Jane loved Deadwood. From the moment she arrived, she knew it was her kind of place. In Deadwood, everyone kind of looked like Jane, and everyone kind of walked like Jane, and everyone kind of talked like her, too.
“Hey, you!” said a man from the door of a saloon. “Come ’ere!”
“Yeah?” Jane stepped toward him.
“Come closer,” he slurred, and when she did the man belched in her face.
She brapped right back at him. The man laughed coarsely and called her a name that Jane didn’t understand the meaning of, because (in spite of what a certain popular TV show about Deadwood will lead you to believe) that particular dirty word didn’t come into regular usage in America until 1890, and this is still 1876.
“Here!” yelled another man, and thrust a heavy white pot into her hands. “Have a free commode from Bullock Hardware and Supplies!”
A-yep. She was going to fit in here fine.
What was there not to like? Everything in the town was brown, brown, and more brown, which happened to be Jane’s favorite color. On a related note, they gave out free commodes. And best of all, you could get a stiff drink pretty much everywhere you cast your eye to. There were four “theaters” (ahem—brothels), and five saloons: the Montana Saloon (even though they weren’t in Montana), the No. 10 Saloon (even though there weren’t nine other saloons), the Lone Star Saloon (even though they weren’t in Texas), the Shaggy Dog Saloon (even though the owner only owned a bunch of mangy cats), and the Tully Saloon (which was owned by a man named Smith). Nothing was properly named in Deadwood. Which was just Jane’s style.
But first: the cure. The pamphlet had said to go to a particular place in Deadwood, and talk to a particular person, only Jane couldn’t rightly remember either one of those finer details. It’d been months ago, after all, that Winnie had read her that pamphlet, and Jane hadn’t exactly written it down.
She asked around. One fellow said the cure could be found on Sherman Street, but all Jane discovered there was a shabby-looking bakery. Another man suggested the corner of Gold Street and Main, but at that juncture sat a log cabin–type grocery store owned by a man named Farnum, who wouldn’t stop talking at Jane in a funny way she didn’t understand. Farnum was the one who told her to try Old Doc Babcock’s place, seeing as she was looking for a cure, so she should probably see a doctor.
The cure wasn’t at Old Doc Babcock’s, but the old man did know where to find it: the Gem. Once a day, around about one o’clock, there was a show at the Gem to demonstrate the cure of the latest garou to pay the hundred-dollar fee.
“A quack, though, that Swearengen,” grumbled Old Doc Babcock. “What you need to do is take one of my tonics.” He rummaged around in a cabinet and started lifting out bottles. “This one here is Tott’s Teething Cordial, satisfies the baby, pleases the mother, gives rest to both. But it would work on the garou, too, I imagine.” He saw that Jane looked unconvinced. “I also got Casseebeer’s Coca-Calisaya, made from the very best Peruvian coca leaves.” Jane shook her head. “How about Dr. Lindley’s Epilepsy Remedy, for fits, spasms, convulsions, and St. Vitus’ dance—that’d calm a wolf type right down, I reckon. Or here’s Mixer’s Cancer and Scrofula Syrup, which cures cancer, tumors, abscesses, ulcers, fever sores, goiter, catarrh, scald head, piles, rheumatism, and all the blood diseases. That would cover the garou, right enough.” He turned to her, his arms full of bottles. “For one hundred dollars, you could have them all.”
Jane took a step back toward the door.
“How about it, young feller?” said the doctor. “One of these is sure to fix your wolf problem right up.”
“It’s not for me. It’s for a friend,” Jane said hastily, and then beat it out of there. It didn’t take her long to locate the Gem. When she got there people were getting the chairs set up for the show. A large metal cage had been placed on the stage next to a podium. For a minute she stood staring at the cage.
“Hello, there,” said a lady, who by her dress and face paint Jane instantly knew to be a prostitute. “Come for the cure, have you?”
Jane found herself shaking her head. “I’m a garou hunter, see. That’s what I am. Yep. So I’ve come to see if this cure business is true, because then I should probably look for another form of employment, don’t you think?”
“All right,” laughed the painted lady. “Well, the cure works, sure enough, but it won’t get rid of all the garou. There’s not too many of them that can afford the hundred dollars a pop.”
Jane nodded thoughtfully. “That is a lot of scratch.”
The lady smiled. “Enjoy the show.”
Jane took a seat in the back.
At precisely one o’clock, another painted lady walked up to the front onto the makeshift-stage area and addressed the small crowd that had wandered in from the street. She motioned for them to settle down, and everyone went silent.
