and howling, and she was running away, the trash scattered behind her. The nearest place of shelter was the carriage house in the back of the hotel, where Martha soon found herself surrounded by seven angry brothers. But that’s when her eyes fell upon a weapon:
A bullwhip.
She grabbed it and acted like she knew what she was doing. She did know how to use it, kind of—on the wagon train out west from Missouri she’d spent time with the bullwhackers, who’d let her play with their whips. She’d learned to shoot then, too, and ride as good as any of the adults. Now she spun the whip in a circle around herself and cracked it on the chin of the nearest boy—Adam. He went down like a sack of potatoes, bawling. She cracked it again—down went Benjamin, and—crack—Caleb.
But then the remaining four decided to rush her all at once.
Martha bit and punched and kicked and whipped with all her might, and she walloped those boys pretty good, considering she was outnumbered four to one. However, she also managed to knock over every single pile of tools and stack of saddles in the building, panic the horses, and light the carriage house on fire. Then she made a break for it and ran for the back door of the hotel, where her busting into the kitchen startled the cook into dropping a tray of glasses, which shattered onto the floor. Martha darted out of the kitchen and into the dining room, where she crashed into a waitress, who spilled a bowl of soup right down onto a lady in a fine silk dress, who shrieked, which sent Martha sprawling backward until she bumped into Wild Bill Hickok again, who’d been standing there watching the entire thing unfold.
She tipped her hat, “Good day, sir,” and tried to run again, but that’s when Mr. Cuny caught her by the ear.
“You, kid, are a walking calamity,” Mr. Cuny observed.
She’d heard that before. “It weren’t my fault,” she panted. “I swear.”
“Nevertheless, son, you’re fired.”
“I didn’t want this stupid job anyway,” she said, which is when he gave her the literal boot out the front door.
She was sitting alone on the boardwalk turning the silver coin over in her hand—her only money in the world now—when Wild Bill Hickok came to sit down next to her. At first he didn’t say anything. He just offered her a bottle of sarsaparilla.
She gulped it down. Then she asked, “Could I hold one of your pistols, sir?”
He drew one of his guns and gazed at it fondly. “Yes. This is Susannah. The other one is Mary Ann. My lady loves.”
“Um, sure.” She wasn’t certain how she felt about guns being named after ladies, but to each his own, she guessed.
“I’d like to offer you a job,” he said then, handing her the gun.
She gave a disbelieving laugh. “You saw what happened. I’m a calamity.”
“I saw that you can handle yourself when the odds are stacked against you,” he said. “I could pay five dollars a week.”
That was more than she’d made in a month at the hotel. She smoothed her thumb across the handle of the gun in her hand. “Why me?”
“I could use a girl like you.”
Her breath caught. She’d been pretending to be a boy so long the word girl didn’t even feel like it applied to her anymore. “Look, I don’t . . . know what you’re talking about . . . I’m not who you think I—”
He held up a hand. “I know who you are.” Then he just came out and told her that he was the one who’d shot her pa back in Salt Lake City. That it’d been a mistake. That he was sorry, and he’d been trying to find her ever since, to set things right.
At some point she jumped to her feet and considered shooting him with his fancy gun, which would be justice, she thought, a famous gunfighter brought down by the girl he’d made an orphan. But then she sat next to him again and cried, and he put his arm around her.
“I know that saying I’m sorry doesn’t make up for it,” Wild Bill said gently. “Not even a little. I’ll go to my grave with that sin upon my soul.”
“Five dollars a week, you say?” she sniffled.
“Plus room and board, although we’ll likely be bedding down in the open a fair amount. I’ll also feed you and clothe you and provide all the necessary supplies.”
“And what would I be doing?”
“This and that. Taking care of the horses. Cleaning and maintaining the equipment. I’m still a garou hunter, but I’ve a mind to turn my talents toward entertainment, some kind of show, maybe. We’ll see. And you wouldn’t be stuck with only me all the time. I have a son
about your age. We’d get on all right together.”
Maybe doing this would be betraying her pa. But when she looked in Wild Bill’s eyes, when he said he was sorry, she believed him.
“The way I see it, kid,” Bill said, “you’ve come to a fork in the road.”
