Calamity

by Libbie Hawker

  I told myself I hadn’t given up on my brothers and sisters. I told them the same, when I scrawled my inelegant missives and carried them off to the post, hoping the letters would find their intended recipients. But I liked the weight of money in my purse too much to give up the touring life. And before I knew it, a year had passed—then two—and I was no closer to storming Piedmont and rounding up the widely scattered Canary children. In fact, I had settled into a new dream—one entirely my own. I had never forgotten what I’d learned at Braddick’s ranch. Nor had the strange weight of melancholy left me from the night of my first delivery with the mule team. I knew the West wouldn’t last forever—not as it was then, wild and alive, a creature of its own reckless determination. The rails would tame it soon enough, domesticate the land and shape it into a beast unrecognizable. I intended to see my world before the West fell to its sad and inevitable fate.

  Lest the yearning, hungry look in her wildly beautiful eyes should pain him

  I never was bit by a rattler; that’s one small mercy for which I may sincerely thank the Lord. I saw plenty of men who was, though, for by God in my day I saw everything.

  I remember one man in particular who showed me the place on his leg where he’d been bit, just above the bone of his ankle, which was unexpectedly delicate, a pale white roundness with skin soft as flour. And marring the ladylike perfection of his ankle, two angry red holes with black at their center and thin veins of scarlet and old-bruise blue, running off in all directions like the rays of a star, like the reaching arms of a sunburst high up on a church wall.

  “Rattler bit me,” he said as we got dressed. Our transaction was all over, and the day was cold, so neither of us was much inclined to linger in the ivory. “Some two years gone, out along the Platte River.”

  I said, “Two years is an awful long time to leave holes like that in your skin. Didn’t you ever see a doctor?”

  “Course I did. I seen every doctor in Nebraska, and probably half of them what’s in Wyoming, besides. But no one can heal it.”

  He said a rattler pumps poison from its fangs, and once that poison’s in you, it stays—no matter what cure you seek, no matter what any doctor may try. Assuming you don’t die or cut off the bitten limb, you will carry the snake’s hot venom everywhere you go, through every clime. The venom throbs along your veins; it sets your blood afire. At night you get no relief. In coolness and in stillness, the ache of the poison fills your soul and affords you little rest. All your thoughts are consumed by the snake. You wonder if it got away, if it ever bit another man. Or if you shot it, or spiked its head in vengeance, then a serpentine ghost will haunt you, curling ’round your heart so you feel it—the cold loops of its body and the ridges of its scales—pressing down upon your soul. The snake never lets you be.

  He said to me: “Calamity Jane, you can’t know what it feels like, the long slow ache that never leaves, the ghost that encircles your heart.”

  But I did know, and I do. For by that time, I had already met Wild Bill.

  The first time I saw him I was eighteen years old, or near enough as made no difference. It was 1874; the Great Depression had settled in the year before, and that’s how I know the date still. The whole of the country was Depressed, but I was riding high on my happiness. I had left the hurdy-gurdy circuit and gone back to the camps, just for a change of scenery; I had followed the railroad camps for two years by then. I didn’t confine myself to the railways; now and then I took up with a soldiering camp, the kind that ventured up into the Black Hills to look for Indians. I was a young woman, of the age when love is hard and real. I was already in love, already susceptible to the ache. But I hadn’t yet fallen for any man—though I had my pick of the men, any night I pleased. Plenty prettier girls followed the camps, but I was the most popular, for I could drink alongside the men without losing my head, and most of them though it great fun to hear me cuss till my tongue turned blue. Besides, I was up for more adventure than any other girl I ever knew. I’d do more fancy tricks than anyone, except maybe for Backwards Kate, but she preferred the road houses in those days, and wasn’t often to be found among the tents.

  The boys back then was fair with their pay; even if there was a Great Depression somewhere Back East, we knew how to whoop it up along the train lines. Black iron rails might as well have been made from gold, for all we cared about money. Every foot of track the boys laid brought more coins showering down. Of course, we knew there was an edge to the world—a boundary beyond which the rail lines could never go. But we had yet to reach the end, so the money was still good and reliable. The Pacific was a long way off, and for us, the sun was far from setting.

