My Calamity Jane

by Cynthia Hand

  As luck would have it, Al Swearengen was sitting at the bar when Jane sashayed through the door. At the sight of her, about a dozen of Swearengen’s wolf minions jumped to their feet and drew their guns. She’d definitely beefed up her security since the trial. Jack McCall was nowhere in sight. He must be lying low until he could get out of town, which would have been a good idea seeing as how the townsfolk were still pretty mad that he’d killed Bill.

  “Oh, relax, fellas,” her mother said to the minions. “Are you here with another set of insults?” she drawled at Jane. “Or have you finally come around to my way of thinking?”

  “Yeah, that second thing,” said Jane.

  Al turned to look at her. “What?”

  “I seen the light.” Jane climbed onto the stool next to her mother. “I’ll be in your Pack. I’ll be your Beta. You’ve got an opening now, right, if Jack’s leaving?”

  Al tilted her head to one side. “You’ll be the Beta?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why am I having a hard time believing that?”

  Jane tried to keep her voice steady. “I can explain. But first, spot me a drink?”

  Al frowned. “Are we going to have to have a tough-love talk about your alcoholism?”

  Jane gave her a waiting look.

  “Oh, all right,” Al said, and nodded at the barkeep, who poured Jane a whiskey.

  Jane turned to her mother without drinking it. “The thing is, you got me beat.”

  “I do, don’t I?” An evil, triumphant smile appeared on her mother’s lips. Jane suppressed a shiver of rage.

  “You got rid of Bill. Frank and Annie are leaving town and going back to the show, but there’s no place for me there, what with people knowing I’m a woof. I’m out of options,” Jane said. “I got nowhere else to go.”

  “Poor baby,” said Al.

  “And like you said, blood’s thicker than water. You’re my ma, and my place is with you, I reckon. So I come to ask you to take me back.”

  “But what if I don’t want you?” Al said. “You betrayed me. I don’t take that kind of thing lightly.”

  “I was confused,” Jane said. “There was so much happening, so many surprises, so much to think about, and thinking’s never really been my strong suit.”

  “Indeed. Well,” Al chuckled. She was clearly delighted by how all this was working out. Annie was right. People loved to be told what they wanted to hear. “All right. You are my daughter, after all. I’ll give you another chance to prove yourself.”

  “I’ll take it,” Jane said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Charlie Utter’s in town,” Al informed her. “It’s come to my attention that he’s a Pinkerton agent, tasked with bringing me down.”

  “I know Charlie pretty well,” Jane said.

  “Yes, and he knows you. He trusts you. Which makes you the perfect person to take him out.”

  Jane’s hands started to tremble again, but she clenched her fists and thrust them under the bar. “You want me to kill Charlie Utter?”

  “You can do as you like,” Al said lightly. “But if that man were to bite the bullet, so to speak, I’d see it as a favor done to me. I’d see the person who did me such a favor as a loyal member of the Pack. All would be forgiven.”

  Jane nodded. “Okay. I’ll kill Charlie. I never did like him much. He was always spoiling my fun.”

  “That’s my girl.” Al put her arm around Jane. Jane fought a wave of revulsion. It was just so clear that her ma was evil, through and through. Anything that had been good about Charlotte Canary was long gone. It made Jane sad.

  “Thanks, Ma,” she murmured against Al’s shoulder. “I won’t let you down.”

  “I have faith in you, sweetie,” said Al, drawing back and patting Jane’s cheek. “You can do whatever you set your mind to.”

  Jane forced a smile and raised her glass. “I’ll drink to that.” Then she lowered the glass again. “Have a drink with me? I don’t much like to drink alone.”

  “Oh, all right. Just one can’t hurt, I suppose,” Al said. “A celebratory brandy, if you please,” she said to the barkeep.

  “How about a whiskey, for my sake?” said Jane.

  “Fine. Whiskey,” Al said.

  “I’ll pour it,” said Jane, reaching across the bar and grabbing the bottle of whiskey. In the same moment, she stealthily uncorked the vial that was up her sleeve, poured the wolfsbane and the whiskey into a shot glass, and set it in front of her mother.