“What’s a fork doing in a road?” she asked.
He stifled a smile. “You’ve got two roads before you. One road you walk alone. You’ve been doing all right for yourself on that road so far, I reckon. I’ve been on that road myself, and it’s nice to be so free. Nobody else to boss you around. But it’s lonesome, and you’ve got to face all the problems life’s going to throw at you by yourself.”
Jane nodded thoughtfully.
“But there’s another road, one where people walk with you, and you shoulder the burdens of life together, you help each other through the tough times. That’s the road I’m inviting you on right now. To walk with me.”
“All right,” she said after a minute. “I’ll walk with you.” She gave him back the ivory-handled pistol.
“This will be a fresh start for you, kid,” he said brightly. “I think you should own up to being a girl, but you should dress how you like. That kind of secret is hard to manage, I find. And you’re going to need a new name.”
She frowned. “My name’s Martha.”
He made a sour face. “No. That’s not right at all.”
“What do you mean that’s not right? It’s my name, ain’t it?”
“If you’re going to be part of my show, you want a name that will stand out, a name people will remember.”
She scoffed. “Like Wild Bill Hickok?”
“James Butler.” He leaned over to shake her hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Martha Canary,” she said stubbornly.
He shook his head.
“Martha . . . Doe?”
He winced. “What’s your middle name?”
“Jane.”
“Jane. That’s it.”
“My name’s Jane?” she asked.
The edges of his eyes crinkled up again. “Nope,” he said. “Your name is Calamity Jane.”
Now, back at the Marriott, still smiling and crying a little, Jane put Susannah back into the box.
“I’m sorry, Bill.” She would have reached for the whiskey, but then she saw the wallet tucked into the side of the box, fat with cash. It was what Bill had won at the poker table today. For her. And obviously some he’d been saving.
There was $128 there.
Enough for a new life. A fresh start.
She looked at the whiskey bottle, now nearly empty, and she knew there were two roads before her once again. One led her to the bottom of a bottle, drinking the pain away over and over until she ended up cutting herself off from everybody else. Her only real friend, in time, the amber glass. That road, she knew, had a bad end.
Or she could pick herself up now and walk with Frank and Annie, if they’d have her, and together they’d do what they could to set things right. Or maybe not right, as things would never be right again, not really, without Bill. But as right as they could make them. They could help one another through it and come out somewhere on the other side. This road was more work. It was harder. And it would hurt.
But she knew which one Bill would want her to choose.
“Oh, all right, Bill, all right,” she complained loudly. Then she put the bottle in the trash and went about finding some gawl-darned boots.
Al Swearengen was surprised to see Jane when she strode into the Gem.
“Have you finally come to see reason?” she asked. “Ready to join the fold?”
“Nope.” Jane slapped the money down on the bar. “Here’s your hundred dollars. Even though the cure’s a scam. Even though someday I’m going to see you pay for what you done, Ma, so help me God, but here you go, you . . . coward.”
The room went silent.
“Did she just call Swearengen a . . .”
“Coward,” piped up a man in the back. “Yep, she did. I heard her.”
“You couldn’t even face him, could you?” Jane accused. “You had to send Jack McCall to shoot him while his back was turned.”
Another hush. “Did she say Al sent Jack McCall?”
“That’s nonsense,” her mother said matter-of-factly. “What quarrel would I have with Wild Bill Hickok? I didn’t even know the man.”
Suddenly there were a bunch of guns out, all pointed at Jane. She swallowed. Maybe she shouldn’t have called her mother yellow. She was still a bit drunk, she admitted to herself. But she was rapidly feeling sober. “You didn’t even know him,” she said softly.
Her mother smiled—the scariest smile Jane had ever beheld. “You’ll come to see all this was necessary, my dear, in time. You’ve been sorely lacking in discipline, and bringing you to heel is going to require a bit of unpleasantness. But I have faith that you’ll come around.”
“You don’t know me, either,” Jane growled.
“You’ll be glad to hear that I sent for your siblings,” Al continued as if Jane hadn’t spoken. “Now that there’s no one hunting me, we can all be a happy family again. You’ll want to set a good example, won’t you, when they arrive?”