  It wasn’t a man who’d captured my heart then, in the railway days. It was the land itself that enchanted me. I worked hard and earned plenty, enough to buy a real fine saddle for Silkie—that’s what I came to call my big black mare. The saddle had only a few silver fripperies. Its real beauty lay in its tooling, intricate swirls carved into the leather, wild roses and asters and spikes of lupine like you see growing in the high wet meadows come spring. Every morning I would sling that pretty saddle up onto Silkie’s back, and together we rode out from the camp—whichever camp we happened to call home that month—and took to the hills. Black Hills, dry hills, hills white with limestone or green after an April rain; hills streaked with red and ocher like spilled paint running down their sides. From the crest of a hill, I could see all the world, sweeping far away below me, a vastness of a land undiscovered, where in the shadowed clefts of mountains or in the sere golden earth itself, below its hot dry skin, there was gems waiting to be discovered, there was harmonies waiting to be found and laced together into song. There was nothing bigger than the plains and the mountains at my back. There was nothing greater than the sky, its blue solitude, its singularity, the very limit of what a mortal mind could know. There was nothing beyond, no God waiting to judge me for being who and what I was. There at the top of a hill—any hill would do—I could be myself. I could be free.

  That was the great love I felt. The West had romanced me. I had fallen for its charms as any fool does, and gladly I threw myself into the sweet fury of love. By day I rode alone, with only Silkie for a friend, and come sunset I was back at the camp, ready to take to my work cheerfully, my spirit filled with the warmth of the high places, my heart overbrimming from the smell of dry grass and distant rain.

  At sunset on a day in late spring, when the lupines still stood tall and blue in the cool, high meadows, I came back to camp just as another party arrived. This must have been in the Big Horns, on the Montana side, where the earth breaks up into deep red canyons striped like the muscle of a butchered ox. The memory of deep black clefts still lingered as I neared the tents and fire pits of our camp—the canyons seen from on high, a pattern of shadowed veins flowing along the landscape, the veins pulsing fast under my skin.

  I pulled Silkie in beside my own small tent and watched the party of men arrive. There was a dozen fellas maybe, and a few pack mules. They came along briskly at a trot. Their horses was all sweat-darkened from a long ride, but looked to be in fine fettle, so I concluded that they must be men of experience and quality, for a quality man always keeps his horse fit and happy.

  Molly b’Damn came out of her tent and stood beside me. We watched the new arrivals in silence. Molly had recently come from Ireland, determined to make her fortune on her back, and she was well on her way. She could cuss near as good as I could, and besides her forceful tongue, her golden hair and startling black brows made her a great favorite with the boys.

  She said in her bright, funny accent, “Tis Gen’ral Sharr’dan. They’ve sent him up to find some way to fight the Indians.”

  The Sioux was a powerful nuisance in that locale (as everywhere), though I can’t say I judge them harshly for being a menace and a terror. Settlements sprouted off the rail lines like tendrils from a vine, and by then the Indians must have felt desperate and rather scared by the rapid rising of our t
ide.

  I watched the troop ride past. The one in the lead was General Sheridan himself, I surmised—for though he wasn’t decked out in military finery, he carried an air of command about him that even I (a young woman and a whore besides) recognized at once. Below the wide brim of his hat, the general’s eyes seemed hard and far-seeing, and his mouth, though mostly obscured by a drooping dark mustache, still gave the impression of being pressed in long and careful thought.

  Just behind him rode a personage who swept every thought of Sheridan clean away, the moment I laid eyes on him. Never before had I seen a man so perfectly beautiful. His was a carefully carved, masculine beauty made of strength, utility and an easy, self-assured competence—a special kind of loveliness only men may boast of. His mustache was alike to the General’s, downturned and thick, but slicker and impeccably kept. His face was light, soft-looking, with the unchapped skin of a man who seldom removed his hat. The lines around his eyes spoke of many long years spent riding among wilderness; he was at least twice my age. And his hair…! It was marvelous, long and flowing as a woman’s, a red as deep as canyon stone, tumbling with waves. He wore a fringed buckskin coat with a fleece collar, with Indian beads at the sleeves. The coat hung open, welcoming in the crisp mountain air.

