“You need a time-out here to calm down and think about your behavior,” Al Swearengen said as her men dumped Jane in a heap in the back room of the blacksmith’s shop, which served as Deadwood’s makeshift jail.
Her mother’s tone was almost sweet, parental-like, but Jane knew better.
“I’ll come back tomorrow. Maybe by then you’ll be ready to make better choices.”
Jane scrambled to her feet and threw herself against the slatted iron door of her “cell,” feeling the tight brick walls closing in around her. It was dark in there, even in the middle of the afternoon, the only light a narrow barred window at the far wall. It smelled like death. “Ma,” she panted. “Don’t leave me in here.”
Al’s eyes flashed. “Don’t call me that unless you’re ready to be a true daughter of mine. Not until you do what you’re meant to do.”
“I can’t kill Bill,” Jane said. “I don’t want to kill nobody.”
“Then you’re weak, and I have no use for you,” pronounced Al, turning away.
Jane wiped at her nose, which was bleeding from a blow she’d taken back at the theater. She hurt all over, but she tried to stand up straight. “If I’m so weak, why can’t you control me?”
Al stiffened and pivoted slowly to face Jane again. “I believe it’s because you’re already under someone else’s thrall,” she said coldly. “But not for long.”
Jane shivered. “Ma, please,” she pleaded. “It don’t have to be this way.”
“You’re a traitor to your own kind,” Al said. “You need to be punished.”
Jane’s chin lifted. “We don’t harm a garou unless that garou’s hurting people or trying to hurt us. You act like you’re helping the garou, but then you lie to them and make them your slaves. So which of us is really a traitor to our kind?”
Al made a sound like a growl and stepped forward with her hand raised, her lip curled into a snarl. Jane could see the sharp points of fangs in her mouth. But then her mother shook her head and smiled, the fangs receding, her hand closing into a fist and dropping to her side. “You always could rile me, girl. You’re just like your father. He never did know how to see the big picture.”
“I’m not like him or you.”
Al sighed. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you want to be like Wild Bill Hickok,” she said in disgust.
Jane said nothing.
“To think, you chose to protect that tired old has-been.” There was hurt behind the anger in Al’s eyes, a jealous wound. “You chose him over me, your own mother.”
“I don’t want to choose,” Jane murmured.
“That man shot me, nearly killed me, but you don’t seem to care. What’s worse, he killed your father, murdered him in cold blood in front of your brothers and sisters, no less. That’s your hero.”
“I know,” Jane said. “He—”
But Al had started to pace and rave. “Why don’t you want to take revenge? Don’t you understand? That man ruined everything!”
“I know.”
“He’s a monster! He killed your pa!” Al cried.
“I KNOW!” Jane yelled, just to get her voice heard. Then, softer: “I always knew Bill killed Pa.”
Al stopped pacing. “What do you mean, you knew?”
Jane swallowed. “He told me. Years ago. He told me what he did, and why, and I forgave him.”
Al gave an incredulous laugh. Then she nodded, like she’d made up her mind about something. “You need some time to think about what’s important here. Blood is thicker than water, my dear. You are my daughter, like it or not, and you belong with me. You could still have everything you desire. I would give it to you. A home here. Your family, by your side. Wealth. Prosperity. Why, I’m sure I could even find you a suitable husband, given time, and then you could have children of your own.”
Jane said nothing.
Al glanced at her pocket watch. “As I said, I will be back in the morning to check whether you’ve seen the light. If not, the townsfolk are bound to be upset. Those mobs can get ugly, can’t they, especially when they’re scared, and nothing scares them more than a dangerous and uncontrollable female. They’re like to want to hang you, and I don’t believe even I could stop them.”
“All right, then,” said Jane.
Al sighed. “Being a good mother is so hard.” She snapped her fingers at Jack McCall, who jumped to attention from where he’d been leaning casually against the wall. “Let’s go. You’ve still got an errand to run for me.”
“Bye, Jane.” Jack smiled his usual smile, but this time there was something extra creepy behind it.
