Jane was so close she could practically taste it. (We’re pretty sure Deadwood tastes like a mix of mud and whiskey, which would have been fine by Jane.) At long last she found herself in Crook City, which was only about eleven miles outside of Deadwood. Of course she didn’t have anywhere near a hundred dollars saved up (or, cough, anything saved up), but she’d figure things out when she got there.
Along the way she’d found work as a scout, sometimes, and a messenger, at others, but as a bullwhacker, mostly. This was a job in which a person used a bullwhip (because Jane’s skills in this area were, well, legendary) to drive animals down a trail. Along this particular stretch of road Jane had been driving a team of oxen pulling a wagon of wannabe miners, every single one of them sure he was going to get stinking rich on Black Hills gold.
There were garou among them, too, Jane suspected, on their way to Deadwood for the same reason she was. Every time there was a full moon a few of the men disappeared during the night. Herself included.
There was a full moon rising tonight, in fact. After seeing herself through a few of them, Jane could actually feel the full moon coming on. Every month it was the same. Jane did her best to keep to Bill’s “SO YOU’RE A WEREWOLF—NOW WHAT?” guidelines. She found a safe place to stash herself—a room where no one would bother her, or, in tonight’s case, a big tree a few miles away from town. She’d prepare for the change—she’d clear a room of breakables, for instance, and test the strength of the chains she’d bought that first night on her own to make sure there wasn’t a weak link. She’d lock herself up as tight as she could manage. And then she’d wait.
She never remembered much about the nights she spent as a wolf. She always woke up sore and itchy, her throat dry, her wrists and ankles marked by the chains. But she hadn’t hurt anyone, which counted for a lot.
She’d felt the moon coming all day. Her body felt bloated and tender in places. She’d developed a painful spot on one side of her nose. (Spots, dear reader, is the old-fashioned word for pimples, which means that Jane was experiencing your typical teenage breakout. Although maybe it’s not so typical, seeing as she’s a character in a young adult novel, but we’re just going to put it out there: Jane had a zit.) She was cranky and craving something salty. That’s when she figured out it wasn’t only the garou stuff she’d been suffering from, but another condition that befell Jane every twenty-eight days or so. Especially in the Old West, this part of being a girl kind of sucked.
But the moon was still coming, so she headed out to the designated tree well before sundown to chain herself up. The next thing she knew, she was waking up in the middle of Main Street naked as a jay, right as the sheriff was coming out of his house in search of his morning coffee. She was arrested on the spot for indecency and public drunkenness (although she hadn’t had that much to drink the night before, but she’d take it over any other explanation) and thrown in the Crook City jail.
This was a problem, seeing as the full moon is a three-night affair and she’d only made it through night number one.
“You got a cell way in the back, away from the prying eyes?” Jane asked the sheriff. “I don’t want to be disturbed tonight.”
He gazed at her thoughtfully. “You a woof, then?”
Her breath caught. “I’d appreciate if that didn’t become common knowledge,” she replied. “I haven’t hurt anyone . . . have I?” Because she’d been loose last night. Who knows what might have happened?
“Not that I’m aware,” he said.
She let out a sigh of relief.
“You’re headed to Deadwood to get yourself sorted out?” he asked.
“Yessir.”
He stroked his beard in a way that reminded her of Bill. “I don’t know if I believe in this cure business. But I guess it’s worth a try. I do happen to have a cell way in the back. You can be a guest there until the next party comes through that’s headed to Deadwood, and then go along with them.”
She nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
She spent all afternoon in that cell in the back, glad for the solitude and the strength of the iron bars. She slept off and on. She had another dream. This one of her mother.
The dream was born from a bit of a memory from when Jane was four or five. Her mother was in one of her gentler moods and teaching Jane to ride, sitting behind her and showing her how to balance on the horse’s back.
A good dream. Her ma’s hands guiding Jane’s hands on the reins.
Her ma’s voice in Jane’s ear.
“You’re a natural,” she’d said that day. “You’re a natural horsewoman, Marthey.”
But today, in this particular dream, her ma said, “Come to me, baby. Come on.”
Which didn’t make no sense.
Her ma was dead.
Which led Jane to another series of memories, these ones not so good. Her mother’s rough laugh as her pa shouted at her not to be so careless—“If the neighbors find out, Char, we’ll get run out of town!”
To which Ma said darkly, “Let ’em come.”
They had gotten run out of that town, eventually. And the next town. And the next, until her pa had decided to move them out of Missouri for good and off to a fresh start. Which in this day and age meant going west.
