by Cynthia Hand
So they sat there, together, watching. Waiting. Only Frank didn’t know what they were waiting for.
George pushed his nose into Frank’s hand. He wasn’t saying much either, but his large brown eyes were mournful. Frank scratched behind his ear absently.
Just then an official-looking man in a suit walked out of the McDaniels Theater. With dramatic flourish, the man removed his hat and held it high. “Put your name in for the jury! A hundred names for jury selection!”
The man was instantly mobbed with merchants and miners alike, all scrambling to write their names on scraps of paper, clamoring to be on the jury.
“Trial starts tomorrow morning at nine a.m. sharp!” the man said.
“I wish they allowed women on the jury,” Annie muttered. “I want to be on that jury.”
Me too, thought George.
Frank didn’t answer. A fresh wave of grief tore through him, from his head to his feet, and he doubled over. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. And then, as fast as it had come, the grief was gone.
George whined and licked his face.
“Are we going to go to the trial?” Annie asked.
Frank turned to her, numb again. “I want to be there when they tell Jack McCall he’s going to hang.”
Later Annie finally convinced Frank to eat something. She watched him while he nibbled halfheartedly on a biscuit and took a few sips of coffee. Frank felt like everyone in the restaurant was staring at them. Maybe they recognized him—the Pistol Prince. Maybe they were here to get a piece of him, too.
“Annie?” Frank said.
“Yes?”
“Thank you for standing by me.”
Annie reached for Frank’s hand, and then pulled back abruptly. “Of course.” She smoothed the napkin over her lap.
Frank didn’t know if she’d pulled back because of the onlookers or because she hadn’t wanted to touch him. She’d seen him, he realized with a dull sense of horror. She’d seen him lose control. She’d seen his fur and claws and snapping teeth. How could she see him ever again?
But she was still here. With him. That was something. And she sat with him until the earliest morning hours, when Frank walked her to her room and reluctantly said good night.
The next morning, the McDaniels Theater was bursting at the seams for the trial of the century. Jack McCall sat at a table on the stage, alongside his counsel. At another table sat the prosecutor. They were arranged at an angle, so both audience and judge could see. Everyone was waiting for the judge.
“Oh dear,” Annie said. Beside him, she scowled at the newspaper she was reading.
“What is it?” Frank asked.
“Nothing,” Annie said, folding it.
“More stuff about Bill?”
She nodded.
Charlie wasn’t there, because he wanted to guard Bill’s body. Jane hadn’t been able to bring herself to come to the trial, for fear that she would lose her temper and wolf out. George had opted to keep an eye on her. So it was just Frank and Annie and a few hundred people who’d come to watch the spectacle.
Frank studied Jack McCall’s face. He closed his eyes and pictured walking up to him from behind, gun drawn. Would he be able to do it? Murder him in cold blood?
Frank wouldn’t have thought so before, but this grief of his was a strange monster. This morning it was sitting heavy in his chest, occasionally swelling into violent urges to avenge his father. If Annie hadn’t been stuck to him like glue, he might have given in.
There were reporters all over the courtroom, their pencils scribbling furiously, even though the trial hadn’t started. Frank recognized the writer he’d met on the train, Edward Wheeler. He wondered if any of this would have happened if it weren’t for that article about Jane.
Ugh, reporters. That other loathsome writer—Ned Buntline—was sitting in front of Annie. She peered over his shoulder to see what he was writing. Then she gasped.
“‘A small, sandy mustache covered a sensual mouth’?” Annie read indignantly. “Who is that supposed to describe?”
Buntline tilted his notebook so she could no longer read it. Annie poked his shoulder roughly. She contorted herself so she could read more. “You think Jack McCall’s mouth was supple when he was pulling that trigger and killing my friend?”
“Easy,” Frank murmured.
“Sorry.” She righted herself in her chair. “It just makes me so angry, you know.”
Frank knew. “It’s okay.”
“Supple lips,” Annie grumbled loudly. “I’ll supple your—”
“Please don’t finish that sentence,” Frank said.
