By and by, I found a broad, flat road running north, and despite the glaring sun and the thirsty dust hanging over the prairie, that road looked smooth and inviting. Fort Laramie lay to the north—the last town where I had seen Bill Hickock. Fort Laramie seemed as good a destination as any other; maybe lucky into the bargain, so I turned my team northward and settled back to enjoy the drive.
The day was hot, but I kept an easy pace, wending my steady way through sage and grass, always following the promise of my chosen road. A herd of buffalo moved lazy in the distance, and once a great flock of black birds scattered up from the road ahead, twisting in the air above me like some wind-tossed storm cloud. In time, the heat eased and evening set in, followed by a fleeting sunset. The stars blossomed in a cooling sky, paving my road with gentle silver light. Starlight seemed such a blessing that I knew I couldn’t be far from my goal—my endless, aching need. My love, Wild Bill.
I arrived at Fort Laramie just after dark and surrendered my rented buggy and the team of four to the livery. “They’re from Cheyenne,” I told the fella who ran the place. “Wire down and tell them Calamity Jane has turned in their buggy and team in fine fettle. And tell the whole damn town to go stuff their heads while you’re at it, just as a favor to me.”
I mounted Silkie and rode through the dark, narrow lanes of Fort Laramie, with my worldly goods stuffed once more into my saddle bags and one eye keenly open for a likely place to rest my head. I passed plenty of saloons—the Fort had grown up considerable since I seen it last—but I felt no temptation to venture inside. I reasoned I would spend one night at Fort Laramie, then strike out for the next destination (whatever it may be.) I intended to keep moving from town to town and fort to fort till I’d crisscrossed the whole West, ever on the lookout for Wild Bill. And once I found him, I wouldn’t leave his side again, not even if he tried to drive me away with a club. Fate had spared him, preserving him from Custer’s grisly end. Foolish girl that I was, I couldn’t help but believe—with the dead-certain conviction of an idiot in love—that fate had kept him safe specifically for me.
Seeing as I was thoroughly determined to keep myself on the trail till I found Wild Bill at last, you can imagine my surprise at almost riding him down in the black streets of Fort Laramie. I had just made a circuit of the town, but had found no vacant boarding rooms—so I decided to cut back to a grassy, unbuilt square and make a rough camp there, just as I’d done with my brothers and sisters in Salt Lake City. I wheeled Silkie around in the middle of a narrow street and kicked her into a brisk trot, but at that very moment a man came striding out of an alley, bursting into reality sudden as a snap of lightning. Silkie reared and very nearly threw me; I cussed and fought the reins till my horse was back on all four feet, snorting and wringing her tail.
“You damn fool,” I shouted, “why don’t you look where you’re going? Or at least don’t wander around drunk in the dark of night. Somebody’ll take you for a thief!” Didn’t I know all about that.
The man planted himself in front of my horse, stalk-still, and stared up at me in disbelief. Even in the darkness I recognized him—the long tumble of hair, the proud carriage, the buckskin coat with its swinging fringe and Indian beads along the edges of his sleeves. And his eyes—sharp, intense, as piercing and considering as ever. I recognized him, and yet I didn’t. I couldn’t really believe I’d found him, easy as that, just by wishing and dreaming I would. And so I set like a bag of rocks in my saddle, mouth hanging open, unable to do much more than stare.
“I’ll be damned,” Bill said at last. “Calamity Jane.”
The sound of his voice. Like nothing I’d heard in all my life, better than any music, sweeter and more compelling than the wind in the mountains. I wanted to close my eyes to listen—wanted to distill him to an essence of himself, pure sound, concentrated and singing all through my blood—but I was afraid the sheer force of my longing had conjured up a vision, and if I took my eyes off him, even for a second, he would disappear.
He said, “What are you doing in Fort Laramie? And riding like a breakneck fool in the middle of the night?”