“Come, Jack,” Al commanded, and swept from the room, Jack jogging along at her heels.
Jane sank onto the cold dirt floor. She tried to lie down and get comfortable, seeing as she was going to be here for a while, but there was no way to relax. It was cold. Damp. Smelly. She hugged herself for warmth. She wished for her man clothes—her buckskins and her breeches instead of this torn, flimsy shirt and cumbersome skirt. She wished she hadn’t sassed her ma—that always made things twice as bad, in her experience, but she never seemed to learn that, did she? She wished . . . well, heck, she wished for a lot of things, but wishing was a waste of time, she thought bitterly. Wishing can’t make a thing true.
She was a garou—everybody knew it now, everybody—and it turned out there was no magic cure that would make it not so. She was in jail, possibly about to be hanged by an angry mob come morning. But more than anything else, she was really, really hungry. Her stomach rumbled, and she clutched at her middle and groaned. She hadn’t eaten or drunk anything since that steak she’d had the night before. (We’d like to point out that this wasn’t that long ago, so Jane wasn’t exactly starving to death. But still, she was hangry.)
“Hello!” she called into the rest of the blacksmith shop, hoping that there’d at least be some kind of guard. “Hey, is anybody there?”
Nothing. Folks trusted the strength of the brick walls and the iron doors to hold her. She rattled and pulled at the bars, but all that accomplished was making her arms more tired and her throat even more dried out. She licked her lips. “I need water!” she hollered. “I need food! Hey!”
No one came.
She dropped back to the floor. “Who do I have to bribe,” she bellowed, “to bring me some grub around here?”
“You know, in order to offer a bribe, a person might first want to have something to barter,” came a gruff but dear voice out of the darkness.
Jane sat up with a gasp. Her eyes searched between the slats of the door. “Bill! That you?”
“I’m here, Jane.”
Jane was seized with worry. “You should get out of town,” she warned. “Al wants you dead.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” he laughed.
“This ain’t a joke,” she said. “She will kill you, or send someone to do the job.”
“Then we better leave town quick as we can, I reckon,” Bill said, “but I’m not going anywhere without you, and you don’t seem to be going anywhere, so that’s a problem.”
“I’m sorry, Bill,” she lamented. “I’ve brought you nothing but trouble, haven’t I?”
“This isn’t your fault, Jane. It’s mine.” She could see him now, standing on the other side of the door, still a grand figure in his billowy white shirt with the laces up the front, his long auburn curls and carefully trimmed mustache. Jane crawled to the door and grabbed the bars to lift herself up. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. “You’ll see.”
“Ah now, you’re just saying that.” She swallowed back a sob. “Maybe you should . . . give me the silver-bullet treatment,” she managed to choke out. “I’m a garou, and I cain’t handle myself at all, as you’ve seen. It’d be a kindness, coming from you. You’d make it quick, Bill. Painless. Better than a mob is like to do.” A shudder passed through her, but she braved on. “Best get it over, I think.”
The thing was, though, she really didn’t want to die.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” he said pleasantly. “I’m not a garou hunter anymore. I have officially retired. For real, this time.”
“Oh. That’s nice. Good for you, Bill.”
“Yep. So no one is going to be getting any more silver bullets from me. Least of all you.” Bill placed his hand over hers through the bars. “Don’t worry, Janey. I’ll get you out of here.”
She didn’t see how. “I don’t have the cash to pay for the cure, and I don’t think they’ll let me go, otherwise. I’ve got twenty-three dollars saved, in my boot back at my room, but it’s not enough, and you cain’t go into the Gem, seeing as they’d murder you before you could say howdy, and it’s . . . it’s only a matter of time before the people of this town get sick of waiting and come to get me.”
Tomorrow, Al had said, and her ma wasn’t the type to make idle threats. It was either her way or the—(uh-oh, highways didn’t exist yet)—the way you took to get out of town.
“I’ll get the money,” Bill said. “I’ve got some of my own saved up, and I can win the rest at poker this afternoon—I’ve got a good spot staked out at the Number Ten. I’ll have you free by suppertime, and then we’ll light out of this cursed town and figure out our next move.”