“Point of order,” the bailiff called and the crowd grew quiet.
Judge Kuykendall entered the room and sat in a chair that faced the two tables and the audience. The jury filed in afterward and sat in the front row of the theater.
Then, making a conspicuous entrance, Al Swearengen strode in, walked down the aisle, and sat in the one seat left in the front row.
Frank made a move to stand, but Annie held him back.
The judge put up a hand. “I ask the good people of Deadwood to sustain me in the discharge of these duties. I am in the unenviable position to oversee the trial of Jack McCall, who is charged with the murder of James Butler Hickok, better known as Wild Bill.”
Frank flinched at the sound of his father’s name. The prosecutor rose to address the court. “We would like to call Charles Rich to the stand.”
A man Frank didn’t recognize stood and went to the chair next to the judge.
“Mr. Rich, you were at the poker table with Wild Bill. Can you tell us about what you witnessed?” the prosecutor asked.
“Man comes in and walks right up to Wild Bill and shoots him in the back of the head, and shouts, ‘Take that!’”
Murmurs of outrage rippled through the audience.
“And can you identify the man you saw?”
Mr. Rich pointed to Jack McCall. “That’s him.”
More murmurs. More outrage.
The prosecutor brought two more witnesses who’d been in the No. 10 at the time of the shooting. They both had the same story.
“They have to find him guilty,” Annie said. “They have to.”
Frank nodded.
But then the defense called P. H. Smith.
“I know Jack McCall, and he is mild-mannered,” Smith said. “I also had drinks once with Wild Bill Hickok, and he has a bad reputation. Always quick to use his guns and shoot people. I mean, think of all the people he’s killed. Hundreds? Jack McCall probably saved lives killin’ Wild Bill.”
Frank’s hands began to tremble.
“Wooo,” Annie whispered in his ear.
Buntline was scribbling furiously, documenting the witness’s erroneous testimony. Annie shoved his shoulder. “Don’t write that down.”
“Freedom of the press,” the reporter growled back.
“Everyone knows Bill was a kindhearted man,” Annie said. “This is fake news.”
“Wooo,” Frank said to Annie.
Finally the defense called Jack McCall to the chair. Frank could barely stand looking him in the face. That creepy smile. Those beady eyes. He’d sensed all along that Jack McCall was bad news.
“I’m going to murder his face,” Annie said under her breath.
“Bill wouldn’t want you to do that.” Frank knew she wasn’t serious. She’d already had her chance to kill Jack McCall, and she’d chosen not to.
“Bill is a better man than I,” Annie said.
“Was,” Frank corrected forlornly, feeling the pain in his chest.
McCall’s counsel asked Jack why he shot Wild Bill Hickok.
Jack McCall straightened his spine (although your narrators don’t know how he did it, considering we are pretty sure he was spineless). “Well, men, I have but few words to say. Wild Bill killed my brother, and so I killed him. Wild Bill threatened to kill me if I ever crossed his path. I am not sorry for what I have done. I would do the same
thing over again.”
“Liar!” a voice shouted out. It was a moment before Frank realized he was standing, and the voice was his voice. Everyone turned to look at him.
“Order!” said the judge.
Buntline was still writing away.
Annie rolled up her newspaper and smacked him on the head.
“Order!” the judge repeated.
Frank sank to his chair, glaring at McCall, and McCall had the gawl-durn nerve to glare back.
“Seeing as there are no more witnesses, court will adjourn,” the judge said. “Please clear the theater while our fine jury decides the fate of Jack McCall.”
Frank and Annie returned to the steps of the Marriott across the street. The wait was unbearable. Every second passed like a drop of sticky sap making its way down the bark of a tree. Jack McCall’s fate was out of their hands now.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Annie suggested.
“I don’t want to be somewhere else when the verdict comes down,” Frank said.
“Well, then, let’s just pace.” So that’s what they did, back and forth and back and forth on the muddy road in front of the McDaniels Theater, until the afternoon sun began to sink lower in the sky.