“It ain’t the middle of the night,” I managed to say. “Not yet.” I swung down from the saddle, took a few halting steps toward him. “I just come up tonight from Cheyenne. What are you doing here, Bill?” His name on my tongue tasted better than molasses taffy.
“Arranging another expedition, I’m afraid.” He swept off his hat, held it against his chest in a sheepish display—a false display, for Bill had never been meek nor humble in all his life. It was one of the things I loved best about him. “I’m bound for the Hills again soon. I aim to stake out a claim among the gold fields.”
“An expedition,” I said, perking up some. “That’s good luck for me. I’m coming with you, Bill, come Hell or high water. I won’t take no for an answer. You’ll find me real useful and pleasant, I swear. I haven’t had a drop to drink in a proper long while.”
I omitted the fact that I had been penned up in jail for a proper long while, too, and that accounted for my dryness. What Bill didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Bill chuffed a little laugh and sort of settled on his feet, leaned his weight in a comfortable fashion. “Now why in God’s name would you want to join up with another expedition? I would have thought your last adventure was enough to put you off the idea for a lifetime, at least.”
“I want to be a gold miner,” I said, without taking the time to consider whether it might be true. I would make it true, if Bill agreed—I’d become the best damn gold miner who ever dipped a pan in a crick. “I been real respectable since we parted ways, but it’s getting harder all the time to find good work. I tried, down in Cheyenne—tried real hard. I thought I might keep a boarding house, but there was no house that’d have me. And there ain’t no boarding houses here at the Fort, far as I can tell. I don’t want the kind of work that’ll just keep me barely fed, though; I aim to get rich someday and live like a queen.”
Bill chuckled at that. He turned his hat in his elegant hands.
“Why not?” I said, defiant. “Ain’t I got as much right to live like a queen as any other woman? And I’m willing to work hard to get there—harder than most ladies will consent to work, I wager.”
“I guess you got as much a right as anyone else,” Bill said. I liked the warmth in his voice, the note of chummy gladness. “And I guess gold mining ain’t less respectable an occupation than the one you held in the past.”
I sensed my advantage and pressed it most shamelessly. “I’d say gold mining is a damn sight more respectable—at least if you was to ask a preacher for his opinion. Come on, Bill—let me join up. You know I’m strong and hardy, and I can ride as well as any man.”
“I dare say you can, at that.”
“I’ll be just as handy in the gold fields. I can do the same work a man can do.”
Bill’s mouth twisted in a slow, considering fashion, and a veil of doubt seemed to slide across his eyes.
Before he could tell me no, I said, “It’s a long way from here to the Hills. And expeditions require a powerful lot of money.” I didn’t know that to be true, but I figured they must be costly affairs. Otherwise, a body would run into ten new expeditions for every mile of trail they rode. “I can earn quick money along the way. I’ll give it all to the expedition. You know I’m good as my word.”
“Earn money? Calam—”
“Not through any sinful means. I developed a reputation as a trick shooter. Look, Bill, I still got your gun, and I can shoot real good, too. People come from miles around to see Calamity Jane trick-shoot. All the money is yours, Bill—whatever I can earn. Just take me with you up into the Hills. Let me have a chance as a gold miner. Let me take my one shot at living like a queen.”
Bill turned away, but not to reject me. He stared out into the lightless calm of Fort Laramie, silent and still while he weighed my offer. Crickets called everywhere in the night, one clamoring chorus of joy. My heart seemed to
beat as fast as the rapid pulse of their song.
Finally Bill looked at me again and nodded. Just that—but it was all I needed.
“Bully!” It was all I could do to keep myself from hollering that word. “We’re going to get rich, Bill—you and me.”
“Come along to where I left the rest of my crew. You might as well start bedding down with all of us tonight. They’re a good bunch; they won’t give you no trouble, long as you return the favor.”
I led my horse through the night, and Bill fell into step beside me. When we reached the expedition’s encampment, out on the edge of Fort Laramie, I realized Bill had carried his hat the whole way. Just as a gentleman would do in the company of a real, proper lady.
