Calamity

by Libbie Hawker

  I seen plenty of rowdy settlements in my day, but few compared to that town. Tenderfeet rode the rails from the grand cities Back East in droves, dispersing among Cheyenne and Laramie and Boulder. And all those fancy Back East folks earnestly believed they’d come for a taste of the real, wild West. But I tell you what: if those tenderfeet had the misfortune to find themselves in Fort Pierre, they would have walked all the long way back to Boston or New York rather than wait for the next train to whisk them off to safety. There never was a wilder example of the West than Fort Pierre. Folks of that town never bothered with the law; if two fellas had a dispute, they shot it out in the streets, and a body was as like to be felled by a stray bullet as bit by a flea. A few small gangs of cattle rustlers banded together into one great mob of bullies, and extracted pay from the citizens of the town in exchange for not burning down their houses or shooting all the menfolk dead. No one liked to live in Fort Pierre, but everybody who was there was stuck good and tight, like a boot bogged down in thick mud. Lord have mercy on the poor souls who couldn’t pull themselves free.

  Despite its infamy, I found the town pleasant enough, as long as I kept my wits about me and paid heed to the prevailing mood—though I’m sure I only found Fort Pierre passing decent ’cause I didn’t have to live there. Whenever a gun fight seemed likely to erupt, I returned to the livery and hunkered down under my wagon till the immediate danger passed. Then I hitched up my cattle and drove away, fast as I could persuade those lumbering beasts to go. But by the time I made another delivery, Fort Pierre always settled back into its wheel-rut, and more often than not, I had a perfectly enjoyable time among its taverns and saloons.

  I grew especially fond of the Triple Star, a tavern right at the heart of town. I loved the Triple Star not for its whiskey (though I sampled enough of it to know it was top notch) but for the company of Angus, the barkeep. Angus came to know me well, too, for I often stopped for a single drink before I returned to the road, and the old fella always enjoyed the stories of my past adventures. He was right amiable—put me in mind both of Mr. Braddick and Timothy Crutch at the same time, with just a touch of California Joe and Sam Young, those fellas who’d been so keen to hear my tales in the glory days when Wild Bill had ridden at my side.

  Angus, gesturing with one of the cigars he never ceased to smoke, always drew a crowd over to the bar the moment I stepped into the Triple Star. Those fellas bellied up and listened while I held forth, spinning the most fanciful yarns about my past, sparing not a single cuss. The Triple Star rattled with laughter whenever I hit the high note of a story, and Angus poured me a second drink—not whiskey, but a bracing tonic or a good, spicy sarsaparilla—without my saying boo. He seemed to understand that I struggled to keep myself clean, and declined to make that task any harder for me. A less honorable man would have kept the whiskey flowing, and pocketed every coin that fell from my inebriated hands. But there wasn’t a dishonorable drop in Angus’s blood. He liked me as I was, and aimed to keep me that way—not falling-down drunk, just for the sake of his own profits. I was grateful for his friendly discretion.

  Angus didn’t mind if I took up my old trade, neither—the very oldest. He kept a comfortable room upstairs for just that sort of occasion, and only took a small cut of my earnings. The gents of Fort Pierre paid well for a night with the famous Calamity Jane, and Angus’s upstairs room made for pleasanter accommodation than my wagon in the livery shed—that’s for damn sure.

  Since I found success as a bullwhacker, I felt no more need to take up as any man’s wife. I felt no more compunction over plying a trade on my back, neither. Those men didn’t mean a thing to me, but their money sure did. With two regular sources of income, I began to make out the shape and color of a steady future somewheres just ahead. Before long, I thought, I would have enough money to sell that tumble-down house in Boulder and move my operation elsewhere—wherever the growth of the railroads dictated. And once the bullwhacking trade fell all to pieces (which was inevitable, I knew, having learned Braddick’s lesson well), I would have saved enough money to open the fancy boarding house of which I had so often dreamed.

  Yes, a pleasant turn to the road of my fortune was waiting just ahead—so close I could already see it. After the long, harrowing slog of my life, a suitable reward for my patience and fortitude was practically at hand.

  That was when calamity found me again, and dashed all my dreams to pieces.

  You see, I fell pregnant in Fort Pierre. Of course, I had employed all the usual tricks a girl of my trade learns early on. A copper coin stashed right up in your nook-and-cranny was the most effective measure, but when the coin trick failed—as it often did—I took regular doses of tansy and pennyroyal tea to keep my belly in a pleasantly unoccupied state. But this time around, none of the usual tricks worked. I was stuck with a child, and I plum despaired, for I knew would make a piss-poor example of a mother.