And then, out of nowhere, Annie reached out her hand, and Frank took it.
He couldn’t hold in his question any longer. “Annie?”
“Yes?”
He stopped and faced her. “You saw me as a wolf.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Does that mean— Do you think you can—”
Annie looked up at him expectantly. “Yes?”
But before he could get the rest of his question out, bells rang on the street. The man in the suit emerged from the McDaniels Theater. “Verdict’s in!”
Everyone rushed forward, but Frank remained frozen in place.
The man held up a piece of paper. “A statement from the jury. ‘We the jurors find the prisoner, Mr. Jack McCall, not guilty.’ He is free to go.”
THIRTY-NINE
Annie
There was so much injustice in this world. Annie had believed there was a good chance that the people of Deadwood would go against Jack McCall and—by association—Swearengen. It had seemed reasonable to Annie that Deadwood might care more about the most famous gunslinger in the world, but Swearengen clearly held the whole town in her thrall, even if they weren’t all garou. Annie had believed the truth would prevail.
She’d been wrong.
Now the four of them—Annie, Jane, Frank, and George—were sitting around in Annie’s room at the Marriott (Jane had insisted on sneaking in through the window, even though she’d paid her debt), trying not to think too hard about the trial and Jack McCall’s exultant expression when he’d been set free.
It was almost more than Annie thought she could bear.
(Ahem, narrators here. We know, we’re supposed to be writing a comedy, and this whole part is pretty sad, but sometimes bad things happen and people are sad. That’s the truth of life. Still, even the saddest of times can have moments of humor to help pull you through to the other side of grief. We’ll get you there. We promise.)
“What do we do?” Annie asked.
“What can we do?” Jane countered.
Frank said nothing at all. Annie had liked Mr. Hickok, although she hadn’t known him well, and Jane had loved him, but he was Frank’s father. Frank wasn’t turning into a wolf anymore, but his quiet grief was even more difficult to watch.
Annie started to reach for his hand again but stopped short. She didn’t know what kind of comfort he wanted now—or if he wanted any at all.
“We’ll have to tell Agnes,” Jane murmured. “She needs to know what happened.”
Right. Mr. Hickok’s wife.
“I wish Charlie would come back here,” Jane said. “He’d know what to do.”
“What is he doing now? And can we do that, too?” Annie asked hopefully.
Jane flopped back onto the bed. “He’s still watching over the bo—” She coughed a little. “You know. Him. Making sure no one cuts off pieces of his beard to sell and all that. And”—her voice caught—“preparing him, I guess. For the funeral.”
“For the funeral,” Annie echoed. It was so hard to think about. How would Frank endure it? Again, she started to reach for him, then shifted to make it look like she had meant to sit on her hand this entire time.
“Jack McCall is leaving town in the morning,” Jane said.
“Yeah. I heard.” Annie sighed. Maybe it was best that Jack McCall was leaving, but it seemed wrong that he got away scot-free while everyone else had to miss Mr. Hickok.
“Swearengen is making him,” Jane added.
“I heard that, too,” Annie said. Swearengen had stood up after the verdict and suggested that it was best if Jack McCall left, what with him being a no-good murderer, giving Deadwood a bad name. Which Annie found wildly hypocritical.
Jane wiped at her face, about as discreetly as Annie had sat on her hand earlier, and for several more minutes, they all just took up space and breathed stale air.
“There must be something we can do.” Annie hated this—doing nothing when they should have been doing something—and taking action was the only cure. “There must be a way to make people see that Swearengen ordered Jack McCall to do it.”
“It wouldn’t matter if they did,” Jane said. “They won’t go against her.”
“But what if they did?” An idea nudged at the back of Annie’s mind. “People are afraid of her, but what if they were mad at her, too? What if we could turn the town against her?”
Jane frowned. “How do you propose we do that?”