  Al smiled and lifted her glass.

  “To family,” Jane said, and she thought of Bill’s kind eyes, now closed forever.

  “To family,” Al agreed.

  They touched glasses and drank.

  Al made a face. “That’s nasty,” she said. “Whiskey’s never been my drink.”

  “It’s an acquired taste, I guess.” Jane wondered how long it would take for the wolfsbane to work. Would it be an instant thing? Was every enthralled wolf in town now suddenly waking up? She glanced over at the wolf minions sitting around the bar. They didn’t seem any different—they were glaring at her exactly the same way they’d been before.

  “Well, I should go see about killing Charlie,” Jane said, hopping off her stool. She’d done what she came to do.

  “Oh, and you should probably make it look like an accident,” remarked Al.

  “An accident?”

  “I don’t want to have to rig another trial.”

  Jane stared at her. Everybody in the room was staring at Al at this point.

  Because Al suddenly had spouted a large, bushy mustache.

  “What?” Al said, feeling the eyes on her. “What’s everybody looking at?”

  “Um, nothing much,” Jane said as Al lifted her hand to her face and gasped in horror.

  As suddenly as it had come, the mustache disappeared. But now Al’s right hand had hair and claws. Al stared at it as her entire arm became that of a garou. But it was only the one arm. Then it quickly shifted back to its normal, human form. There was a crack from beneath her skirt, and Jane knew that one of Al’s legs must be changing. Al’s nose grew out into a snout. Then it receded, but her shoulders swelled, splitting the seams of her fancy jacket.

  Her mother was losing control of the wolf, but one body part at a time.

  Al stood up and whirled to look at Jane, her ears growing into points and sprouting hair. Comprehension dawned in her golden eyes. She picked up the empty whiskey glass and dashed it to the floor, where it burst into a hundred shards.

  “What have you done to me, you stupid girl?” she snarled.

  “What’s going on, Al?” said one of the minions, and Jane instantly recognized his voice. He was wearing an eyepatch and had shaved his mustache off, but it was Jack McCall. “Are you all right? What should we do?”

  The wolf minions, who Jane figured should be becoming unenthralled at this point, leapt to their feet and drew their guns again.

  Oh, rocks, Jane thought.

  Happily, someone burst through the door. It was Ned Buntline—that dirty, rotten, no-good writer. He was brandishing a paper over his head and waving it like a flag. He stopped short when he saw the men with their guns drawn. Then his eyes fell on Al Swearengen, who was still shifting back and forth to a garou. Her left arm was huge and hairy, and a tail was poking out from under her dress.

  Buntline’s mouth fell open. “So the story’s true,” he gasped. “Al Swearengen is a garou.”

  “It’s not what it looks like,” Al panted, thrusting her arm behind her back. “I’ve been poisoned.”

  “Poisoned?” repeated Buntline.

  “Poisoned?” said Jack McCall.

  “By her.” Al lifted a clawed hand to point at her daughter. All the wolf minions spun to look at Jane again, lips curling up to reveal sharp, pointed teeth.

  “Let’s get her,” said Jack McCall, smiling his creepy smile.

  Jane really wanted to punch him in the kisser. But she was outnumbered twelve to one. So she j
ust ran.

  FORTY-ONE

  Frank

  “Poor Jane,” Annie said. “She was so nervous.”

  Frank nodded. They’d found a bench that was far enough away from the Gem to be safe, yet close enough to watch for Jane, and now they were waiting for her to return.

  “At least she can be comforted in the fact that her mother is an evil, no-good . . . I won’t even say the word.”

  Frank smiled, because he was pretty sure she had no idea what word she was going to say. She probably wasn’t even thinking it, because it would be improper.

  “Yeah, her mom is pretty darn evil,” Frank said. “But, when it comes to being an orphan . . .” Frank paused and scratched his forehead. “I don’t know. I can only speak for myself. I grew up knowing that my parents were killed and Bill took me in and saved me. And despite all of that, there’s always that thought. What would life have been like if my parents hadn’t been killed? It’s just the unknown. Jane thought her mother was dead, and then she found out she was alive, which meant she got this second chance with her. So even though Swearengen is, by every definition of the word, bad, I’m afraid this is going to be very hard for Jane.”

