Yep. Jane was a woof. Frank couldn’t wrap his head around it.
Let’s back up to when Jane was walking down the boardwalk earlier. What she didn’t know was that Frank was watching her. She seemed lost in thought, obviously unaware of her surroundings, because before Frank could catch up with her, she tripped over a golden retriever.
And here was where it got weird. She yelled at the dog. And then promptly had words with it. Frank wasn’t close enough to hear the dog’s thoughts, but he knew a conversation when he saw one.
That’s when things snapped into place. Jane’s strange behavior after the factory raid. Her distracted conversations. Her bushy eyebrows, which Frank had assumed was just dirt. And now she was talking to a dog the way Frank talked to George.
Jane was a garou.
No wonder she’d been distressed lately. She probably felt so alone. Frank knew that feeling of bearing such a heavy secret, and he didn’t know what he would’ve done without Bill’s guidance.
It was Bill who had rescued him from the garou who had killed his family. (That part of the show was true, but Bill hadn’t reached baby Frank before the garou had bitten him that fateful night, a detail they changed in the retelling of the tale.) It was Bill who had taught Frank to control the wolf.
They’d worked on it constantly when he was a child. Any time that Frank got angry, even at the smallest thing, Bill would practice the Wooo with the young boy, and stay by his side as Frank learned to settle the wolf.
Jane could learn to do it. With Frank’s and Bill’s help.
What she needed now was to know the truth about Frank. He had kept his secret for so long, he wondered how it would feel to say the words out loud to another person.
I’m a garou.
Another troubling thought emerged. If Jane was a garou, was it dangerous to keep Annie around? One garou could stay a secret, especially one as practiced as Frank. But a second one, who had arguably the biggest mouth this side of the Mississippi? (And by that, we mean both sides.) If Annie found out, people could get hurt.
He kicked at the dirt.
Bill would know what to do.
When Frank got to Bill’s room, he found it empty. He went downstairs to see the manager, who was chewing on a toothpick.
“Hey, you seen Wild Bill?” Frank asked.
The manager removed the toothpick from his mouth and used it to point. “He’s at the Kauffman Saloon.”
Contemplating the best way to tell Bill the news about Jane, Frank made his way there. The poker room was saturated with smoke and the smell of whiskey.
Bill was sitting at one of the tables, but as usual, he was in his corner with his back to the wall, making it impossible for Frank to lean down and whisper.
“Hey, Dad. Can I speak to you?” Frank said.
“I’m in the middle of a hand. Is it important?” Bill kept his eyes on the pile of chips in the center of the table.
Well, of course Frank wouldn’t interrupt poker if it wasn’t important.
“It’s about Jane,” Frank said. “She needs some help with . . . that . . . book about garou.”
“Jane’s always been able to take care of herself,” Bill said, checking his cards again.
“Yeah, I don’t think this is one of those times.”
A man across the table sighed loudly. “Are we gonna play cards, or are we gonna start a book club?” (Reader, this was before book clubs were a thing, so the man considered himself very clever.)
“I’ll be done in a bit,” Bill said.
Frank rolled his eyes. If Bill would only look at him, he could wink. “She’s gone and gotten herself into . . . a hairy situation. With a bad batch of moonshine.”
Finally, Bill looked up. Frank nodded.
“I fold,” Bill said.
The entire way back to the hotel, Bill was saying things like, “Now don’t scare her off. You know how jumpy Jane can be,” and “We’ll tell her how you handle the wolf,” and “Don’t be too critical of her behavior.”
At this one, Frank scoffed. “I’m never critical.”
Bill shot him a knowing look.
“Okay, okay,” Frank said.
They got to Jane’s room and knocked, but there was no answer.
“Jane.” Frank could hear the urgency in his own voice. “Jane, open up.”
“We need to talk to you,” said Bill. “It’s important.”
From the other side of the door, they heard a thump and then a scuffle and then nothing.
“Stand back.” Frank kicked open the door, but when they stumbled in, they found one bed full of Annie, and the other one empty. Frank felt a breeze. The window was open.
He rushed over to the window to see Jane jumping onto the back of a passing stagecoach.
“Darn it.” Frank looked down at Annie, who was snoring lightly. And cutely, he might add.
“How did she sleep through Jane jumping out the window and us kicking in the door?” Bill asked.
“I don’t know,” Frank said softly, still gazing at her. “She must be a heavy sleeper.”
Bill cleared his throat. “Um, Frank?”
“Yes?”
“You should probably stop staring at her now.”
“Sorry,” Frank said.
“We’ve got to find Jane,” Bill said. “Where do you think she’s headed?”
“Toward the nearest watering hole?”
“I don’t think so.” Bill had opened the wardrobe by Jane’s bed, and there were only Annie’s clothes inside.
Frank sank onto the empty bed. “Why would she leave? Where would she go?”
“Don’t know. She’s got siblings in Salt Lake City. Maybe she’ll head out west.”
Frank put his head in his hands and stared at the floor, where he saw the corner of a paper sticking out from under the bed. He picked it up, and read the headline. “Maybe she’s not running away. Maybe she’s running toward something.” He held up the paper. “A cure for the wolf? In Deadwood? Jane wouldn’t believe this, would she?”
Bill sighed. “Becoming a wolf can make a person desperate. But at least we know where she’s going. Let’s head her off at the station.”
“What about Annie?” Frank said.
Bill smiled sadly. “She was fine before us, she’ll be fine without us.”
But would Frank be fine without her? His chest squeezed at the thought of leaving her without saying goodbye, but maybe it was for the best.
Bill’s hand came down on his shoulder and squeezed. “Let’s go,” Bill said. “Time is of the essence.”
A few minutes later they were standing outside the livery, where they discovered that Bullseye (Jane’s horse, as you’ll remember) was gone. Black Nell, Mister Ed, and Charlie’s horse weren’t in the barn either. Even the donkey, Silver, was missing.
They walked around to the back of the livery to the gated corral. Their horses and the donkey were scattered about. Bullseye wasn’t there.
“That . . . She . . .” Frank was so mad he couldn’t form words.
Bill tipped his hat. “You gotta admit, she can be shrewd when she wants to be. Let’s round ’em up.”
By the time they rode to the station, the train to Chicago (the most straightforward way to Deadwood) had already left. Presumably with Jane on it.
“Time to go pack our bags,” Bill sighed.
As they were leaving the station, two men in the corner caught Frank’s eye. One was Jack McCall, the other a man Frank didn’t know. But he had the biggest handlebar mustache Frank had ever seen.
The hairs rose up on the back of Frank’s neck. “It’s Jack again.”
“Don’t alert him to our presence,” Bill said. “I don’t trust that Jack McCall.”
“Why?” Frank asked.
“Just a feeling,” Bill said.
They watched McCall as he handed the other man a roll of bills.
“Well that’s not suspicious at all,” Bill remarked.
“Why do you think he’s paying him?” Frank whispered.
“I don’t know.” Bill tilted his hat lower over his face. “That’s something we can look into, after we find our Jane.”