“She’s been putting all these wolves under her thrall.” Annie popped up out of her chair. “But what if they weren’t under her thrall anymore? What if everyone in town found out that she’s been lying about the cure, that she’s been enthralling wolves, and that she ordered Jack McCall to kill Mr. Hickok? What if—”
“What if you stopped with the what-ifs?” Jane said.
“Right,” Annie said, “but what if we turned the town against Swearengen?”
“How,” Frank said slowly, “do you propose we do that?”
A grin formed on Annie’s face. “With the cure.”
“The cure?” Jane sat up, scowling. “That doesn’t seem right.”
“I agree with Jane,” Frank said. George, who’d been sitting quietly at his feet for the entire conversation so far, stood up then, and yipped.
“The cure for the cure.” Annie bounced on the balls of her toes. “We’ll get the cure for the cure and free all the thralls and they’ll hate Swearengen and then the whole town will hate her, too. And this time they won’t be shy about it.”
“You have a cure for the cure to free all the thralls?” Jane asked.
“Not me. Many Horses. She gave me something for her sister. But Walks Looking resisted, like you did, so I gave it back to Many Horses.”
“You didn’t think we’d need it later?” Frank said. George tilted his head.
“It wasn’t mine to keep.”
“You didn’t ask if you could keep it?” Jane asked.
“I didn’t think we’d need it.”
Frank frowned. George growled. “All right. So you want to find Many Horses again and ask for the cure for the cure to free all the thralls, and then turn the town against Swearengen.”
“Exactly!” Annie grinned at him, excited now that there was something to be done. “When the townsfolk find out what she’s really been doing, they’ll be furious!”
“I think we’ve had enough angry mobs, though,” Jane said thoughtfully. “What with all the angry mobs we’ve had.”
Frank nodded. “They do like their angry mobs in Deadwood. But I agree that we need another approach.”
“Like what?” Annie tried not to be miffed that her plan wasn’t enough for him.
“We need to give them another source of information,” Frank said.
“Li
ke what?” Annie asked. “Like a newspaper article?”
Frank nodded again. “And it needs to come from somewhere they trust.”
“Like where?” Jane asked.
“An unbiased reporter.”
“Like who?” Annie and Jane asked at the same time, although Jane asked with a note of dread in her tone and believe us, Annie did not fail to notice.
“That Edward Wheeler fellow—”
“Ooooh, no,” Jane said. “Nope. Not gonna happen. No way. No how. No ifs, ands, or buts.”
“Edward Wheeler wrote the article about Jane!” Annie pointed out. “Edward Wheeler is the reason for that angry mob that dragged Jane into the Gem in the first place.”
“I agree,” Jane said.
“Me too,” Frank agreed. “And yet, that makes Edward Wheeler the perfect man for the job. The town knows him because of that article. The town will listen to him on this, too.”
“Edward Wheeler is not the man for the job,” Jane said.
“Why not?” Frank asked.
“Because she— I mean he, he’s the one who—” Jane bit off the words and glanced at Annie, her face turning a soft shade of pink.
“Who what?” Annie frowned.
“We kissed!” Jane threw up her hands. “We kissed, but it doesn’t matter! We’re not talking to him!”
“You kissed?” Annie squealed, and her mind flew back to the day her older sister, Lydia, came home talking about a young man—the same young man she ended up marrying later. (Whoops, did we forget to mention Annie’s older sister until now? Well, she had an older sister. Her name was Lydia. She’d gotten married and moved away years ago.) Lydia had been moody and contrary, going on about how much she hated the guy . . . followed by an ode to the color of his eyes. It had been a confusing few days before Lydia had admitted to liking the boy. “You have a crush on Edward Wheeler?”
(Reader! About the word crush. Around this time, people were using mash to mean a romantic infatuation, but Annie had never liked the way it sounded. Too icky. Crush, however—it just sounded better to her, so she was doing her very best to change hearts and minds and slang. Unfortunately, most folks thought Annie wasn’t good at colloquialisms, and so they either ignored her perceived slipup, or told her, “Stop trying to make crush happen.” It did catch on eventually, but not during the time this novel takes place. Anyway, etymology lesson over.)