Calamity

by Libbie Hawker

  I waited till the music kicked up lively below and the walls of the pool hall shivered to the rhythm of stamping feet. The hoots and whistles of eager men sounded piercing and sharp above the rapid clang of the piano. That was my cue to go, for even Nancy would be too distracted by the fun to look for me. I hurried downstairs without a backward glance at my abandoned crib. Then I pushed through the crowd, out into a cold, deep-blue night.

  Delia’s suggestion that I board for the night near the livery stable was a good one. If I’d been in a sounder frame of mind, I might have taken it. But having made up my mind to vacate Fort Laramie altogether, I was already subject to the lure of the trail—and by the time that crisp night air struck my face and filled my lungs with the smell of dust and sage, I was hankering for the wilderness again. That’s not to say I’d forgotten the hardships of the trail—nor the fright of being a woman alone in the wilderness. I was merely confident that I could face those dangers and come out on top; I had licked Red Nancy, after all. I could lick her again if I wanted to stick around and face her knives. Whatever I lacked in good looks, I made up for with grit and cleverness—the pool hall had taught me that much. I felt equal to the challenge of the trail, and the sooner I put Laramie at my back, the sooner I would reach my new destination… whatever it may be.

  The town was still lively, for though darkness came earlier each day, commerce hadn’t slowed. That was one of the perks of situating a town along the Overland Stage Line, I suppose: there was always new freight coming in, always work for the idle, and most of all, always some excuse for money to change hands. After months spent working for Madam Robair, I had more money than I’d ever dreamed of—though to be sure, it wasn’t exactly a fortune—and I thought if I meant to hit the trail again, I might as well do the job properly. So I headed first thing to the livery and the general store that stood next door.

  The fellow that kept the livery tipped his hat when he saw me enter the yard. He was a sharp young man by the name of Juan, a Mexican with a heavy accent, always dressed real smart and turned out like every day was Sunday, which I accounted some kind of miracle, since he spent all his time shoveling horse shit.

  Juan leaned on his pitchfork under the glare of a lantern, burning high up on a pole. “Miss Jane,” he said, “good to see you again. What brings you out tonight?” Juan knew me well, for I had dropped by at least twice a week to take Rainbow out for a ride, and I always paid her board fee on time.

  “I come for my mule.” I shifted my bundle, for it had grown heavy across my shoulders. I was eager to fill my saddle bags and head out of town. “But this time, I’m taking her for good. I aim to hit the trail again, and I don’t expect to be back in Laramie for an awful long time.”

  Juan stroked his mustache, looking around the livery yard almost as if something had frightened him. I couldn’t imagine why my declaration had put up his hackles, unless he was sore over losing his best boarder. Then he said, real slow and cautious, “I don’t understand, Miss Jane. I sold your mule two days ago, just like you asked.”

  My bundle hit the dirt with a thud. I stood there gawping at the man while he swayed from one foot to the other, looking like he planned to take off running.

  “I got a note from you,” Juan said. “A note, Miss Jane, telling me to sell off that mule. I got the money. Of course I kept it for you.”

  “I… I never sent no note.” I didn’t like the way my voice sounded, high and wavering like maybe I was about to cry. And in that moment, I saw Nancy’s hand in the affair. Every girl in the pool hall knew how much I loved my mule, and cherished the time I spent riding. One of those bitter old cats had sent a note in my stead, just to pull one over on me—and I would have wagered all the gold in Montana that Nancy had done the deed.

  I pressed my hands to my face so Juan couldn’t see my tears fall. Rainbow had been my only friend in the world, my true companion. Worse, she was my last tie to Mr. Braddick, a reminder of the happy days I’d spent working on his ranch, driving alone out into the great wide open. I never got to say good-bye to that mule—my dearest friend. I couldn’t help but feel that Rainbow would resent me forever, believing I had sent her off all uncaring, leaving her to toil in the traces for some hard-handed master without even one last pat on the neck from me. It about shattered my heart, to know that Rainbow and I was parted forever—and worse, that she would assume I had done it on purpose. It cost me all my strength to remain on my feet. I wanted nothing more than to fall to my knees beside my bundle and weep out all the inconsolable grief of my heart.