  They didn’t speak for a while, Frank kicking at the dirt, Annie smoothing her dress. It was the quiet before the storm, at least it was as quiet as Deadwood ever was, which meant the low rumblings of prospectors rattling rocks and sand around in their tin trays, hoping for gold, and the occasional gunshot going off, gamblers missing spittoons, and painted ladies calling out to men passing by.

  “What do you think will happen?” Annie said. “Will those poor enthralled garou remember anything after Swearengen gets the cure for the cure? Or what if the cure for the cure doesn’t even work, and everything stays the same? Except for the news article will come out, and maybe everyone will think Edward Wheeler is a big fat liar? Oh dear.” Annie placed her hand on her chest. “Wooo.”

  “I don’t know,” Frank said, but he was more interested in the fact that she’d called the garou “poor.” He shifted on the bench so he was facing her. “Annie.”

  “Yes?”

  “You probably drew your own conclusions on Edward Wheeler and Winnie and Jane . . .”

  “Yes,” Annie said, tilting her head.

  “Well, she expressed concern about what Bill would think about such an unconventional love. And I think I said something that was really smart.”

  Annie raised her eyebrows. “And what was that?”

  “I said that Bill would probably say, ‘Love is love.’”

  “Then shouldn’t Bill get the credit for being smart?” Annie said, a mischievous glint in her eye.

  “What? No. He didn’t say it.”

  “But you said he would have said it.” Annie’s lips turned up at the corners.

  “Yes . . . No . . . Well that’s not the point. The point is . . .” Frank cleared his throat. “The point is . . .” He looked into her eyes. And she looked . . . over his shoulder.

  “Hold that thought,” she said.

  Annie stood and walked past Frank. Frank stayed perfectly still and whispered, I love you toward the spot Annie had just abandoned. He was like 90 percent there. She was this close to knowing how he felt about her. But close only counts in horseshoes. (Later the phrase would be amended to say, “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades,” giving it a little boost in cadence, but since hand grenades as we know them were not invented until 1914, the cliché had to remain slightly unbalanced.)

  “Frank, look,” Annie gasped.

  Frank turned. A young boy was walking down the street with a stack of newspapers held together with twine. He took up a post on the street corner and untied the stack.

  “Extra, extra! Read all about it! Al Swearengen is a garou!”

  “It’s starting,” Frank said.

  People began to migrate toward the boy.

  “That ain’t true,” one miner yelled, and then followed it with a tobacco spit for punctuation.

  “Them there are lies,” another one hollered. And yet, they were lining up to buy the papers.

  “Here we go,” Annie said.

  The news spread like the ripples from a rock thrown in a lake. Pretty soon, everyone on the street was walking and reading, sitting and reading, standing and reading, drinking and reading. And then the whispers started. Then the shouts of disbelief.

  Frank could understand the incredulity. The unofficial town leader, the curer of garou, the hater of the abomination . . . a garou herself?

  One man with an unusually dirty beard that looked more like a clump of dirt on his chin, crumpled the paper and threw it over his head. “It’s lies. All lies. Who is this Edward Wheeler anyway?”

  “Ain’t he the one who outed Calamity Jane?” a man with a wooden leg said.

  “So what? Now he thinks everyone famous is a garou? I’d like to see proof.”

  “Hmm,” Annie said. “I’m not sure this is going to go the way we thought it would.”

  The mud-beard man eyed a few other outraged people and jerked his head, and they all headed off together past the hotel and around the corner to the alley.

  “Jane hasn’t had enough time to give Swearengen the cure, that’s all,” Frank said, trying to convince himself as well as Annie.

  “You realize that if the cure for the cure doesn’t free all the thralls, Swearengen could send every last garou after us,” Annie pointed out.

  Frank’s shoulders tensed. He and Annie were good with their guns, Jane was good with a bullwhip, but there was no way they could fend off hundreds of garou if they decided to get organized. Perhaps they had not considered every possible outcome.