Jane stared at her, aghast, but before she could think of anything to say, Ned Buntline burst through the door.
“You again?” said Jane.
“I go where the action is,” said Buntline breathlessly. “I’ve got news. The town’s decided that there will be a trial for Jack McCall!”
“A trial?” said a man from the back of the room. “How can there be a trial when there ain’t no law in Deadwood?”
“Just because there is no government here doesn’t mean we can’t make our own laws,” said Buntline. “What happened to Wild Bill was a crime. You can’t have people murdering celebrities in cold blood in your town—how would that look? So the townsfolk have appointed a sheriff—Mr. Seth Bullock, the man with the free commodes—who was a marshal back in Montana, and there happens to be a man—a Mr. Kuykendall, who rode into town today, who’s a bona fide judge. What luck, wouldn’t you say?” He glanced at Al Swearengen.
“Yes,” said Al slowly. “What luck. And when’s this trial supposed to take place?”
“Tomorrow morning, first thing,” said Buntline.
Jane had been backing toward the door during this announcement, then slipped out and ran. She had to figure out how to stop her mother. She had to find Frank and Annie. But then somebody called her name.
“Janey!” cried the old familiar voice. “Over here, Jane!”
She turned, and there leaning on a cane in the middle of the street was Charlie Utter.
Jane almost bowled him over as she threw herself into his arms. “Charlie! When’d you get here?”
“Five minutes ago,” he said.
She drew back, her lip trembling. “Oh, Charlie, Bill’s dead.”
He nodded grimly. “It’s all anybody’s talking about. Where’d they put the body?”
“It was my fault,” she said as they walked down the street, Charlie limping a bit. “I’m so sorry. My ma is Al Swearengen, and Al Swearengen’s the Alpha, Charlie, and she hates Bill, and she set Jack McCall to straight-up murder him, and I tried to warn him, but he was trying to earn the money to get me out of jail.”
“You were in jail? What for?”
“For being a woof.”
“I see.” He put his arm around her. “Where’d they take his body, again?”
“It’s still at the Number Ten, I think. Oh, Charlie, I’m sorry. I’d trade places with him if I could.”
He stopped and looked at her sternly. “Now see here. Bill has had a target on his back for who knows how long. He’s a gunfighter. He knew this was likely how he was going to leave this world. He wouldn’t have wanted it to be that way for you.”
“But—”
“We need to regroup, figure out what to do now. I’ll take care of the funeral arrangements,” Charlie s
aid, back all of five minutes but still the manager of the show in every sense of the word. “Where can we stay?”
“Frank and Annie still have rooms at the Marriott, I think.”
Charlie’s eyebrows lifted. “Annie’s here, too? Well, good. I want to have a conversation with that girl about my horse. And we’re going to need everybody we can get.”
“But, Charlie—”
“It’s going to be all right, Janey,” he said gruffly. “You’ll see.”
But she didn’t see how.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Frank
“Five dollars for a lock of hair from the legendary Wild Bill Hickok!”
The merchant tent had popped up outside the No. 10 Saloon almost before Bill’s body was cold. It was late now, past midnight, but the main street was filled with rubberneckers, each wanting a piece of Bill’s death.
Frank and Annie were watching the circus from the front steps of the Marriott, George at their feet, his head on Frank’s knee.
Frank couldn’t feel his hands. He couldn’t feel anything, really, not since he’d changed back into a human after they’d brought Jack McCall into custody. But the numbness was better than the alternative. If Frank had been capable of feeling right now, he’d cross the street and flip the tables over. He’d scream and yell. He’d send the tufts of hair they were selling into the mud, even though he knew they couldn’t possibly be Bill’s. Bill’s body was safe under the watch of Charlie Utter at his camp across the river. There was no telling what Frank might do to the vultures who’d descended to pick and nip and steal and merchandize what was left of his father.
But Frank didn’t feel anything. Not rage. Not even sadness.
“Five dollars will get you a piece of history!” the merchants cried.
“That’s so disrespectful,” Annie said quietly. She hadn’t left Frank’s side since he’d wolfed out over Bill’s body. She’d tried to convince him to go inside, get some sleep, but he was not having it.