The idea that he would pay that much for her freedom—one hundred dollars—took Jane’s breath away, but she shook her head.
“I can’t let you do that, Bill,” she said. “Why would you want to use your money on me? I ain’t nothing. I’ve never been nothing. Not to anybody.”
His hand tightened around hers. “How can you believe that? All these years, you’ve never wavered in your lively spirit, your generous nature, your humor, your hard work. Besides, I . . . You’re . . .” He coughed. “You’re my family, not by blood, perhaps, but in every way that counts. As sure as Frank is my son, you are my daughter.”
Then he didn’t speak again for several minutes, or maybe Jane was bawling so hard she didn’t hear him. It wasn’t a pretty cry, either. It was the full-out, swollen-eyed, snotty-sobfest kind of cry. But afterward she felt better.
“Oh, Bill,” she sniffled finally. “Thank you for saying that.”
“I meant it.” He smiled that quiet smile of his that was mostly in his eyes. “Now I have to go scrounge us up some capital. I’ll be back in a few hours, I promise.”
“Remember, Al’s gunning for you,” she said, still feeling that the safest course of action would be for he and Frank and Annie to leave town as soon as possible. “Watch your back!”
He patted her hand, and she felt suddenly silly for advising him, the Wild Bill Hickok, the world’s first gunfighter, the quickest eye, the fastest draw, on how to stay alive in the Wild West.
“I’ll just wait here, then,” she called after him as he swept away, his big black coat flaring behind him.
She wiped at her face with her torn sleeve. She might not have much, but she believed what he’d said to her. That she had people who cared. Bill. Frank trying to talk the mob down earlier. Annie crying “Stop!” when they’d whipped Jane in the cage. Which she reckoned was something to keep fighting for.
Time passed quick, because Jane took a nap. She woke when the blacksmith finally appeared and brought her some food—a fat hunk of bread and leg of what might be rabbit, a skin full of water that tasted of mud. She was in the middle of (if you’ll pardon the expression) wolfing down her meal when she received another visitor to the cramped little cell.
It wasn’t Bill come to spring her free, though. It was Edwina Harris.
She was dressed as a woman this time, in a dark gray skirt and fine white blouse, her corn-silk colored hair piled up in a mess of curls at the top of her head, some kind of fancy ivory brooch at her throat, and delicate white gloves.
Jane’s heart thundered at the sight of her, but she wiped rabbit grease off her mouth with the back of her hand and conjured up a smirk. “Oh, good. So next it’s to be torture, then?”
Winnie frowned and twisted her hands together in front of her. Ironically she seemed at a loss for words. “Martha, I—”
“I got nothing to say to you,” sniffed Jane. “And my name ain’t Martha, not anymore.”
“Jane, then. Jane,” amended Winnie. “I came to explain myself.”
“No need.” Jane put out a hand. “You wanted a story. You got one. That about sum it up?”
“You know it’s more complicated than that.”
“Is it, though?” Jane pulled her tattered shirt more tightly around her. She hated that she must look like a fallen woman, but she supposed that’s what she was. “It feels pretty simple to me. You used me. Then you threw me away.”
“No, that’s not what I wanted to—” Winnie stopped and closed her eyes, then tried again. “I did it because of Buntline. He’s been working on a story about Wild Bill, and he has this theory that all of you—Wild Bill, Frank, you, perhaps even Annie Oakley, are all garou. It’s the perfect cover, see, as you’re garou hunters. You’re hiding in plain sight. Buntline thinks it will be the story of the century.”
A chill trickled down Jane’s spine. She thought about how careful Frank had been to keep that part of himself hidden. How the Wild West show, Frank’s pride and joy, would crumble to nothing if people knew Frank was a woof.
“So you thought you’d beat him to the punch, huh?”
Winnie shook her head. “That’s not what my story was about. Of course you didn’t read it, but—”
Jane’s jaw tightened. “Yeah, of course not. I’m dumb as a bag of rocks.”
