“Five dollars for a lock of hair from the legendary Wild Bill Hickok!”
The merchant tent had popped up outside the No. 10 Saloon almost before Bill’s body was cold. It was late now, past midnight, but the main street was filled with rubberneckers, each wanting a piece of Bill’s death.
Frank and Annie were watching the circus from the front steps of the Marriott, George at their feet, his head on Frank’s knee.
Frank couldn’t feel his hands. He couldn’t feel anything, really, not since he’d changed back into a human after they’d brought Jack McCall into custody. But the numbness was better than the alternative. If Frank had been capable of feeling right now, he’d cross the street and flip the tables over. He’d scream and yell. He’d send the tufts of hair they were selling into the mud, even though he knew they couldn’t possibly be Bill’s. Bill’s body was safe under the watch of Charlie Utter at his camp across the river. There was no telling what Frank might do to the vultures who’d descended to pick and nip and steal and merchandize what was left of his father.
But Frank didn’t feel anything. Not rage. Not even sadness.
“Five dollars will get you a piece of history!” the merchants cried.
“That’s so disrespectful,” Annie said quietly. She hadn’t left Frank’s side since he’d wolfed out over Bill’s body. She’d tried to convince him to go inside, get some sleep, but he was not having it.
So they sat there, together, watching. Waiting. Only Frank didn’t know what they were waiting for.
George pushed his nose into Frank’s hand. He wasn’t saying much either, but his large brown eyes were mournful. Frank scratched behind his ear absently.
Just then an official-looking man in a suit walked out of the McDaniels Theater. With dramatic flourish, the man removed his hat and held it high. “Put your name in for the jury! A hundred names for jury selection!”
The man was instantly mobbed with merchants and miners alike, all scrambling to write their names on scraps of paper, clamoring to be on the jury.
“Trial starts tomorrow morning at nine a.m. sharp!” the man said.
“I wish they allowed women on the jury,” Annie muttered. “I want to be on that jury.”
Me too, thought George.
Frank didn’t answer. A fresh wave of grief tore through him, from his head to his feet, and he doubled over. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. And then, as fast as it had come, the grief was gone.
George whined and licked his face.
“Are we going to go to the trial?” Annie asked.
Frank turned to her, numb again. “I want to be there when they tell Jack McCall he’s going to hang.”
Later Annie finally convinced Frank to eat something. She watched him while he nibbled halfheartedly on a biscuit and took a few sips of coffee. Frank felt like everyone in the restaurant was staring at them. Maybe they recognized him—the Pistol Prince. Maybe they were here to get a piece of him, too.
“Annie?” Frank said.
“Yes?”
“Thank you for standing by me.”
Annie reached for Frank’s hand, and then pulled back abruptly. “Of course.” She smoothed the napkin over her lap.
Frank didn’t know if she’d pulled back because of the onlookers or because she hadn’t wanted to touch him. She’d seen him, he realized with a dull sense of horror. She’d seen him lose control. She’d seen his fur and claws and snapping teeth. How could she see him ever again?
But she was still here. With him. That was something. And she sat with him until the earliest morning hours, when Frank walked her to her room and reluctantly said good night.
The next morning, the McDaniels Theater was bursting at the seams for the trial of the century. Jack McCall sat at a table on the stage, alongside his counsel. At another table sat the prosecutor. They were arranged at an angle, so both audience and judge could see. Everyone was waiting for the judge.
“Oh dear,” Annie said. Beside him, she scowled at the newspaper she was reading.
“What is it?” Frank asked.
“Nothing,” Annie said, folding it.
“More stuff about Bill?”
She nodded.
Charlie wasn’t there, because he wanted to guard Bill’s body. Jane hadn’t been able to bring herself to come to the trial, for fear that she would lose her temper and wolf out. George had opted to keep an eye on her. So it was just Frank and Annie and a few hundred people who’d come to watch the spectacle.
Frank studied Jack McCall’s face. He closed his eyes and pictured walking up to him from behind, gun drawn. Would he be able to do it? Murder him in cold blood?
Frank wouldn’t have thought so before, but this grief of his was a strange monster. This morning it was sitting heavy in his chest, occasionally swelling into violent urges to avenge his father. If Annie hadn’t been stuck to him like glue, he might have given in.
There were reporters all over the courtroom, their pencils scribbling furiously, even though the trial hadn’t started. Frank recognized the writer he’d met on the train, Edward Wheeler. He wondered if any of this would have happened if it weren’t for that article about Jane.
Ugh, reporters. That other loathsome writer—Ned Buntline—was sitting in front of Annie. She peered over his shoulder to see what he was writing. Then she gasped.
“‘A small, sandy mustache covered a sensual mouth’?” Annie read indignantly. “Who is that supposed to describe?”
Buntline tilted his notebook so she could no longer read it. Annie poked his shoulder roughly. She contorted herself so she could read more. “You think Jack McCall’s mouth was supple when he was pulling that trigger and killing my friend?”
