Wild at Heart

by Layce Gardner

I squinted at the shadow. “If you don’t mind me saying so, there’s something mighty familiar about you.”

  “First time in Deadwood, Charlie.”

  “Seems like I seen you somewheres before too,” Pete said.

  The gunslinger asked him, “You ever been to New York City?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me neither,” the gunslinger said.

  “It weren’t there then,” Pete said.

  “Nope.”

  There was silence for a bit. Nothing made any noise but the wind creaking the front doors. Even the cicadas were quiet. Finally I said, “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “That’s ’cause he didn’t give it,” Pete said.

  I waited again, but when the gunslinger didn’t introduce himself, I asked, “What’s your moniker?”

  I heard the slosh of liquid in the bottle and knew he was taking a drink. After he’d had enough time to swallow it down, he said, “Why do you want to know?”

  “Just being friendly,” I said like an apology.

  “So was that rattlesnake. A little too friendly. You might want to bear his fate in mind.”

  I heard his chair squeak across the wood floor and he emerged from the shadows. He walked over and put an elbow on the bar.

  “You really don’t recognize me, huh?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Should I?”

  “Tell me this,” he said, leaning in to me, “When you look at me what do you see?”

  I met his eyes and tried to figure out what game he was playing. I also hoped to gauge his temper. Instead, I saw something in those murky eyes I hadn’t expected. There was a genuine person hiding behind that gunslinger façade, and I’m a pretty good judge of human nature, so I put all my cards face-up on the table and said, “I see a regular gunslinger. Maybe lonely. Maybe hurting. Maybe running. From the law probably.” I added quickly, “That’s not my business, nor do I care.”

  “Hmmm,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “Yes. I see a man who—”

  “You know who that is?” Pete interrupted before I could finish.

  Pete was standing in front of the wanted posters and excitedly pointing at one. “That’s none other than Calamity Jane!”

  The gunslinger never took his eyes from mine. I looked at Pete, at the poster and back to the stranger. “I knew you looked familiar,” I said. “You’re Calamity Jane in the flesh.”

  All of a sudden, Calamity Jane stepped back, drew her revolvers, spun them around her fingers and pointed one at Pete and one at me. “I’m sorry you saw that poster, boys. Now I got to kill you.”

  “Aw, shit,” Pete muttered.

  My sentiments exactly.

  ***

  There wasn’t so much as an exhale of breath for the next few seconds. Then Calamity Jane’s serious face broke into a wide grin. “Aw, I was just foolin’.”

  “You’re not going to kill us?” Pete dared ask.

  “Not right now,” Calamity said.

  “Then might I ask if you’d kindly point those guns elsewhere?” I asked as polite as pie.

  “Sure,” she said, “But you have to hand over your guns first. I can’t chance that you boys won’t be enticed by the reward on my head.” Not taking her eyes off me, she said, “Pete, unholster that peashooter of yours, nice and easy, then slide it over here to me.”

  Pete did as asked.

  “And Charlie, hand over your gun,” she said.

  “I’m not heeled,” I said.

  She grinned. “Then you’d be the only barkeep in the world who doesn’t tote a derringer in the back of his pants.”

  I sighed and pulled out my single-shot derringer. Holding it by its barrel, I eased it down onto the bar. She holstered one gun and slipped the derringer into her jacket pocket. “Give me the shotgun under the bar, Charlie, before you make me regret going easy on you.”

  “How’d you know about that?” I asked.

  She grinned and gestured with her gun at the mirror behind me. I’d forgotten that it gave a clear view of what was behind the bar. I pulled the sawed-off shotgun out from under the bar, cracked it open, shook out both shells onto the floor and held it out to her. She put away her gun and ignored the shotgun. The empty shotgun wasn’t a threat, she knew that she could shoot and kill me before I’d ever get it loaded again.

  She picked up Pete’s gun and stuck it in the front of her belt. “Thank you kindly for your cooperation, boys. You’re a pair of gentlemen,” she said.

  “That gun cost me a month’s wages,” Pete grumbled.