A Romance of the Silent Tongues
I’ve talked a streak already, Short Pants, and drawn the picture of my life, as far as my poor skills will allow—drawn out every beautiful and ugly facet, laid my whole world bare. But how can I describe the bliss of riding again with Wild Bill? I look back on those weeks, when we made our way from Fort Laramie to Deadwood, and I find words fail me utterly. Perhaps there’s no language sufficient to describe the beautiful pain of love. The torment of proximity, the longing in your bones—in the fiber of your flesh—a need to touch so compelling, your hands will catch fire unless you reach out to take what you can never have. It’s a hunger so deep, no food will satisfy; a weariness so consuming, no sleep can ease it—and anyway, in sleep you find only dreams of the love you cannot speak, the rip you cannot mend.
Even if Bill had loved me—if he had deigned to hold me close, as lovers do—my longing would have gone on forever. My love for him was too powerful by then. Mere touch would never quiet that force. A kiss, a lingering embrace—nothing could have cured the sweet, the endless ache. Even the stark act wouldn’t have been enough; I yearned to know Bill’s mind and heart so desperately, nothing could have contented me except to merge with him—body, mind, heart—till his every private thought became my own, till I felt his breath in my own lungs and heard his voice spilling from my throat.
An impossibility—that’s what my love was.
I knew it was impossible, knew I could never be happy again, even if God granted a miracle and Bill decided he could love me after all. I was miserable with the knowing, even while my heart soared to heights of bliss I hadn’t imagined might exist.
I thrilled to every moment of that journey, each passing heartbeat—for I had grown closer to Bill than I had dared to dream. (I mean closer in the physical sense—riding by his side—as well as in our friendship.) I was willing to tolerate the precious agony of an unfulfillable longing, so long as I rode next to Bill, and shared a laugh with him now and again. So long as I could watch Bill ride out onto the trail ahead, scouting the way, while the edges of him blended into the land and the land melted into his beauty.
On Dodge’s expedition, I had come to appreciate that Wild Bill was a part of the West. But it wasn’t till our trek to Deadwood that I came to understand Bill’s perfection of place and spirit. I felt his belonging in that vast, open world the way you feel a line of poetry, or the strain of a poignant song. The sight of Bill on his red horse, perched atop a red bluff—or traversing a ridge at evening time, singular in the cooling night—reverberated in my blood, so that even when Bill returned to his place on the trail beside me, I could still see him there—away out there, a ghost drifting apart from the ordinary world, a memory patterned against the sky in skewed and vivid colors, as when the vision of a candle flame remains imprinted on your eyes, dancing violet and blue against all mundanity of ordinary sight. I savored those visions of Bill in the wilderness more than I ever savored whiskey. And Bill among the world—his true and rightful world—brought a thrill far deeper and richer than whiskey, too. I came to understand that Wild Bill was a habit I could never shake. With enough motivation, I could hold myself clear of liquor—I knew that by now. But my hunger for Bill—the sweet, trembling pain of my insatiability—would haunt me all the rest of my days.
We didn’t travel alone, Bill and me—more’s the pity. Don’t take me wrong; the fellas he chose for his expedition was all good men to a one, and whenever Bill went off scouting, I enjoyed their company immensely. Three gents accompanied Bill and me, each hopeful of enough gold to make him rich as a lord. There was Joe McAllister, whose pappy came from Scotland, and who played a dandy fiddle by the campfire every night. Timothy Crutch was a Negro boy about my same age who didn’t talk much but enjoyed my stories plenty. The more fanciful and improbable my stories became, the more Timothy laughed and prodded me on. And Jasper, of no particular last name, was the oldest of our lot—old enough to be a grandpa, I think, but strong and vigorous with a respect for Wild Bill almost as great as my own. I enjoyed the company of those boys whenever Bill rode off on his own, but the moment he returned, I cleaved to his side like a loyal spaniel pressed against its master’s heel. Truth was, Bill paid me no more heed than he paid Joe or Jasper or Timothy. But he paid me no less heed than he paid the boys, either. I counted that a wealth and a blessing.