“What you came to see here today is a marvel,” she began by way of introduction. “And the woman who brings us this marvel is no less than a miracle worker, in my estimation, a pioneer, an entrepreneur, an explorer, an inventor, and a—”
“A woman? Isn’t it a doctor?” Jane asked loudly. This entire thing felt less legit if the cure-it-all person wasn’t a doctor.
“She has come to clear this wolf plague that’s cursed our fine country,” the lady continued as if Jane hadn’t spoken. “I give you, Deadwood’s very own, Alice Swearengen.”
Oh. He was a she, Jane surmised as a woman in a fancy dress took the stage. She was wearing a brown top hat with a length of silk tied around the brim, which trailed down her back like a bridal veil. She gave a graceful wave to the audience. Jane’s heart started racing, her blood pounding all the way up to her head.
She really, really wanted the cure to be real.
“I am Alice Swearengen, the proud owner of the Gem, but call me Al,” said the woman. “Some time ago I took an interest in this wolf epidemic that is raging across America. It affects so many people who cannot help what they are and would otherwise be good and upstanding members of society. There must be some way, I thought, to eradicate this affliction without destroying the garou themselves.”
Jane clapped hard at that.
Al Swearengen continued. “After many years of trial and error, I came up with a serum that will, once injected into the bloodstream, attach itself to the part of the person that has been corrupted into a wolf, and quickly disintegrate the connection between the man and his inner beast. Any man—or woman, mind you—who wants to, can be cured.”
Swearengen’s eyes found Jane’s in the crowd, and the hair on the back of Jane’s neck lifted. There was something familiar about this lady. Jane couldn’t put her finger on what. It was hard because the lady’s face was partially shaded by her hat.
“Why so expensive, then, if you mean it for any man?” another member of the crowd called out—obviously another garou who couldn’t afford the stiff price of the serum. “Why a hundred dollars?”
Swearengen had a ready answer: “The ingredients for my serum are top secret, and extremely rare, which necessitates the higher price tag.”
“All right, then,” called still another man in the audience. “We came here to see it, didn’t we? Let’s see it!”
This was Jane’s kind of crowd.
“Of course,” said Swearengen mildly. She turned back toward the painted lady who was her assistant. “Can you bring me Mrs. Hoagy, please?”
The lady dashed away for a minute and then returned escorting a little old woman. She walked in small steps to stand on the stage, so bent over it looked painful. She was wearing dark glasses and a hat that largely covered her face. As if the bright light was too much for her tired eyes.
Swearengen took her hand. “I’m so glad to see you, Mrs. Hoagy. Can you tell me about your condition?”
“Oh, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor,” the woman said in a strange, trembly voice, even though nobody had actually confirmed that Alice Swearengen was a doctor of any sort. “I got the woof inside me, Doctor. Can’t you help me?”
“Of course I can. But it will only work if you truly believe in it. Do you believe, Mrs. Hoagy? Do you desire with all your heart and soul to be rid of the wolf?”
“Yes, Doctor! I believe! I want to be changed!” She gave Al Swearengen a wrinkled hundred-dollar bill. Swearengen thanked her and tucked the bill into her pocketbook. Then she helped the old woman climb into the metal cage before locking it firmly. The assistant handed Swearengen a long stick and a whip.
Jane felt her body tense. The entire crowd drew in a worried breath.
Swearengen held out her hand. “No need for concern, ladies and gentlemen. Mrs. Hoagy here has agreed to let us see the wolf part of herself, so you can be assured that we are curing a garou here today. She will not be harmed. In fact, she will be freed from the constraints this life has put upon her until now.”
Jane sat back again.
Swearengen whipped the cage. Mrs. Hoagy startled. Swearengen reached between the iron bars and poked her with the stick, then whipped at her again.
At such provocation, Mrs. Hoagy reared back against the cage, away from the bite of the whip, and then lurched forward again, collapsing onto the floor. The crowd gasped and sat up, straining to see her as she writhed and screamed at the bottom of the cage. There was the sound of clothing tearing and teeth gnashing. The old lady gave a loud, bloodcurdling howl, and stood up onto her back legs. And suddenly Mrs. Hoagy wasn’t Mrs. Hoagy anymore.
She was a garou, a shaggy brown beast with the head of a wolf.
People in the audience were standing up and pointing and exclaiming among themselves. Many of them had never seen a real-live garou before. It was exciting and upsetting all at once.
Jane waited—holding her breath—as Swearengen and her assistant quieted the crowd and urged folks back into their seats. The garou paced the cage, snarling. Al Swearengen stood at the podium like nothing had happened, perfectly calm.
“She’s all right,” she assured the crowd. “Now it is time to administer the serum.”