“Jane—” Winnie sighed. “I wrote about how you were bitten back at the candle factory in Ohio, how you were injured in the line of duty, so to speak. And I plan to write a follow-up piece, on how you came to Deadwood for the cure.”
“Yeah and you saw how well that turned out.” Jane gestured around herself.
“I think I can help you,” Winnie said almost pleadingly. “I can write—”
“No, thanks. I think you’ve written enough.” It was a lesson Jane would take to heart this time. Never, ever, ever trust a writer. As a whole, they’re a no-good bunch. (Ouch. That smarts.) “Why do you care if my story has a happy ending? Will it sell more papers that way?”
“I’m sorry,” Winnie said. “I know I promised you.”
“Yeah. You did.”
“I wanted to get the true story out there first, so Buntline wouldn’t be able to spin it.”
It made a fair bit of sense, but Jane could not forgive her. Not this time. “It wasn’t your story to tell, though,” she pointed out. “And now I’m here. Because of you.”
Winnie nodded. “I didn’t know how people would take it. I thought they would see how brave you were, how selfless, even, but all they saw was the wolf. I’m so sorry, Jane. I know you won’t believe that, but I am.”
They gazed at each other. Jane couldn’t help drinking in the sight of Winnie, one last time, she told herself, just looking at her, and then she’d put what had happened between them away and never take it out again. She noted the sweep of her dark lashes, the slight upturned nose so small she had to keep pushing up her glasses. Those green eyes. The dainty, heart-shaped mouth that Jane had kissed.
Then Jane gave the girl a look made of iron. “Apology not accepted. Now get out of here. Get out of this town, if you know what’s good for you.”
“I meant what I said. I could—”
“Get out,” Jane snarled, and turned to face the wall. “I never want to see you again.”
When she looked that way a few minutes later, Winnie was gone.
More time passed, which felt like a year, and still Bill didn’t come. Jane leaned against the wall and sang about bottles of beer until the blacksmith came and threatened to chain her up if she didn’t stop.
He didn’t get a chance, though, because right then there was a ruckus outside.
Jane went to the window and peered out. The first thing she saw was Jack McCall—her stomach twisting at the mere sight of him. But Jack was in trouble now. His expression was something akin to panic. He was holding a gun, but he suddenly threw it down onto the ground and kept on running, like he meant to run right out of town.
Jane tried to ask him a question as he sprinted past the blacksmith’s shop, but he didn’t even see her. That’s when Jane noticed the mob behind him. They were coming with a cloud of dust, holding rifles and shovels and even some literal pitchforks, churning with noise and fury like a coming thunderstorm.
What is it with angry mobs today? Jane thought, feeling, in spite of her best judgment, a sudden flash of pity for Jack McCall, seeing as a few hours earlier these same people had been coming for her.
But then she went ahead and thought, Well, that guy has it coming.
“Hey!” she called through the bars as the mob began to pass by. (She probably should have laid low and stayed out of sight, considering that these people were likely to come for her next. But in Jane’s experience, angry mobs were single-minded, and she was curious, so she risked it.)
“Hey, what’s going on?” she tried again. “Why are you after Jack McCall?”
They paid her no mind. She yelled and waved her hand out through the bars, but no one stopped. When almost everyone else had rumbled by, she caught sight of the doctor, Babcock, she thought his name was.
“Hey, Babcock,” she hollered.
He looked at her.
She gestured for him to come over, and he did.
“What happened?” she asked him.
Doc Babcock stared at her with a mixture of sadness and excitement, that he would be the one to tell her.
“Jack McCall just killed Wild Bill Hickok,” the man said.
Jane’s lungs emptied of air. “What’d you say?”
Babcock nodded grimly. “Shot him, right in the back of the head, in the middle of a crowded room in broad daylight.”
He might have kept talking, but Jane didn’t hear. She was vaguely aware of her legs giving out under her, and then her arms extending before her like she had fallen into a kind of desperate woefully belated prayer.
And then her hands were paws, clawing at the floor, huge clods of dirt flying out behind her.
Digging.
Digging under the wall of her cell.
Digging out.
Because she had to go.