“I can’t believe she didn’t believe me,” Frank said for the hundredth time. He glared into the shot of whiskey on the bar in front of him. “After all these years together, you’d think she’d trust me by now.”
Beside him, Bill grunted. “People can be peculiar when it comes to family.”
Frank was still having trouble with that idea, too. “Al Swearengen is not Jane’s family,” he insisted. “She’s never been there when Jane’s needed her, but we have.”
“Well, that’s complicated.”
“I don’t see what’s so complicated about it.”
Bill turned and studied Frank’s face. Then he signaled to the barkeep at the No. 10 Saloon to pour him another whiskey. He threw back the shot and wiped his beard. “Frank, did you ever wonder why I took Jane in?”
“I thought you just picked up strays, like me. I thought it was kind of your thing.”
Bill shook his head. “A few years back, when I was hunting full-time, and you were staying with the Browns, I was on the trail of the most vicious garou I’d ever come across. It stayed in wolf form for months on end, biting people indiscriminately, killing some, looting and robbing, and tearing places apart. It seemed dead set on bloodthirsty chaos. I was determined to find that monster and bring it down.”
Frank had heard his father tell many a tall tale on the stage, but this was different. He’d never heard this story.
“At one point, I caught up with it in Cheyenne,” Bill continued in a melancholy tone. “Townsfolk were running down the street, shouting about a garou attack at the butcher shop. When I got there, the garou had the butcher and his wife cornered. The garou was toying with them. It had already cut up the poor wife’s face with its claws, to mar her and terrify her. The butcher was begging the garou to stop. The garou made like it was backing off, but then it raised its arm to strike the butcher down. I drew my pistols, but the garou knocked me over with a slab of beef.”
Frank raised his eyebrows. “Beef, huh?”
Bill pshawed. “It was a big slab of beef. Once I was down, the wolf came over the counter at me, teeth snapping, but I got a shot off. Not a killing one—just through the shoulder—but enough to make it think twice about eating me. It dropped to the floor, yelping and whimpering, like a hurt dog. Then it went quiet. I figured it knew its time was up.” He paused, his eyes troubled. “I took aim to shoot it, through the heart this time, but right then, the garou began to change back to a human, and I saw it was a woman.”
“A woman?” Frank echoed.
Bill nodded grimly. “I admit that I hesitated. I’d never shot a woman. She was beautiful, too, tall, dark of hair, proud. She stood up and held out her hand. There was blood on her fingers from where I’d shot her. She said, ‘This is the only blood you’ll ever get from me, Wild Bill Hickok.’ I didn’t know what to say to that, but it didn’t matter. Faster than any garou I’ve ever seen, she was a wolf again and gone through the window. But first, she left me this.” Bill tugged aside the collar of his shirt.
Frank had never seen the scar on Bill’s chest up close before. It was deep, and it ran from his shoulder to his heart. Frank had always assumed Bill had gotten it during the war. “Then what happened?” he asked.
Bill sighed. “I continued hunting her. Came close a few times, but she always evaded me. It wasn’t until Salt Lake City that I finally caught up with her again. Normally, she’d hit a place once, rob or bite somebody, and then move on, but this time, she stuck around town. She had to know it was dangerous. I couldn’t figure out why she’d changed her pattern. I was working with the local sheriff, trying to nail down her location, but she always kept two steps ahead of me. Until this one day, at the sheriff’s office, when in walked a little girl.”
Frank’s breath caught. “What little girl?” But he suspected he already knew.
“She was a scrappy thing, maybe ten or eleven, still in pigtails, but she was wearing britches like a boy. She seemed dazed.” Bill stared across the bar, like he could still see her clearly. “She said there was a garou at her house. And the thing is, her house is pretty near the center of all the activity I’d been tracking, following this female garou. I thought, ‘This is it. I’ve got her.’ This time, I wasn’t about to hesitate. If I had the chance to bring her down, woman or not, I’d take it.
“I rode out to the house. I saw the garou through the window. I shot her right through the heart.”
Frank exhaled. “Okay. So you got the bad guy.”
But Bill shook his head. “Inside the house, I heard screaming. Kids. I went in and told them they were safe now, but they kept sobbing and shouting at me. That’s when I got a look at the garou I’d killed, who, in death had turned back into a human.” He cleared his throat, then ordered and drank another whiskey.
Frank waited.
“It wasn’t the woman I’d been hunting,” Bill said finally. “It was a man. I’d just killed these kids’ father.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry,” Frank said.
Bill stared into the empty glass. “I stayed in Salt Lake City long enough to make sure the children had places to go. I gave up the hunt for a spell. But I always wondered what happened to that little girl who told us about the garou, her father. She’d run off. She was all alone in the world. So I tracked her down. It took me a while, but I finally found her in Wyoming. She was teaching herself to be a scout. She dressed as a boy and took any odd job she could, but it was rough finding a living and staying safe at such a young age. So, eventually, after I went and got you from the Browns, I decided to take her in.”
“Jane,” Frank murmured.
Bill nodded.
Frank remembered when Jane had first joined them. She’d been skinny and dirty, her clothes not much more than rags. Frank had introduced himself and held out his hand, because the Browns had taught him manners, but she’d spit at his feet and walked away.