Men appeared next to the cage. They opened a small window on each side and somehow managed to capture the garou’s arms. Then Al Swearengen quickly produced a syringe (which Jane had never seen before, either) and stabbed the needle into the forearm of the garou. The wolf lady howled in rage.
Swearengen withdrew a watch from her pocket and looked at it. “Sixty seconds,” she said loudly. “That is all it should take.”
Sure enough, something began to happen to the beast who had formerly been Mrs. Hoagy. It gave a strange, strangled cry. Its body jerked this way and that, and suddenly flopped once again to the floor of the cage. For several heartbeats it didn’t move. Then the crowd gasped again as Mrs. Hoagy stood up shakily where the garou had been.
She was human. Her hair was disheveled from all the tossing about, a wild mess around her face. She snatched up and put on her glasses, and clutched the remains of her tattered dress around herself.
Swearengen unlocked the cage and helped the old lady out from it, giving her a long robe to cover her torn clothing.
She was still bent and old and frail-looking, but she was definitely human.
Jane’s breath whooshed out all in a rush.
“Oh, Doctor, Doctor, thank you,” rasped Mrs. Hoagy.
“Come here, madam,” Al Swearengen said. “I wonder if you might tell me something. We all know that one symptom of the garou’s disease is color blindness. Could you differentiate color, Mrs. Hoagy, since you became a wolf?”
She shook her head. “I could not,” she croaked, and then smiled.
There was something familiar about the old lady, too, Jane realized. Something about that smile.
Al Swearengen lifted a brightly colored handkerchief in each hand. “What color is the kerchief on the right?”
“Blue,” the lady chimed sweetly.
“And the left?”
“Why, it’s red!” she exclaimed. “Oh dear! I’m seeing red!”
Jane had no idea what color they were, of course, but by the dumbstruck reactions from the people around her, Mrs. Hoagy had named them correctly.
Al Swearengen said something about the old woman having been through so much this afternoon, and needing to rest now and recover fully. But she would, Al assured the audience, recover fully.
The painted lady led Mrs. Hoagy from the room.
All eyes returned to Al Swearengen.
“My friends, you’ve seen a miracle tonight,” she said. “And you’ll see many more if you stick around this place. If you have a family member—or a friend, or even a passing acquaintance—who’s a garou, I beg you, for their sake and yours, tell them what you’ve seen here today. Spread the word. Help them save up the money to be treated. And wolf by wolf we shall wipe this plague from our great land!”
The crowd clapped and clapped, Jane more enthusiastically than any of them. She could hardly believe what she’d just witnessed. It was true. All that Jack McCall had said. The cure was real.
Jane’s heart surged with hope.
The crowd dispersed, but Al Swearengen motioned to her assistant again, who nodded and took Jane aside after Swearengen disappeared into one of the back rooms.
“You’re Calamity Jane, aren’t you?” the painted lady asked.
“Maybe,” Jane said. “What’s it to ya?”
“We’re so honored to have someone of your celebrity grace our humble establishment,” said the lady. “Ms. Swearengen has asked to see you. In private.”
Jane didn’t think that sounded like a good idea. She’d meant to slip into town all incognito-like, find some work as a scout or a driver, save up the hundred dollars, get the cure without drawing any unnecessary attention, and rush back to Frank and Bill and Annie pronto. She didn’t want it to be known that the famous Calamity Jane was or had ever been a garou.
She was pretty sure Charlie would consider such a thing bad for business.
But the painted lady was insistent that Jane go with her, and in short order Jane was ushered up the back stairs into a large, expensively furnished bedroom, where Alice Swearengen was seated at a vanity, her back to Jane.
“Calamity Jane, I presume,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to see you.”
“Uh, likewise,” said Jane. The hairs were standing up on the back of her neck again.
“What did you think of the show?” Al Swearengen asked.
“I found it mighty interesting,” admitted Jane. In truth, she wanted to whoop. She wanted to sing and dance, even though she didn’t know how to do neither. She wanted to get working straightaway on earning some money. “I should get going, though. I got some things to attend to.”
“Stay awhile,” said Al Swearengen, and then, still with her back to Jane, she took off her top hat and started unpinning her hair. Jane squinted at the reflection in the vanity mirror, but the glass was warped a bit. She knew this woman, she was certain of it now. Al’s features had been shaded by the hat before, and the fancy dress and booming voice had been distracting, but—
Then Al Swearengen turned to face Jane, wearing a triumphant smile Jane knew as well as her own, and she said, “Hello, baby.”
And Jane didn’t know what to say, except, “Oh. Hello, Ma.”
Because Al Swearengen wasn’t Al Swearengen at all, but Charlotte Canary. Jane’s mother.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, eyes shining. “I’ve been waiting for so long.”