  The initial shock passed, leaving anger in its wake. I stood there for a long time, my face still hidden behind my quaking hands, weighing the merits of returning to the pool hall and calling Nancy out into the street for a real fight. If she was spoiling to get at me, then let her do her worst. I could bend that bitch around my knee, easy as a blacksmith shaping iron. But no—if I showed Nancy how deep she had hurt me, she would only take it for a victory, and crow about it from her bed while every bone I’d broken in her miserable body knit back together, making her stronger and meaner than ever before. I had no choice but to concede the fight, and put Fort Laramie behind me all the faster, before I talked myself into doing something truly stupid.

  When I looked up, Juan stood beside me, holding out a few banknotes—the money from Rainbow’s sale, less his commission. I nodded mutely and slipped the notes into my purse. Then I swallowed hard a few times till I felt strong enough to talk.

  “I’ll need a horse,” I said. “And a saddle, I guess, for I bet that note said to sell my tack, too. Show me whatever horses you got for sale. I’ll take the best out of the lot.” At least I had enough money to afford a decent mount—I was sure of that.

  Before much longer, I was cinching a fine saddle around the belly of a black mare. She was young, something of a spitfire, and I didn’t know her well enough yet to like her. Nevertheless, something had drawn me to her the moment Juan pointed her out in the corral. She was big and rough around the edges, with a steep goose rump and a head like a half-sawn log, heavy and coarse. But she had a keen, clever eye and she looked inexhaustible, and when Juan slipped between the rails and kissed out loud to make the herd move, I could see how free and easy the black mare ran. Maybe that’s what drew me to her—maybe she put me in mind of my own self. Nothing pretty to look at, but boy, could she get the job done.

  I bid Juan a heartbroken farewell and led my new horse to the general store. The old man and woman who ran it was making ready to close up for the night, but they held the door open for me. I purchased a new bed roll and a couple more blankets, a good flint and steel for sparking my camp fires, and various other sundries I thought might sustain me on a trek of indeterminate length. Winter wasn’t far off, so I added a good pair of fleece-lined gloves, three pairs of thick wool stockings, and a fur-lined jacket with a scarf long enough to wrap around my head and my neck at the same time.

  As the old woman tallied up my purchase, I watched her husband put the final buff on a pistol he’d been cleaning behind the counter. Something about that gun held my attention. I stared at the piece while the oil-stained rag ran across its surface—the scrollwork etched into the barrel, the pearl-white star set into the handle. Then I remembered where I’d seen that pistol last.

  “Billy Voss,” I blurted out.

  The man stopped polishing the gun. He looked up at me, kind of slow and mournful like.

  “That’s Billy Voss’s gun,” I said. “I’d recognize it anywhere. How did you come to have it, sir? Did he gamble it away again?”

  “No, miss,” the shopkeeper said. “If you were a friend of Billy Voss, then I’m sorry to be the one to give you bad news. Billy was killed about a week ago running steers out on the range. Fell from his horse and broke his neck. Sure is an awful shame; he was a good fellow.”

  I hung my head. I hadn’t known Billy Voss for more than one night, but I remembered him well. He said I would make a fine wife. He had asked me to m
arry him, and I laughed at the offer. How I regretted it now.

  “Billy’s friends brought in all his worldly goods,” the shopkeeper said, “and sold them to pay for his funeral expenses. He hadn’t any family, the poor boy. He was an orphan, all alone in the world.”

  An orphan—just like me.

  “How much for the gun?” I asked.

  “Thirty-five, with the holster.”

  I took the money from my purse—it had lightened considerably since I’d left the pool hall—plus a dollar for two boxes of cartridges.

  Solemnly, the shopkeep passed me the gun. “Do you know how to use it?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I know the general idea.”

  “I’m awful glad a friend of Billy’s will keep his gun. I think he’d be glad to know it, too.”