“Easy,” Frank murmured.
“Sorry.” She righted herself in her chair. “It just makes me so angry, you know.”
Frank knew. “It’s okay.”
“Supple lips,” Annie grumbled loudly. “I’ll supple your—”
“Please don’t finish that sentence,” Frank said.
“Point of order,” the bailiff called and the crowd grew quiet.
Judge Kuykendall entered the room and sat in a chair that faced the two tables and the audience. The jury filed in afterward and sat in the front row of the theater.
Then, making a conspicuous entrance, Al Swearengen strode in, walked down the aisle, and sat in the one seat left in the front row.
Frank made a move to stand, but Annie held him back.
The judge put up a hand. “I ask the good people of Deadwood to sustain me in the discharge of these duties. I am in the unenviable position to oversee the trial of Jack McCall, who is charged with the murder of James Butler Hickok, better known as Wild Bill.”
Frank flinched at the sound of his father’s name. The prosecutor rose to address the court. “We would like to call Charles Rich to the stand.”
A man Frank didn’t recognize stood and went to the chair next to the judge.
“Mr. Rich, you were at the poker table with Wild Bill. Can you tell us about what you witnessed?” the prosecutor asked.
“Man comes in and walks right up to Wild Bill and shoots him in the back of the head, and shouts, ‘Take that!’”
Murmurs of outrage rippled through the audience.
“And can you identify the man you saw?”
Mr. Rich pointed to Jack McCall. “That’s him.”
More murmurs. More outrage.
The prosecutor brought two more witnesses who’d been in the No. 10 at the time of the shooting. They both had the same story.
“They have to find him guilty,” Annie said. “They have to.”
Frank nodded.
But then the defense called P. H. Smith.
“I know Jack McCall, and he is mild-mannered,” Smith said. “I also had drinks once with Wild Bill Hickok, and he has a bad reputation. Always quick to use his guns and shoot people. I mean, think of all the people he’s killed. Hundreds? Jack McCall probably saved lives killin’ Wild Bill.”
Frank’s hands began to tremble.
“Wooo,” Annie whispered in his ear.
Buntline was scribbling furiously, documenting the witness’s erroneous testimony. Annie shoved his shoulder. “Don’t write that down.”
“Freedom of the press,” the reporter growled back.
“Everyone knows Bill was a kindhearted man,” Annie said. “This is fake news.”
“Wooo,” Frank said to Annie.
Finally the defense called Jack McCall to the chair. Frank could barely stand looking him in the face. That creepy smile. Those beady eyes. He’d sensed all along that Jack McCall was bad news.
“I’m going to murder his face,” Annie said under her breath.
“Bill wouldn’t want you to do that.” Frank knew she wasn’t serious. She’d already had her chance to kill Jack McCall, and she’d chosen not to.
“Bill is a better man than I,” Annie said.
“Was,” Frank corrected forlornly, feeling the pain in his chest.
McCall’s counsel asked Jack why he shot Wild Bill Hickok.
Jack McCall straightened his spine (although your narrators don’t know how he did it, considering we are pretty sure he was spineless). “Well, men, I have but few words to say. Wild Bill killed my brother, and so I killed him. Wild Bill threatened to kill me if I ever crossed his path. I am not sorry for what I have done. I would do the same thing over again.”
“Liar!” a voice shouted out. It was a moment before Frank realized he was standing, and the voice was his voice. Everyone turned to look at him.
“Order!” said the judge.
Buntline was still writing away.
Annie rolled up her newspaper and smacked him on the head.
“Order!” the judge repeated.
Frank sank to his chair, glaring at McCall, and McCall had the gawl-durn nerve to glare back.
“Seeing as there are no more witnesses, court will adjourn,” the judge said. “Please clear the theater while our fine jury decides the fate of Jack McCall.”
Frank and Annie returned to the steps of the Marriott across the street. The wait was unbearable. Every second passed like a drop of sticky sap making its way down the bark of a tree. Jack McCall’s fate was out of their hands now.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Annie suggested.
“I don’t want to be somewhere else when the verdict comes down,” Frank said.
“Well, then, let’s just pace.” So that’s what they did, back and forth and back and forth on the muddy road in front of the McDaniels Theater, until the afternoon sun began to sink lower in the sky.
And then, out of nowhere, Annie reached out her hand, and Frank took it.
He couldn’t hold in his question any longer. “Annie?”
“Yes?”
He stopped and faced her. “You saw me as a wolf.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Does that mean— Do you think you can—”
Annie looked up at him expectantly. “Yes?”
But before he could get the rest of his question out, bells rang on the street. The man in the suit emerged from the McDaniels Theater. “Verdict’s in!”
Everyone rushed forward, but Frank remained frozen in place.
The man held up a piece of paper. “A statement from the jury. ‘We the jurors find the prisoner, Mr. Jack McCall, not guilty.’ He is free to go.”