  He cast no glance to the side as he rode, took no notice of Molly or me. He was fixed on the Big Horn Mountains ahead, like a sailor attuned to his lodestar. And I believe it was that fixity, that firmness of place, that drew me so powerfully towards him. The mountains still sang in my blood; my body still ached from a long day’s joyful ride. And that man, with his buckskin coat thrown open and his hair falling across his shoulder, was of the mountains—of the hills. He was a thing of the lonely, endless sky. My sky.

  I didn’t work that night. I couldn’t be convinced to; I was far too curious about Sheridan’s presence in the camp, and the long-haired man who rode with him. I saw to Silkie, tethering her with the other horses in a meadow behind the camp. Then I took my tin cup and went walking through the rows of tents, searching for any sign of the newcomers.

  I found them—or the red-haired one, at least—outside Boss’s Place. Boss was a little Chinese fella who hardly stood as tall as my armpit, but he strode about the camp as if he owned the place, which was how he got his name. He had come out to work on the rails, laying ties with the other Chinese laborers, but soon figured he could make more money selling liquor to the camp workers. Selling liquor was far easier work than driving ties. Boss wore a long Manchu cue a-hanging down his back. He had a mustache wispy as a boy’s, which framed a perpetual scowl. But though he glowered fiercely, I still got the impression that Boss was always happy to see me coming. And why wouldn’t he be? I drank at least as much as the men did.

  Boss’s tent was spacious, with a makeshift bar inside made of planks pulled from the bed of a disused wagon. Fellas had already crowded around the bar, ordering up their drinks, and Boss’s Place was as busy that evening as usual. The long-haired man from Sheridan’s company had just settled into a game of faro in a circle of lantern light right outside the tent’s entrance. I walked past him, hardly glancing his way like he wasn’t anything a-tall. I headed straight for the bar, where a gaggle of my admirers set on stools and crates, talking over the day’s business and enjoying their liquor as only men in a tent camp can do.

  Behind the bar, Boss busied himself with a rag, doing his best to clean up his collection of cracked and mismatched glasses. He said, “You come for whiskey, Miss Jane?”

  “When have I ever failed to come for whiskey? Fill my cup, good old Boss.”

  I put my coins down on the wagon planks, and Boss poured till the cup was brimful.

  I said, “Who’s that fella come in with General Sheridan? The one set outside right now, playing a hand of faro?”

  Boss didn’t know. “Nobody tell me nothing,” he said, scowling as ever. “Nobody ever tell Chinese nothing. Think we are stupid, but I got all the liquor in this camp, so who’s stupid now?”

  The men at the bar laughed in appreciation of Boss’s wit. One said to me, “That fella in the buckskin coat is Wild Bill Hickok. Ain’t you never seen him before, Calam?”

  I said I certainly had not, which was the truth.

  Hickock was a Jayhawker in the war, the man told me, and a famed scout besides. He said, “That must be why Wild Bill has come over with Sheridan. Word has it he’s been making his way as an Indian fighter since the war ended, and he ain’t about to do soldiering no more. Not the kind of soldiering he saw Back East, anyways.”

  Another man along the bar, a few crates down from the first, piped up with his own opinion. “Bill Hickok ain’t no Indian fighter. Bill Hickok is nothing but a yahoo.”

  “Don’t let him hear you say that,” advised another.

  The sour man waved his hand like brushing away flies. “A gambler who’s over-fond of getting in shoot-outs. That’s all there is to Hickok. Like half the trash washes up in a railroad camp. Begging your pardon, Calam, for you are surely an exception.”

  The men all had a laugh at that, and I sipped my whiskey to hide my frown.

  Another fella said, “Hickock is respectable enough. He’s been a sheriff in Kansas.”