  He grabbed Annie’s shoulders. “Annie, if this doesn’t turn out well for us, I want you to know . . . I need you to know . . .”

  “Jane,” Annie said.

  Frank was thrown off. “What about her?”

  Annie pointed. “Jane.”

  Frank turned to see Jane running top speed out of the Gem.

  “Frank! Get the lead out! Annie! Get your gun!”

  Frank and Annie stood bewildered for a moment, for it was only Jane.

  Then the doors to the saloon burst open again, and out poured at least a dozen men, some in mid-transformation, and all of them chasing Jane.

  “RUN!” Jane hollered.

  “Annie, do you have your gun?” Frank asked.

  “You said I wouldn’t need it because we’d have the support of the town!”

  “Haven’t you learned yet not to listen to me?”

  Frank and Annie started running as Jane caught up to them. “It didn’t work,” she said breathlessly. “It only made Swear . . . en . . . gen . . . like semi-woof out, but then . . .”

  “Explain later,” Frank panted, already winded from the running.

  “Obviously the cure for the cure didn’t work,” Annie said in a voice that made it sound like she was out for a brisk walk.

  “Annie, if you can run faster, go,” Frank said.

  “I’m not leaving you two behind,” Annie said.

  They ran and ran, past the Checkmate and the No. 10 Saloon.

  “Does this mean you don’t mind that I’m a garou?” Frank asked.

  “Really, Frank?” Jane spit to one side. “This is when you choose to ask her that?”

  “We might not get another opportunity,” Frank said. “And I haven’t had a chance until now!”

  “Cow pucky!” Jane said.

  “Yes,” Annie said.

  Frank turned toward her. “Yes, you do mind? Or yes, you don’t mind?”

  “Consarn it, Frank, she don’t mind,” Jane said. “Get it through your thick skull. Now will you please come up with a plan?”

  “I’ve got one,” Annie said. “I’m going to split off and get my gun. You two try to zigzag, and it would be helpful if you could lead them into a trap of some sort. Maybe double back. Then I’ll try to pick them off one by one.”

  “Where are you gonna get
a dozen silver bullets?” Frank asked.

  “Where are we supposed to find a trap?” added Jane.

  But by then, Annie was gone.

  Frank and Jane tried to do as instructed. They zigged down one alley and zagged down another, went full circle around the McDaniels Theater and doubled back, and then, finally, one turn led them straight into a trap. Only, it was a trap for Frank and Jane. Because blocking their escape route at the other end of the alley was the man with the mud beard and the rest of his cohorts, who now outnumbered the group they’d been running from.

  Every single member of this new mob drew their guns.

  Jane and Frank reached for the sky.

  “It’s over,” Frank said.

  “I don’t suppose that if we two surrender right here, ya might spare us?” Jane asked.

  But the men’s guns remained drawn. The minions from the Gem rounded the corner, and those who weren’t garou drew their guns as well. Frank and Jane were officially surrounded.

  The mud-beard man cocked his gun, and aimed.

  “I love you, Frank,” Jane said.

  “I love you too, Calam. And Annie. I should have told Annie when I had the chance.” Frank squeezed his eyes shut.

  Bang! A shot rang out.

  Then two more shots. Bang bang.

  Frank had never been shot before, but he was surprised at how little he felt it.

  The first shot had probably killed him instantly, thank the good Lord.

  “Frank,” Jane hissed.

  “You’re here with me?” Frank said, trying to hide the surprise in his voice that Jane would end up in heaven.

  She punched him in the shoulder.

  “Ow,” Frank said. He didn’t think there would be pain in heaven.

  “Frank, we gotta run again.”

  Frank opened his eyes to see the townsfolk—who had previously been under the thrall—chasing the Gem garou, shooting at them as they went. They flew past Frank and Jane like a river going around two boulders.

  Jane and Frank slowly lowered their hands.

  “The cure for the cure must have worked,” Frank concluded.

  Jane nodded. “But why didn’t it work on the Gem minions?