Annie had been robbed.
Frantically, she searched through the drawers and wardrobe and even under her bed, in case her money had migrated to better climates, but everywhere she looked, her money was not there.
Oh, some of it was. There was still two dollars and fifty cents, along with—mysteriously—a pink rock about the size of her thumbnail. But a whole ten dollars was missing.
“Argh!” she cried, because money didn’t just get up and walk away. Money certainly didn’t change into rocks overnight.
It hadn’t been much money, but it was all her earnings from the show—everything she hadn’t sent to her family—and she’d been counting on it to get her through the next couple of weeks. Show business paid, but it didn’t pay that well.
Someone knocked on the door.
“What do you want?” she yelled, digging through the trunk below the window. It had to be here somewhere. It had to be.
“Annie, it’s me,” Frank said from the other side of the door. “We need to talk.”
That was never a good sign. Annie jerked up straight and hit her head on the windowsill. “Darn it to heck!” she swore, and somewhere in Darke County, her mama steamed up in outrage and didn’t quite know why.
“Are you all right?” A note of urgency filled Frank’s voice. “Can I come in?”
“Yes.” Annie rubbed the back of her head as the door opened and Frank stepped inside. He wore his brown coat, tall boots, and a worried frown. Annie was suddenly grateful she’d dressed first thing, before she’d gone looking for all her worldly possessions.
“What happened?” Frank asked, looking her over for injury. “You’re not bleeding.”
“No,” she agreed. “But I think I was robbed. I should check if Jane—” At last, she glanced around the room and realized that Jane’s side was empty. “Where is Jane, anyway?”
“That’s what I’ve come to talk to you about.”
“About Jane?”
Frank nodded.
“What about Jane?”
“I’m sure you’ve noticed that she’s gone.”
“Just now, yes.” This was going to be an awkward conversation. Annie could tell. “I was distracted by the realization that I’ve been robbed. Ten dollars is gone. Mr. Frost should be alerted to the presence of a thief right away.”
Frank sighed. “It was probably Jane who robbed you.”
“What?” It came out like a shriek. Annie took a breath and lowered her voice. “Why would she do that?”
“Because she wanted to go to Deadwood, but she drank all her own money away.”
Annie scowled. “She stole my money so she could go to Deadwood?” That didn’t make sense. Well, it did, sort of, because Jane had been drinking an awful lot. A worrying amount, really. But if Jane had needed money she should have asked. Not that Annie would have funded her drinking habit, but— The rest finally caught up with her.
“Wait, Jane is in Deadwood?”
“Yes,” Frank said. “I mean no. I mean not yet. She’s going there. She left this morning and we need to go after her. Not Charlie, obviously. He’s in no shape to travel, and he needs to stay here to await orders, but yes, Deadwood.” He caught Annie’s utterly baffled look and dragged his hand down his face. “I’m not explaining this well.”
“All right. Can you start from the beginning?”
“Probably not,” he admitted.
“Mr. Utter is awaiting orders because . . .”
“He’s a Pinkerton.”
“Oh.” Annie raised an eyebrow. How impressive. “I thought he was the show’s manager.”
“He’s that, too. The show is the cover, as you already figured out.” Frank said it in a way that made it clear he didn’t want the show to be a cover—he wanted the show to be the job—but it wasn’t his call.
“Oh, right.” Annie scratched her head. “So . . .”
Frank sighed. “I think I should get to the point.”
“The point being that Jane is going to Deadwood and we’re all going after her, with the exception of Mr. Utter,” Annie said.
“The point being that you’re no longer necessary in Wild Bill’s Wild West,” said Frank.
It took Annie a moment to register those words. Then:
“What?” Annie quickly covered her mouth. “Sorry,” she said, her voice muffled behind her hands. “I think I have a concussion. Did you say I’m fired?”
“I said it more nicely than that, but in essence—”
“Why?” Annie glanced around the room, as though she might find something to help her cause, but the only things she found were her gun, her pillow, and the shiny pink rock Jane (apparently) had left in place of Annie’s ten dollars. She grabbed the pillow and brandished it at him. “Is this because Jane is gone? Or because you’re jealous that the papers like me better?”