  “Sheriffs ain’t respectable automatically,” said the sour man. “If you think so, Jim, then I’d say you ain’t met too many sheriffs.”

  Around that time, the talk at Boss’s bar devolved into an argument over the merits of the badge, so I excused myself to the tent’s exterior, where a small crowd had assembled to watch the faro game—or perhaps they had gathered merely to gaze on Wild Bill Hickok, whose reputation (whatever it may be) had surely preceded him. My curiosity was thoroughly piqued, as well as my pulse quickened. I edged into the crowd and found a place across from where Bill sat gazing calmly at his cards.

  I had walked in on the heckling that is customary when men gather for a game. The boys paid me little heed, being focused on each other—on Hickok especially, whose unexpected appearance had ignited a sort of festival air. One of them, a rail laborer who I never spotted without a cigarette in his mouth, blew a stream of smoke and shifted the cards in his hand. Then he said, “Wild Bill, that long purty hair of yours is apt to incite the Indians.”

  “That is the idea,” Bill answered, cool and unprovoked. His voice was smooth and low, like whiskey on the tongue.

  “Ain’t you concerned that your scalp might prove too tempting a target for a Red to resist?”

  “Any Indian is welcome to try me.” Bill never looked up from his hand.

  One of the men watching the game reached towards Bill’s hair as if he wanted to touch it but didn’t dare. I couldn’t blame him. Those marvelous auburn locks, spilling from beneath Wild Bill’s hat like the cascades of a waterfall. The man said, addressing the crowd at large, “They call him Wild Bill, Devoid of Vanity.”

  “I am devoid of vanity.” Bill tossed a few chips in to bid.

  Most of the men hooted at his words, and I must confess I joined in their laughter. His coat may have been buckskin like any frontier rough, but everything about him—from the slickness of his mustache to the shine of the beads that trimmed his sleeves—spoke of a certain dandiness that could only come from vanity. I didn’t blame him, though. I had always longed to be pretty, and if I’d been blessed with the fine good looks of Molly b’Damn or Backwards Kate or Wild Bill himself, I would have been vain as a peacock, and strutted and preened in a shameless display of pride. If the Lord gives you any gifts, you ought to take pleasure in them, and make the most of them, too. That’s what I always say. Humility might get you into Heaven—I cannot rightly say—but humility makes for a dull, small life whilst you’re stuck in the mortal realm.

  I guess Wild Bill must have heard my laugh. I’m a big girl; always have been tall as a man, so many folks is surprised by my laugh, which is high and sweet. When I’m laughing (which is a rare thing nowadays) I sound like the giggliest little handful who ever bounced on a knee at the hurdy-gu
rdies. Bill looked up and caught me just as I raised the tin cup to my lips.

  He caught me, and he held me with his eyes. Picked me out of all that crowd and saw me, as no one else saw me that night, as no one saw me ever. There was a quiet thoughtfulness in his gaze, which I appreciated as a permanent feature, not something he affected for me, not something I brought out in him. What could I bring out of any man, except the money from his pocket? But the look to him. The sadness in his gaze. And then, as I swallowed my whiskey and felt the smile die slowly on my unrefined face, Bill dipped a very gentle nod, lifting the brim of his hat with one long, graceful finger.

  Somebody in the crowd said, by way of introduction, “That’s Calamity Jane, the loudest and cussin’est wench in the Big Horns.”

  And I thought, but couldn’t make myself say, No sir, my name is Martha Canary, and I am pleased to make your acquaintance. Instead of speaking, I downed the remainder of my whiskey in one long gulp and Bill returned to his cards. But that was the moment—just then, as his finger touched the edge of his hat—that his poisoned tooth found my heart.

  Well, I hardly think it suitable to recount the days that followed, for my behavior was undignified. I knew it then, and felt vaguely embarrassed by my hunger, my insatiable impulses—but I couldn’t stop myself. I reasoned (and still half-believe now) that I was never a woman of propriety or grace in the first place, so putting on airs of dignity did me no service whatsoever. It was better to be myself, in all my miserable glory, than to put on a show I couldn’t maintain for long.