Later, Bill told him that Jane had a way with the bullwhip, and Frank had an idea. The next time they were outside, he took a piece of candy out of his pocket. “You ever had taffy before?” he asked her.
Jane didn’t answer, but she looked at the sweet longingly.
Frank put it on the top of a fence post. “First one to snap it with the whip gets to eat it,” he said.
Frank had never been any good with a bullwhip, so even though he tried to win (his father taught him to never throw a contest) it was Jane who ended up with the taffy.
She smiled and unwrapped the candy, took a bite, and then offered the rest to Frank.
“No, you won it fair and square,” Frank said.
She gobbled up the rest and then held out her hand. “I’m Calamity Jane.”
“How do you do, Calam?” he said.
Then they were friends, and after a few months, they felt like family.
“That’s when I gave up hunting full-time,” Bill said, pulling Frank back to the present.
“Does Jane know? That you killed her father?”
Bill nodded. “I told her. Apparently her pa was a drunk who couldn’t hold a job and couldn’t provide for his family. But that doesn’t mean I don’t regret it every day.”
“You’ve given Jane a better life,” Frank said softly.
“I don’t know about that,” Bill muttered.
But Frank felt like this still wasn’t the end of the story. “What happened to the other wolf? The female.”
Bill’s jaw tightened. “A while back, I’d heard she’d been captured and killed. But yesterday, I saw her with Jane at the Gem.”
“The wolf’s Al Swearengen,” Frank concluded.
“Yep.”
Frank was starting to understand why this was complicated. “How come you never told me any of this?”
“Because it’s Jane’s story to tell.”
Frank was a tad miffed that she’d never told him, then he remembered he’d never told her about being a garou.
“Jane had a rough time of it, and that leaves a wound,” Bill said. “A wound that maybe makes a person overlook some red flags when they find out their dead mother is actually alive. But that’s not something you can tell her. She’s got to figure it out for herself.”
Right then, the doors to the saloon opened and Annie rushed in. Frank’s heart boomed at the sight of her, but her eyes were wide with fear.
Frank sprang to his feet. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Jane.”
Not again. “What about Jane?”
“She’s a garou!”
Frank felt as though Annie had punched him. Jane was a garou, and that was wrong? Annie had been nothing but nice to him (that kiss, we’re just saying), so he’d hoped she was coming around to the whole garou situation.
“I mean,” Annie continued, “that Jane is a garou, and it’s all over the newspaper, and now there’s an angry mob, and it makes me so—so—angry!”
Frank’s stomach dropped. “Oh.”
“And the worst part is, they’re going to force her to take the cure!”
Outside, the street was swarming with people buzzing about the news.
“Calamity Jane is getting the cure!”
“She’s an abomination. The cure can’t come soon enough!”
and
“She’s finally getting what’s coming to her.”
Frank was surprised at how quickly people could turn on a person. How they could go from asking for an autograph to grabbing their pitchforks in the blink of an eye.
They started for the Gem, but there were too many bodies on the narrow street, and progress was difficult.
Annie, taking charge, as usual, tried to lead them and part the crowd by shouting, “Wild Bill Hickok needs to get through!” But no one could hear her over the ruckus.
So, being petite, she ducked and darted this way and that, narrowly avoiding hitting her head on the butt of someone’s gun. She made it to the door of the Gem and waved to Frank and Bill, who were a ways behind. Then she felt at her back for the strap that she used to carry her rifle. It was broken. Somewhere in the crowd, she’d lost her gun.
A sea of people were entering the Gem by the time Frank and Bill made it to Annie.
“We better get in there,” Bill said.
“But my rifle!” she cried.
“We’ve got this,” Frank said. “Go get your gun. We might need it.”
Then the press of the mob forced Bill and Frank forward, to where a line of guards stood outside the entrance to the theater.
“Hand over your weapons,” they yelled. “No firearms allowed.”
One of them recognized Bill. “Guns please, Mr. Hickok.”
Bill opened his coat to reveal the ivory-handled pistols. “These never leave my side.”
“Then you can’t go in,” the guard said.
Bill sighed, and he and Frank reluctantly turned over their guns. “What are we supposed to use to save Jane?” Frank hissed. “Harsh language?”
They entered into the back of the theater. Jane was already in the cage.
“No,” Frank called out in despair. There was no way to reach her. There were too many people and too many guards. The audience was throwing stuff at her, everything from rotten food to rocks to shoes.
“C’mon,” a man by Frank shouted. “Wolf out!”
Jane crouched in the corner farthest from the crowd. She was shivering.
“This is outrageous,” Frank said.
“Well, if it isn’t the Wild Bill Hickok,” came a voice from behind them. Frank and Bill turned to see none other than Al Swearengen. She seemed to have been waiting for them. “I’m so happy you made it.”
“Let Jane go,” Bill said gruffly. “Your fight is with me.”
Swearengen touched her shoulder. “You know, I still have the bullet you struck me with. I thought about selling it to the highest bidder, but then I decided to keep it with me always.” She pulled out a necklace from inside her shirt. Hanging there was a silver bullet. “Here it is, right by the heart you missed, reminding me every day of your failure.”
“None of that matters.” Bill looked toward the cage. “That’s your daughter in there.”
“No, she’s your daughter. But pretty soon, I’ll have her back, and she’ll forget she ever knew you.” Al smiled wickedly. “Enjoy the show.”