“I’m not jealous!” Annoyance tinged Frank’s tone. “And they don’t like you better. It’s just that you’re new and different.”
Annie scowled. “You’re different, and I’m not fired.”
He shrugged. “Look, Annie, I’m sorry. I was hoping it would work out, but I don’t think you’re a good fit for the group.”
Annie’s scowl deepened, and she clutched the pillow so hard her knuckles whitened. “What does Mr. Hickok think?” The question ground out of her.
Frank eyed the pillow warily. “I’m afraid Bill and I are on the same page.”
“He’s not even here. How can he be on the same page?”
“We talked about this before I came over. And he agrees that you’re not a good fit for the group. Remember, he voted against you to begin with. And now I’m afraid I have to change my vote.”
Why did people think they were allowed to change their votes? “You can’t change your vote.”
“You don’t make the rules.”
“Someone has to make rules, and you’re not doing a good job with it. So I’ll make the rules, and I say the first vote stands.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes! I’m in, and that’s final.”
Frank threw up his hands in exasperation. “Stop trying to change the rules. You’re out of the group, Annie.”
“Didn’t you see me in the show? They loved me. They really, really loved me.”
“Maybe so,” Frank said, his voice more even now, “but as you know, the show isn’t the only thing we do. We also hunt garou.”
“And I’m good at that!” Well, she assumed she was, since she was good at most things.
“Yes,” he said. “You’re good at that, too. But you have the wrong attitude about it.”
“How?” Her voice went embarrassingly shrill. “I have a great attitude. I have the best attitude of anyone in my whole family.”
He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. “You hate garou.”
“Oh, should I love them? They’re monsters!”
He took a step back as though she’d hit him. “That’s the problem right there, Annie. You think they’re monsters. I think they’re people.”
“How can they be? They change into wolves and they eat livers and they go around biting real people to make other garou.”
“Real people?” Frank asked. “Real people?”
“Yes, real people!”
“You don’t think garou are real people?”
“No! They’re cruel, awful creatures.” Tears stung her eyes. Why was he being like this?
His voice rose, too. “Then you don’t think I’m a person.”
“What?”
“I’m a garou!”
“What?” She could barely ask the question. All the air had been sucked out of her.
Frank’s eyes went wide as he seemed to realize what he’d just admitted. And to her. But the words were out, and he repeated them carefully so there was no mistaking them. “I’m a garou.”
“No, you’re not.” Now she spoke in a whisper, unable to stop herself from stepping away. Her hands shook, and the pillow—which she’d intended to hurl at him later—dropped to the floor. “You can’t be.” Everything was spinning, and in spite of the morning sun pouring through the window, a sharp chill crawled over her arms and cheeks and throat. Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe right; air kept getting stuck in her shut-tight throat, because if she could breathe, then she could scream, and if she screamed, then the Wolves would be angry and—
“Well, I am,” Frank was saying, oblivious to Annie’s terror, “and the fact that you suddenly think I’m a monster when you didn’t five minutes ago is exactly why you aren’t a good fit for this team. The problem is you, Annie. It’s not me. You’re not as nice of a person as you think you are.”
With that, Frank turned and strode out of the room.
The door slammed, and Annie collapsed to the floor.
Annie didn’t move for three hours. Well, she did move, but it was mostly small shudders from her crying and full-body quakes as she recalled the terror she’d experienced every day for two years at the hands of the Wolf family. They were monsters.
And Frank was apparently one of them. Sweet, kind, funny Frank.
He couldn’t be a wolf. Clearly he’d been mistaken. Confused. Maybe it was a phase. But why would he say he was a garou if it wasn’t true? No one would admit to that unless they were sure.
Frank wasn’t like anyone in the Wolf family, but if he was a garou . . .
A hollow pit of uncertainty formed in Annie’s stomach. Maybe she needed to talk to him again. But no, she couldn’t, because he thought she was a horrible person for hating garou, and anyway, he was on his way to Deadwood.