Then the worst memory of all, Virginia City, Montana. By then Jane had known her mother could turn into a wolf monster, but she hadn’t known that turning into a wolf was brought on by a bite, or that there were other wolf people wandering about in this world, called the garou. At the time the wolf just seemed to be another one of the many facets of her ma’s personality: one minute, smiling, stroking Jane’s hair, rocking a baby in her arms, the next minute ranting and raving, throwing their only teacup to smash into bits on the floor, the next minute telling randy jokes around the kitchen table to a bunch of visitors, the next sprouting fur and fangs and ripping up the new curtains Lena had sewn.
But that last night in Virginia City, that was the worst.
And it had started with an argument over the moon.
“Come on, Char,” Pa had pleaded with his hands full of rope. “We don’t want a repeat of last month. Let’s get you tied up.”
“I don’t want to be tied up,” Ma said with an angry laugh. “I want to be free.”
“You cain’t,” he said.
“Why cain’t I?”
“Because you might hurt someone.”
“If I hurt someone,” she said coolly, “they had it coming.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Oh, but I do.” Ma smiled a wicked-type smile. “It ain’t natural to tie me up. It ain’t the way.”
He shook his head. “What is the way?”
“The way is the wolf.” Ma stretched her arms over her head and grinned. “I should run. I should hunt. If I kill someone, they were meant to die. If I bite them, they’ll turn, and that’s all the better.”
“You will bring calamity upon us,” Pa said mournfully. He wasn’t drunk then, one of Jane’s only memories of her father sober.
“No,” Ma said. “I’ll bring truth. Let me bite you, Robert, and you’ll see.”
“And what about our children? Have you forgotten them?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I love my children.”
Jane, who’d been hiding up in the loft even though her pa had told her to go with her brothers and sisters to the neighbors’ for the night, smiled when she heard her mother say that. She loved her children. Which meant she loved Jane.
“When they’re old enough, I’ll bite them, too,” Ma said.
Her father inhaled sharply. “Why would you do that?”
“Because then they’ll be strong. They won’t get diseases. They won’t die like so many sheep. They will be wolves in a pack. They’ll be part of the future, instead of stuck in the past.”
Pa’s hands tightened on the ropes. “You’re not right in the head. It’s not your fault. I should have protected you. I should have never let you get bit.”
“I wanted to get bit,” Ma said. “I asked for it.”
“You what?”
“I always knew I was meant for better things than this. I was meant for greatness. I won’t accept this is as the most I’m going to get—this shack in the mud. This life.”
Her pa was quiet for a long time, and then he said, “I am your husband, so what I say goes. And I say I gotta tie you up.”
Jane knew immediately that this was the wrong thing to say. Her ma never did like that “I’m the boss of you because I’m the man” kind of talk. Pa should know better.
“I’d like to see you try.” Ma’s chair scraped as she stood up. There was the tearing of cloth and a low, horrible growl, and Ma was the wolf.
Pa didn’t act surprised. He dropped the rope and picked up a chair, like he was the lion tamer Jane had seen once at a circus. With his other hand he brandished a gun.
And that’s when Jane knew he meant to kill her.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry, Char.”
“No!” Jane cried.
Both heads turned to look at her, peering over the edge of the loft. Then the beast that was her ma stalked toward Jane, snarling. In her yellow eyes Jane saw no recognition, no love, only an intent to harm. To bite. Maybe to kill.
She scrambled back against the wall as the wolf leapt into the loft. A shot rang out, and the garou howled in pain as a bullet tore through her back. She fell heavily to the floor of the loft. Jane took the opportunity to run past her and jump off the edge.
Her pa caught her as she came down. He set her on the floor and said calmly, “You run now, Martha, straight to the neighbor house, and don’t look back.”
She ran. She tried not to hear the other gunshots behind her.
She tried not to think about what they meant.
At sunrise, her pa showed up at the neighbor’s house to collect the children. He was bandaged and bruised, his clothes in tatters. There was dullness to his eyes. But he was alive.
“Goodness!” exclaimed the neighbor lady. “What happened to you?”
“I took a tumble off my horse on the way over,” he said. “I’m all right.”
His eyes found Jane’s.
“Is she . . .” Jane couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“She’s gone to the angels,” her pa said.
“Oh my!” cried the neighbor lady, holding baby Sarah Beth tight to her chest as if to protect her from the news. “Was it the fever?”
“Yes. It was a fever took her,” Pa said. “There was nothing for it.”
Jane felt wetness on her cheeks. She opened her eyes. These dreams that had been chasing her were bad dreams, but there was a kind of relief in them. At least in these dreams, no matter how bad, she could see her parents again. She wasn’t alone.
Outside the full moon was rising against the window.
Come to me, it said.
Jane threw back her head, and howled.