  I buckled the holster around my waist and slipped the pearl-handled gun into its cradle. Then I gathered up my goods, nodded my thanks to the shopkeep and his wife, and left the store. With every step I took, the pistol bounced against my thigh—a sensation unfamiliar, yet infinitely comforting. By the time I secured my goods in my saddle bags and swung up onto the black mare’s back, the pistol had already begun to feel like a part of me. I rested my hand on the gun, palm pressed tight against that pearl star, as I rode east into the darkness. East towards the dawn.

  I’ll spare you the details of my ride from Laramie to Cheyenne, for if truth be told, one stretch of trail is very much like another. A few weary days after my departure from Laramie, I rode up Cheyenne’s broad main street considerably more familiar with my new horse and my new pistol, for I had put both through their paces out on the gray Wyoming plains. I’d never intended Cheyenne to be my destination. I had only meant to replenish some of my supplies, for each night on the trail had been colder than the last and I knew winter would come on harsh, brutal, and early. If I was to make it farther east—pushing toward an unknown goal, driven by the loneliness and anger that still haunted me—I would need more provisions and a warmer set of clothes.

  But as the black mare loped easily up the street, I looked at Cheyenne with a new set of eyes. Though it had stood only three or four years at most, still Cheyenne reminded me of Piedmont, with its tidy new houses and brightly painted shops—and most of all, the little white church that recalled the sanctuary and blessing I received at the hands of Reverend Wilkes. And quite naturally, when I thought of the Piedmont church I remembered my brothers and sisters, and I asked myself what I was doing riding off into the tarnation east instead of back toward the place where I had left them. I have no defense for such foolishness. I’d only been caught up in the wild flights of fancy to which most girls of fourteen are susceptible. But then and there, I made up my mind to overwinter in Cheyenne, working all the while, and to take my earnings back to Piedmont as soon as the spring thaw came, and reunite the Canarys for good and all.

  I spent a few days boarding in a noisy, crowded house—dusty and thick with the stench of bullwhackers and the animals they drove, but the cheapest place a body could hope to lay its head in all of Cheyenne. Every night, I patrolled the cat houses and pool halls, paying close heed to each one. I watched the girls coming and going, and the gentlemen, too, assessing the caliber of each establishment with the greatest care. I knew what I must look for: a house that boasted more fun than refinement, for the tricks I’d used to make myself popular at Robair’s pool hall would fall flat in too dandy a place.

  That was how I found myself at McDaniel’s one brisk autumn morning, dressed in my green brocade with my matching purse hung on one hip and my star-handled pistol on the other. I had taken pains with my hair and hat before I’d left the boarding house, and I thought I looked as smart as I was ever like to do, with my long black hair braided and twisted all around my crown and a few love-locks pulled free to curl around my face. I wasn’t pretty, exactly, but at least I looked more girlish than I ever did in my trousers and shirt, with my hair a tangled nest, dull and gritty from the dirt of the trail.

  McDaniel’s was as raucous a hurdy-gurdy house as you’d ever like to see. Day and night, the music never stopped playing, and the stage that ran the full length of the hall featured a new performer every hour. McDaniel’s was more like a circus than the standard run of dance hall, for the girls who took to the stage could perform such feats of contortion and acrobatics as the West had never seen before. I presented myself to James McDaniel, the stout, balding proprietor, with no small amount of trepidation. All the while as I spoke to him at the back of the hall, the hurdy-gurdy moaned a lively tune and three red-haired girls dressed in pantaloons and lacy camisoles folded themselves up like Chinese paper cranes. Those girls bent their slender bodies into such impossible positions that I felt rather sick to my stomach at the sight. I couldn’t help but imagine myself cricked backwards that way, or trying to roll across the stage as those girls did, with their ankles pulled up over their heads and their backs round as wheels. Not a one of them so much as dropped her smile while she twisted and cavorted before those cheering, stamping men.

  “You can see, Miss Jane,” said James McDaniels, “that I run a unique establishment. My girls don’t only perform great feats in the cribs upstairs. They must prove exceptional talents in other ways, too.”

  He gestured at the stage, where the three girls had formed a pantaloon-clad pyramid. I said, “Yes sir, I can see as much.”

  “What exceptional talents would you bring to my hall, if I were to take you on?”