Wait, he was on his way to Deadwood because of Jane? Why was Jane going to Deadwood? What was happening with Jane? Annie hadn’t even had a chance to ask. Some best friend she was.
Then again, Jane had stolen ten dollars. Maybe Annie didn’t know Jane as well as she’d thought, either.
After a while, Annie realized that huddling on the floor would get her nowhere. She’d been fired, and she had only two dollars and fifty cents (and a pink rock) to her name, which meant she needed to get a job so that she could get home.
And then what?
The idea of returning home was crushing. After everything she’d given up to come here, Mama and Grandpap Shaw would say they’d been right all along.
But it wasn’t that Annie couldn’t do the show. She was good at the show. It was that Frank was a garou and somehow she was the problem.
You’re not as nice of a person as you think you are, he’d said.
She pushed that away.
First things first. She needed to find a job and get enough money to have options besides walking all the way back home.
Annie washed her face and headed out to the post office. With the outrageous prices they charged for stamps (three cents, people), they surely had enough money to hire her.
“We’re not hiring anyone,” said the man at the counter. “But we do have mail for you.”
“You do?”
“Annie Mosey?”
Her chest squeezed up. She’d been Annie Oakley for only a day, believing that changing her name would change her life, but even that was gone now. “Yes,” she said.
The man passed an envelope to her, and her heart sank. It was the one she’d sent to her family, addressed to them, with her return address here in Cincinnati. “I don’t understand.”
“It was refused,” the man said. “So it was returned.”
“Refused?”
He nodded. “Yep. Made it there, then got refused, and came right back. Do you know how much money returned mail costs us?”
“And that’s why you can’t give me a job?” But she didn’t care about the job anymore. She was busy staring at her letter, the words return to sender scrawled on the back.
A lump formed in her throat as she imagined Mama scowling down at the envelope and then thrusting it back at the postman in disgust.
Annie had officially been abandoned by everyone she cared about. Frank and Mr. Hickok had left her. Jane had left (and robbed!) her in the middle of the night. And now her family wouldn’t even take her letters.
Or her money.
Annie tore open the envelope to find the hundred-dollar bill she’d won in the contest. It was enough to get her wherever she wanted to go, but where was that?
She couldn’t go home. She might have been able to endure the shame of getting fired, but now, with this stinging rejection in her hands, she knew she had no place there anymore. Her family didn’t want her.
Frank and the Wild West show didn’t want her.
You’re not as nice of a person as you think you are.
Gah! Why why did she keep thinking about that? And why had that been the last thing he said to her?
What if it was true?
Annie turned her thoughts to Jane. Yes, Jane had robbed her, but she was the only person who hadn’t rejected her. And there was the matter of that ten dollars and this shiny pink rock. Surely Jane wanted that rock back. Annie wanted her ten dollars back.
And if Deadwood just so happened to be where Frank was going, too . . .
Nope. Annie was going to Deadwood for Jane.
She’d help Jane with whatever Jane’s problem was, and maybe Jane would have some insight as to what to do about Frank. If anything. Jane could talk him into letting Annie back into the show.
You’re not as nice of a person as you think you are.
It was like a song she couldn’t get out of her head, even though he was the garou all of a sudden. Him. He was the problem, not her.
Annie gave a heavy sigh and pushed out of the post office.
All right. She had to get to Deadwood. The train was gone for the day, but there was more than one way to get to the middle of nowhere.
Back at the Bevis House, Annie gathered her belongs and settled her account with Mr. Frost. Then she went to the livery. Black Nell, Mr. Ed, and Bullseye were all gone. But Charlie’s horse was still there, as well as Silver, the cranky-looking donkey.
She looked between Charlie’s horse and Silver, then back again.
Silver let out a long, squeaky fart.
Holding her breath until the stink cleared, Annie saddled Charlie’s horse. But she wasn’t a thief (unlike her only friend Jane, who was totally the reason Annie was going to Deadwood), so Annie picked through the change she’d gotten from Mr. Frost and tacked a five-dollar bill to the back of the stall.
Then she was on her way to Deadwood—and, um, Jane. Yeah. Definitely going for Jane.