  Calamity pulled his gun back out, flipped open the cylinder and shook the bullets out into her palm. She put all the bullets save one into her pocket. The one bullet she loaded back into the cylinder and spun it until it was ready to shoot.

  She tossed the revolver to Pete, saying, “You got one bullet, boy. If you fire, you better make sure your aim is true.”

  Pete holstered his gun. “Thank you kindly, Miss…Jane.”

  “Call me Calamity.”

  “If I may be so bold as to ask,” Pete said, “this here poster claims you killed twelve men. That true?”

  She took a long drink from the bottle and thought about it. “That’s an old poster.” She looked at me and said, “Put a couple glasses down here, Charlie. I don’t like to drink alone.”

  I put two glasses on the bar and she poured a liberal amount of liquor into each one. At this point, I realized she was being generous with my finest liquor and she hadn’t even paid for it yet, but I thought it best to refrain from comment.

  Pete asked, “How many you reckon you killed?”

  “Seventeen or so. Not counting Injuns,” she said.

  After she poured she moved over to a table and made herself at home. Pete picked up his glass, licked his lips and drank. “Sure do appreciate it, Calamity.”

  She turned her attention to me. Not wanting to appear ungrateful, I picked up the other glass and drank. I kept my face passive as the liquid scorched all the way down and set my belly on fire.

  “Seventeen,” Pete repeated. He said it like a toast and even raised his glass in the air before taking a drink. Calamity raised her glass and looked at me. I picked mine back up and raised it.

  She nodded. I drank. It didn’t burn as bad this time, but I did lose the feeling in my toes.

  “Seventeen,” she gloated. “And ever blessed one of them deserved it.” She leaned back in her chair, pleased to have an audience as she recited, “I killed my first man ’cause he cheated me in a game of cards. Number two was ’cause he tried to kill me first. Three, ’cause I didn’t like his brother. Four, ’cause he was ugly. Five, ’cause he tried to steal my horse. Six, ’cause he found out my name. Seven, ’cause he was ugly.”

  Pete interrupted. “You already said that one.”

  “I don’t like ugly men,” she said, then continued her litany. “Eight, ’cause he was a known cattle rustler. Nine, ’cause he got in the way of my bullet meant to kill number eight. Ten ’cause he was the brother of the cattle rustler and was seeking vengeance.”

  She stopped and smiled. I couldn’t let it pass. “That’s only ten. What happened to the other seven?”

  She had been expecting the question. “I killed all seven with a single bullet.”

  Pete bit. “How?”

  Calamity clearly relished the attention and served up a bigger story. “I was challenged to a duel. Being the quicker draw and better aim, I shot the man right through the heart. The bullet went straight through him and into the two fellers standing in a line behind him. After the bullet went through them and they were eating dust, it hit a metal bucket at the well, ricocheted off it and hit the man who was drawing himself a drink.”

  I played along. True or not, I had to know the answer to my question. “That’s only four. What about the other three?”

  Calamity smiled. “They dropped dead from shock and fright.”

  I laughed. Pete, the gullible fool, shot me a look to hush up.r />
  He hooked his thumb to her wanted poster and said, “There’s a thousand-dollar reward on your head.”

  Calamity snorted her disapproval. “One thousand? That’s all?”

  “Yeah, but it’s dead or alive,” he said like it was his bragging rights, not hers.

  “Now that rankles me,” she said. “Billy the Kid has five thousand on his head and he’s still sucking on a sugar tit. Why, I’m plenty more dangerous than him. You know what that is?”

  Pete shook his head, but she didn’t want for his answer. “It’s prejudice-ness against a woman is what that is. They’re just lowballing that reward ’cause I’m of the fairer sex.”

  I pulled my pipe and Bull Durham out of my pocket. I tamped it into the bowl and said, “If it’s any consolation, I didn’t know you was a woman at first look.”

  “Thank you, Charlie.”

  Pete said, “Me either. I never seen a woman in britches.”

  “It’s easier to get on in this world wearing britches. It’s also easier to get on my horse. I can outride, outshoot and outcuss most men. They got all green-eyed once they realized I was a woman, so it was just easier to be one of the boys.”