I made good on my promise to perform at every road ranch and town along the way. The name Calamity Jane drew modest but predictable crowds, and my fancy shooting oft’ inspired enough whooping-up from my admirers that I sometimes brought in extra funds to put toward our gold claim. Long before we reached Deadwood, Bill began to look at me with greater respect. By and by, the pity he had once felt for me eroded, replaced by the warmth of genuine esteem. He never said a word about his shifting opinion of old Calamity Jane, but I read the change in his eyes, in the way he squared his shoulders in my presence and asked me for my thoughts on the towns and road ranches we passed—whether I accounted them worth a stop-over, or whether we ought to press on toward Deadwood. I drank down Bill’s tacit praise, thirsty as a man at a desert well.
What I liked best about that trek wasn’t my shooting shows at the road ranches, nor even the way Bill smiled when I handed over my earnings. What I liked best was the nights. Our little expedition bedded down beside some trickle of a stream, or away out in the sage with nothing around to mark our camp—any flat place would do, chosen because sunset had come, and we was all dropping. By night, I stoked up a fire of buffalo chips, and the five of us cozied up around the blaze, swapping lies and eating heartily even though the food was terrible. We cussed and laughed and basked as much in the warmth of our friendship—all us comrades together—as we did the heat of the fire. The light from our flames set Bill’s face apart from the darkness, and bounced from the golden ring he wore, shaped like a snake with two garnet eyes. And when the flames had dithered down to a few glowing embers, we all took to our bedrolls. Then I lay with my back turned to Bill, whose back was turned to me. But my every sense was attuned to his smallest movement—the sound of his breath, the way it slowed and deepened as he sank towards sleep. I lay awake, shivering from the nearness of the man I loved, aching to touch him—knowing I never could. And all the while, high above, the stars wheeled drunk on their own light, brighter and more numerous than they had ever seemed before.
We took our time traveling to Deadwood, for that summer was especially hot, and the season carried something wild and frenzied in its long, yellow days. Outrage over Custer hadn’t abated. In fact, it seemed to grow with every settlement and ranch we encountered. Long before we reached Deadwood, the summer felt like a tinder box—close and confined, yet packed to bursting, liable to blaze out of control at the first and smallest spark. The people was all frightened, and fear makes most men angry, aggressive, boastful. All across’t the West—or at least across’t Wyoming and Dakota—men seemed harder, less trustful, less worthy of trust. We made up our minds to tread with care and watch what we said, for the most harmless of interactions was apt to end in a fist fight, or worse.
But even at our leisurely pace, we did find Deadwood at last. Bill stopped our party beyond the edge of town, at the crest of a rise, all hard-white earth, dry and exposed, baking under a m
erciless sun. Deadwood lay before us, just far enough to look like a toy village scattered by a child at play. All its buildings was small and fragile, clustered self-consciously around the feet of the Black Hills. The town seemed half-forgotten in the vastness of the landscape.
“I don’t fancy staying in the town itself,” Bill said, staring long and sober at Deadwood. “You seen how het-up everybody was, all along the trail. But we’ve come up against the hottest weeks of summer, too. There ain’t no sense going up into the Hills just now. It’ll only go harder on us than it needs to.”
“We should wait out the last of the summer here,” Jasper said. “Head up into the Hills once we see the rain clouds gather in the high country. Then the cricks will be flowing again for sure, and the going will be easier.”
Bill nodded, but he still kept his eyes fixed on Deadwood. “Exactly my thoughts, Jasper. Let the rest of the summer pass. We’ll benefit from the extra preparation, anyhow—more time to get our supplies together, time to be sure we’ve got the best equipment available. Two weeks, then—and we’ll see how the weather goes. But I don’t like the thought of boarding in town. It’ll cost too much money, for one thing. Jane has worked hard to keep us in cash; I ain’t keen to squander her earnings. We’ll use our money to buy more goods for our mining operation.”
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