All the hairs on Annie’s arms stood up as Frank’s howl carried through the No. 10 Saloon. Then, it was quiet, and Frank bent low over Mr. Hickok once again, sobbing.
It was the worst thing Annie had ever seen. The body. The wolf. The way blood dripped from the table and dotted the fallen cards.
Everything was horribly, horribly wrong, and she didn’t know how to fix any of it.
“Frank?” Her voice was small. “Frank, are you—” Not all right. There was no all right.
But Frank’s shoulders stiffened and he pulled upward, head cocked as he listened to her voice.
She tried to crush the trembling out of it. “Frank, when people get here, you can’t be like this.” They would haul him away to face the “cure,” as they had Jane.
Annie swallowed a lump in her throat. He’d been so good at hiding it. He’d demonstrated such incredible control over his wolf that she wouldn’t have ever guessed if he hadn’t told her, but here he was: a wolf howling with grief.
“I know what you’re going through,” she murmured. It was true. She’d been the one to find her father when the snowstorm faded. It hadn’t been a bullet that killed him, but still she understood the heart-stopping disbelief, the agony of hoping to wake up from this nightmare . . . Cautiously, she approached Frank. “I know it hurts,” she said, avoiding looking directly at Mr. Hickok. “I know it hurts, but you need to change back, and we have to—”
The door flew open, slamming on the wall. Seth Bullock started in, saying, “What’s all this—” but he stopped short when he saw the garou and the body.
Wolf-Frank jumped to his feet and spun, growling at the intruder as Annie staggered backward. His fur stood on end.
“Consarn it!” shouted someone coming up behind Mr. Bullock. “What’s going on here? Another garou?”
By now, wolf-Frank’s claws had burst through his boots and were digging into the floorboards of the saloon. His grief was terrible to watch. Quickly, he shifted back and forth, human then wolf again, like his body couldn’t decide which shape would more effectively bear this sadness.
“Stay where you are.” Annie fought to keep her voice level as she moved to stand between Frank and the gathering audience. “Don’t come in here.” They’d only make the situation worse; they’d use guns with iron bullets, which would merely annoy Frank into mauling them, and then there’d be more dead bodies in Deadwood, and no amount of talking or bribing would persuade the townsfolk to spare Frank or Jane.
“I’ll wait right here,” said Mr. Bullock, moving to cover more of the doorway. “Back away, everyone. Slow steps. That’s right.”
Annie faced Frank, whose hackles were still high, and that low growl was rolling through the room like distant thunder.
“Hey, big guy.” Annie held out her hand and met Frank’s eyes. Wolf eyes, but still his somehow, too. “Sun’s gettin’ real low.”
“Still hours ’til sunset,” muttered someone outside. “How long’s this girl been drinking?”
Annie ignored the audience, keeping all her focus on Frank as he reached out one paw. She traced a line down his inner wrist. “There we are,” she murmured. “Sun’s gettin’ real low.” That last part was just in case. One couldn’t be too thorough when there was a giant garou within striking distance.
But Frank was finally beginning to calm. The tension in his shoulders eased, the fur lay flat along his body. And slowly, so slowly, the shape of his face began to shift.
Then, with barely a warning of screams outside, another garou burst through the wall and howled.
Then Frank howled.
All the hairs on Annie’s arms stood at attention once more.
The two garou stared at each other, then Jane’s eyes shifted beyond Frank to where Mr. Hickok’s body lay. Immediately she became human again, gazing at Mr. Hickok. For a moment, she seemed frozen. Then she walked straight to the bar and took up the nearest bottle.
Five long gulps and she slammed the bottle back onto the counter, gasping.
Annie jumped a little.
But Jane just stood there, staring at the body like she didn’t believe her eyes.
Annie glanced between Frank and Jane, the former still in his wolf form, slinking around uncertainly, while the latter listed back and forth as the alcohol hit her all at once.
“Jane,” Annie said, stepping toward her friend.
“Maybe you shouldn’t get so close,” suggested one of the men outside. “She could bite your whole head off.”
“Jane,” Annie said again. “I think you should sit down.”
“I’ll kill him.” Jane’s voice was unusually soft. “I’ll find him, and I’ll kill him.”
“Jack McCall, you mean.” Annie matched her friend’s tone.
“Yeah, I mean Jack McCall.” Jane closed her eyes. “I saw him running, and the whole town running after him. He did it.”
“Lots of folks saw it,” said Mr. Bullock from the doorway. “Whole room full of people here, some at the bar, some playing poker, and all of them seeing Jack McCall shoot Wild Bill. Just shouted ‘Take that!,’ shot the gun, and ran out of here like he knew what kind of heck was going to rain down on him after that.”
“I saw him try to steal a horse,” another man said. “But he startled it, and it bucked him off before he’d got into the saddle.”
“Then he ran,” added another. “And everyone went running after him.”
Frank growled, and Jane looked ready to follow him back into her wolf shape.
“Wooo,” Annie breathed. No one outside moved as the two garou settled down again, and slowly, Frank began to shift back into a human.