  I struck a match and lighted my pipe. I knew firsthand what she was talking about. I’ve had prejudice aimed at me all my life. Sometimes it even comes at me from the reverse direction—people feeling sorry for me because of my being a dwarf. I hate pity even worse than out-and-out laughing at me.

  Pete said, “I can’t blame you none. I got drunk once and tried on a corset. Couldn’t hardly breathe. Almost passed out.”

  Calamity and I shared a laugh. I suppose we were each picturing Pete gussied up as a woman. She said, “A petticoat might be an improvement on you, Pete. It’d hide those bowlegs of yours.”

  He looked down at his legs like it was the first time he’d ever laid eyes on them.

  “What’s the time, Charlie?” she asked.

  I pulled my timepiece out of my vest pocket, opened its gold cover and announced, “Four minutes to the hour of six o’clock.”

  “Help me finish this off, Pete,” she said, holding the bottle up in the air.

  Pete eagerly joined her at the table. As she poured him a glass full, he asked, “You kill a lot of Injuns?”

  “The way I look at, the more I kill today, the less I got to kill tomorrow.”

  Pete eased back in his chair and said with a wistful tone, “I always had a fancy to be an outlaw. I bet you get lots of women, huh? They’re always drawn to the outlaw image.” He realized what he had just said and quickly backtracked, “Sorry. I mean, I bet you get a lot of men.”

  Calamity laughed and slapped Pete on the back. “No, you were right the first time. Ladies sure do seem to like danger. They swarm all over me like flies on honey.”

  I couldn’t help saying, “Flies swarm on cow patties too.”

  Calamity thumped the bottle down on the table. “What’d you call me?”

  I quickly took it back by saying, “I didn’t mean nothing by it.” The liquor was loosening my tongue. I chastised myself for not weighing my words before opening my mouth.

  Pete covered my tracks by drawing her attention back to his next question. “How’d you come to be called Calamity?”

  “It was Wild Bill who hung that alias on me. It comes from a poem he wrote.”

  “Wild Bill Hickok is a poet?” I blurted.

  “What of it?” She squinted at me.

  I shrugged and puffed on my pipe. “I just find that hard to believe.”

  “I don’t care what you believe.” She turned back to Pete, showing me her back. “Wild Bill is a regular fount of poetry. He’d ease the saddlesores on long rides with the music of his words. I rode with him enough times to commit some of his words to memory.”

  “Can you recite me some of it?” Pete asked, looking like a little kid begging for a Mother Goose rhyme.

  “I’d be proud to offer up his poetry, Pete.” She stood, tilted her head from side to side like she was warming up her neck, solemnly placed her hat over her breast, put one boot on the chair and recited with a wealth of emotion that would have made Sarah Bernhardt shake in her shoes: “To be or not to be is the question. If it ’tis nobler to face the slings and arrows of yon redskins or to take up arms against the sea of troubles. To die is to sleep; to sleep is to dream. And who knows what dreams will come to you in that there sleep of death? There’s the Calamity that comes with living life…” She stopped and threw Pete a conspiratorial wink, saying sotto voce, “That’s my name right there, see?”

  I said, “That wasn’t written by Bill Hickok. It was written by Bill Shakespeare.”

  Calamity put her hat back on. “Now why do you have to go and spoil everything, Charlie?”

  “I have the book of his complete works if you don’t believe me,” I said. “That bit you paraphrased was from Hamlet, Act Three, Scene One.”

  She sat. “You have a mighty dark nature, you know that? I bet you like to take candy from babies too.”

  “I am merely shining the light on ignorance,” I said, clenching my pipe stem in my teeth.

  Pete said, “Maybe Wild Bill wrote them pretty words but just used a different name? Lots of writers do that.”

  “It’s called a nom de plume,” I said with a pretty good French accent.

  “No, it’s called a pen name,” Pete said. “Wild Bill prolly used a different name just so folks wouldn’t think he was namby-pamby.”