  I pulled my pistol from its holster and spun it fast around my finger, so many revolutions it’d make you dizzy to try and count them. Then I caught it smartly and tossed it to my left hand, where I spun it again, just as agilely. “I can tell good jokes, too,” I said, “While I sling my gun around. And I can trick-shoot real good.”

  That last part was an outright lie. I had only fired my pistol in my unsuccessful attempts to bring down small critters along the trail. But I figured it couldn’t be so terribly hard to learn how to trick-shoot. All I needed was a little practice.

  James McDaniels looked rather doubtful. He even shook his head and seemed on the point of dismissing me, but I said quickly, “Madam Robair of Fort Laramie took me in and put me to work. You can write her and ask whether I was any good. She didn’t believe in me at first, neither, but I showed a real knack with men. I can make them like me, sir, I swear it—make them like me better than any other girl you got. I did the job so thoroughly over in Laramie that I left town in fear for my life. The other girls was ready to come after me with knives because of my success. Why do you think a little slip like me carries a gun?”

  McDaniels laughed aloud at that, in spite of his reservations—just as I’d hoped he would. The thought of a big, blocky creature like myself living in fear of a gang of girlish whores was too absurd. Once he laughed, I knew I had him—and I knew I could captivate any of his customers just as readily.

  “How old are you?” he asked when he was done with his chuckle.

  “Eighteen.”

  “Girl, you are not.”

  I shrugged. “Sixteen. Which is old enough, in Wyoming Territory.” Of course I was but fourteen years of age, but what James McDaniels didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me.

  He seemed to accept the proffered age. “You can start tomorrow, but only with comedy. It’ll take me some time to figure out how to make use of a trick shooter indoors.”

  I said that was fine by me. Inwardly, I breathed a sigh of relief. If he had wanted me to dazzle the crowd with my shooting from day one, the jig would have been up before it had really begun, and I would have found myself back in the saddle, riding for the next town.

  It turned out that James McDaniels couldn’t work out the problem of trick shooting indoors for some months. By that time, my brash antics on stage had already earned me a pack of admirers, and the money began to trickle in once more. I was careful now not to make myself too popular; I had learned that lesson well from Red Nancy. So my gains was modest, but still sufficie
nt to bring me bobbing back up to the surface of hope. By the time I’d taught myself how to trick-shoot—riding out into the plains on my days off so no one would see me trying and failing to hit my targets—I had a crowd of gentlemen callers eager to see me put that gun to good use. McDaniels had one of his girls pass out cotton balls whenever I took to the stage, so no one would be deafened by the roar of my pistol. He built a wall of straw bales off the right-hand side of the stage, so I could fire at my targets without blowing holes in the wall. And when spring arrived—first in a trickle, then in a bright, cold gush of melting snow—Calamity Jane had made a new name for herself: the struttin’est, cussin’est girl in all the West, who could shoot an apple off a wooden mannequin’s head at twelve paces and strip a fella of his spare cash at no paces, upstairs.

  The novelty of my act drew so much attention that I soon began to plead with McDaniels to send me elsewhere—for he owned similar establishments throughout the Territory, and I didn’t like to make myself too popular in any one spot. That was how I came to tour from one hurdy-gurdy house to the next, working no more than six or seven weeks in any one place before I moved on again. The balance suited me fine, for after a few weeks had passed, I found myself craving the open wilderness again, the solitude of the trail, and the self-reliance long travel required. And the break from my other duties, of course—those I performed in the cribs.

  In fact, I found the touring life so thoroughly agreeable that it plum caught me in its snare. I still entertained the old fantasy of returning to Piedmont and reuniting the clan. But the more money I made and the more I came to savor those days and weeks spent alone on the trail, the more my plans for Piedmont became an abstraction rather than a concrete set of plans. Oh, I wrote to my brothers—for by the time I reached the age of fifteen, I had decided to make of myself a properly and truly literate woman, as worldly and sophisticated as a girl like me could ever hope to be. But if my letters reached the Richardson ranch, I never knew. Neither Cilus nor Lije ever wrote me back.