He was on all fours, arms shaking as he struggled to hold himself up. He was, Annie thought, still too close to the body. Just a glance out of the corner of his eye might send him back into despair-filled howling. She edged toward him and rested her hand on his shoulder.
“Come this way.” She nodded toward Jane, who’d turned to the bottle again. She didn’t drink as quickly as before, but Annie could almost see Jane’s liver quivering in horror.
Frank didn’t move. Barely seemed to breathe.
“This way,” Annie said, and at last he nodded and let her help him.
“Why?” Frank asked. “Why?”
But they knew that, too. Jack McCall had done it for Swearengen.
“My ma did this.” Jane slammed the bottle onto the bar again, startling everyone. “She told him to do it, and like a no-good, slimy smiling, cure-peddling, lying lowlife, he did it. I may not be able to—” Jane swallowed hard. “Some people might be untouchable here, but he’s not. And I’ll—” Again, the alcohol seemed to get the better of her as she swayed and staggered backward. “I’m going to kill him.”
With that, she transformed and threw herself through the wall again, creating a second wolf-shaped hole in the No. 10. Everyone outside scattered out of her way.
Annie moved quickly. First, she darted around to the business side of the bar and grabbed the shotgun that the bartender kept back there; she didn’t know much about saloons and bars, but if stories had prepared her for anything, it was the fact that there was always—always—a shotgun behind the bar. Then, she hurried for the door, but all the people who’d moved for Jane were now pressed against the holes and door again, looking at Annie like they couldn’t imagine what she intended to do.
“Make way!” she yelled. “Get out of my way!”
But they didn’t pay her any mind. Several tried to squeeze themselves in to get a look at the body of Wild Bill Hickok. The rest kept crowding and scrambling and generally being in her way.
“Everybody move!” The booming voice belonged to Frank, but she’d never heard him speak with such volume. Then she realized he was halfway back into the wolf and had started woooing under his breath.
Nevertheless, it did the trick. The crowd parted at once, freeing Annie and Frank to run after Jane.
The presence of a garou running through Deadwood was causing a stir. People screamed and called for someone—anyone—with silver bullets, and at the sight of Annie with her stolen shotgun (which she fully intended to return with a thank-you note), they moved aside, assuming she was garou hunting.
“I don’t see her,” Annie panted.
Frank pointed. “That way!”
Together, they took off down the road, running at top speed until Frank’s running-induced asthma caught up with him and he doubled over, gasping. “Come on,” Annie said. “You’re a wolf.”
So Frank picked himself up and they ran again, and finally Annie caught sight of the large garou in a shredded white top and brown skirt.
She was clawing at the door to the butcher shop.
“Good girl.” Annie stopped next to Jane and put her hand on her friend’s . . . arm wasn’t quite the right word, but neither was foreleg. “He’s in here?”
Jane yipped.
“I can smell him,” Frank agreed. “He reeks of fear.”
Annie tested the door handle. Open.
Jane plowed in first, with Annie and Frank behind. It took a moment for Annie’s eyes to adjust to the gloom of the shop, but Jane and Frank had no such problems. They went ahead, leading Annie to the back room where Jack McCall huddled under one of the counters.
Frank turned into a wolf. Then, both he and Jane stalked forward and growled so deeply that Annie could feel it through the floorboards.
McCall shuddered. “Please don’t kill me.”
Annie hefted her shotgun.
“Or, yeah, if you’re going to do it, do it fast.”
“Like you did Mr. Hickok?” Annie glared and aimed at him. The lowlife. The murderer.
Frank and Jane prowled around the room, glancing back every now and then to see what Annie was doing.
“I know what I did was wrong,” wheedled Jack McCall. “I know I deserve to go to prison for the rest of my long life.”
Annie glanced at Frank, then Jane. Both of them looked ready to maul the man, but she couldn’t let them do that—not as garou. She was maybe the only one in any position right now to think about the consequences of their actions.
The shotgun felt heavy in her hands. She could do it, though. She could do it quickly, before the wolves struck, and with relatively minor consequences. No one in town would blame her for executing a murderer. It was, after all, how things were done in Deadwood.
But she’d made a promise to herself that she wouldn’t use her skills to hurt people, and no matter what this man had done, she was not the person to decide what his punishment should be. Wasn’t that all part of the problem of Deadwood, anyway? People deciding they were outside the law, that they could do whatever they wanted?
No, she couldn’t be part of that system. She wouldn’t kill McCall—even though he was bad, even though he’d murdered someone she cared about.
“You’re under arrest,” Annie said.
“What?” Jack McCall looked up.
She glanced at Frank. “Wooo.”
He snarled at Jack McCall again, then lunged, and for a heartbeat or two, Annie thought he wouldn’t listen—that his pain was so great he couldn’t control it anymore. But Frank only snapped at the man, pulling back just before his teeth connected with flesh, and shifted back into a human.
He shoved Jack McCall against the wall. “You’ll go to prison, all right,” he growled. “But I wouldn’t count on it being a long time. You murdered Wild Bill Hickok. My father. The most famous gunslinger in the country. I’d say you’ll hang for this.”
Jane growled her agreement as she shifted back into her human form. “How do you feel about angry mobs, Jack McCall?”