  The ignorance in the room was suffocating me. I downed the last of the applejack in my glass, set it down firmly and said, “It was Shakespeare that wrote those words. Unless Wild Bill lived in the Elizabethan times.”

  “He doesn’t know any Elizabeth,” Calamity said. “What makes you so all-fired sure about this?”

  I poked the air with my pipe. “I’m sure because I am correct! Shakespeare happens to be the greatest bard who ever lived.”

  Calamity pulled her gun, twirled it several times around her finger and the barrel came to rest aimed right at my chest. “Watch your mouth, li’l man. Any man who can string together words like that ain’t no bard!”

  I held my hands up in the air like I was on the wrong end of a hold-up. “Okay, okay…” I tried to soothe. “I take it back. He was the greatest writer of time immemorial. That better?”

  “That’s much better.” She reholstered her gun and raised the bottle in a toast. “Here’s to Bill whoever wrote it! Boy, can that bastard write!”

  She threw back another snort. I blew out a hot cloud of smoke.

  Calamity rubbed her hand across her face and asked, “When’s Belle coming back?”

  “Belle does as Belle pleases,” I muttered.

  Pete boldly asked, “What business you got with my Belle anyway?”

  “Your Belle?”

  He puffed up his skinny chest. “She’s my one and only sweetheart.”

  “You and every other man willing to part with a pinch of gold dust,” I said.

  Pete took offense at this and exclaimed, “She likes me plenty!”

  I shrugged like it didn’t make any difference to me. “Take it up with her.”

  “Just ask her. She’s sweet on me all right,” he said to Calamity.

  Calamity closed one eye and said thoughtfully, “Looks like I have a rival for Belle’s affections.”

  “There’s lots of other working girls,” I said. “What’s your stake in this particular one?”

  “Belle and I go a ways back. We have what you might call an understanding.”

  Pete asked in a squeaky voice, “You ain’t going to try to steal her heart from me, are you, Calamity?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of her just handing it over to me.”

  Pete shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “She’s promised to me,” he said.

  “Since when?” I asked.

  “Well…” he hesitated. “I ain’t exactly asked her yet. I’m still in the working-up-my-nerve stage.”


  I snorted. “What kind of husband would you make? You don’t even have a job.”

  “No, but she does.”

  Calamity settled back in her chair like a preening feline, content to listen to us debate.

  “All you two ever do is argue,” I said.

  “That’s called being married,” he said in return.

  “Belle is not lacking in sense. She’d rather marry me than you.”

  “Oh yeah? I heard her turn you down last time you proposed a union not even an hour ago.”

  “I wasn’t asking for her hand. I was asking for her partnership in a business venture,” I said. “It’s you who proposes to her every Saturday night. And she always turns you down too.”

  “I can ask for her to be my wife if I want to,” he said. “Besides, I have a plan this time.”

  “What kind of plan?”

  “A plan to win her hand, that’s what kind of plan,” he said.

  “No need to get snippy with me,” I said, chuckling. “I’m not the one who rejected you.”

  Calamity jumped into the conversation with her own summation, “Sounds to me like the fair lady is fair game. The way I see it, the first one to nab her is the winner.”

  Pete sat up taller. “I hope you ain’t a sore loser.”

  “I don’t know. I never lost,” she said.

  Pete shifted in his chair, quartering his back to her. He finished off his brandy and muttered, “If you wasn’t a woman…”

  Calamity cupped her hand over her ear and said, “Come again?”

  Pete lost a little of his bravado and said shakily, “I said, if you wasn’t a woman, I’d settle this here and now.”

  Calamity stood so fast her chair thumped over backwards. “Listen, you pipsqueak, I’m more man than you’ll ever be and more woman than you’ll ever get.”

  I was hoping they could get good and mad and kill each other, leaving me the winner of Belle’s affections by default. So I egged them on, “Maybe you two should settle this for good. Before Belle gets here, I mean.”

  Pete said, “I ain’t never hit no woman.”

  “Neither have I,” she said.

  Pete snapped his fingers. “I know! Let’s arm wrassle for her.”

  “I have a better idea,” Calamity said as she pulled a bullwhip off the post. “Can you dance?”