  I brooded over the coming disaster for months while my waist thickened (it had never been especially slender to begin with) and my belly began to protrude over the top of my trousers. In time, the boys I hired for the bullwhacking business discerned my condition, and insisted I remain at the house in Boulder, overseeing the deliveries and keeping the books, as far as I was able. They took all the joy of the open road for themselves, and how I did resent my confinement.

  I resented that little mite growing inside me, too, for I never wanted him to begin with. Even less did I welcome him now, pulled as I was from my beloved trail, mired in boredom and misery.

  But a funny thing happened as my condition progressed. The bigger the baby grew, the more real he became in my mind. I began to imagine what he might look like—quite against my will, at first—and I saw again the faces of my little brothers and sisters, remembered them as the babes I had cared for so tenderly while my ma and pa had occupied themselves with their own interests. A grudging affection developed for the child to come, and little by little, a sweet anticipation displaced my resentment. I began to talk to the baby, for it was the only company I had most days. I stroked my belly almost constantly, certain he could feel my touch; I made grand plans for the two of us, and all too soon I was looking forward to becoming a mother, though I still labored under no illusion that I would make an especially fine specimen of maternity.

  For the sake of the baby, I resolved to build a decent future. I counted my growing cache of money—not a fortune by any means, but enough to set myself up with a proper home, enough to meet a little one’s most pressing needs. I had never tried to sew before, and I knew I would be terrible if I tried, so I went about town buying little dresses and bonnets from ladies whose children had grown too big for their old clothes. How I did fuss and fawn over all those pretty little things, despite their stains and patches. Every night I set beside my fire, rubbing my tight belly with one hand, smoothing with the other an embroidered crib dress or a stack of diaper cloths. To my surprise, I found myself downright excited to have that baby—to finally meet the little thing, to look into his wrinkled red face at last. The expected date in early November couldn’t come soon enough.

  What is there to tell you? The date came, all right, and my boys sent for the midwife, just as anxious as if they was all the father. But my child never drew a breath.

  It was a little boy. Somehow I had known all along that it would be a boy. He was perfectly formed, with my black hair. He would have been beautiful—far more beautiful than his mother—if not for the bluish cast to his skin.

  I held his lifeless body for a few cold hours. Then, too stunned and weary to cry, I surrendered him to my boys without a word. They buried my son in a tiny pit out back of the house, under an apple tree, at the edge of the ox-team’s pasture.

  The boys never asked what name they ought to paint on the little wooden cross they stuck into the earth to mark my son’s grave. But I would have called him Bill, if he had lived.

  She has grown reckless in act and rough in language

  The three years
after my baby’s death don’t hold much remembrance for me. They appear to me now like a canyon filled with mist—the dense, heavy fog of autumn settling into low places, obscuring everything from my sight. I kept up my bullwhacking—I hadn’t any idea what else I ought to do—and though my business didn’t exactly thrive, it did hold steady enough to keep me going from day to day. I suppose I must credit the boys I’d hired for the continuation of my deliveries, for I don’t believe I was of any real use to anybody during those years. I went about my life, responding automatically to the push and pull of season and fortune, unthinking as a gear or a shaft within the great black engine of a train.

  One bright spot of color do I recall amid that long and featureless stretch of gray: the day I learned the whereabouts of my brother Lije. While delivering a load of mechanical goods to a rail camp outside Fort Washakie, I listened in on the men who checked over and unloaded my wagon.

  “That’s a right fancy vest you got there, Paul,” one fella said with a hint of a sneer.

  The one called Paul sported some outrageous attire, including a vest all done up in Indian beads, far too bright and dashing for a rail camp worker. He said, “I’m right proud of this vest, I’ll have you know.”

  “Proud as a peacock.”

  All the fellas laughed.

  Then Paul said rather slyly, “I won this dandy garment off Lije Canary down in Lander.”

  Before anyone could respond, I turned to Paul desperately—so fast I had no time to ask myself whether there was a lick of wisdom in what I did. So frantic was my approach that Paul shrank into his beaded vest, as if he feared I might take a swing at him. I seized him by his shoulder, bunching my fist in his shirt. “Did you say Lije Canary?”

  “Yes mam, the one and only.” He laughed and looked around at his friends, silently pleading for their help. “You see? This gal knows who I’m talking about: the famed faro player of Lander. No man can beat him, or so his legend goes. No man except me!” He tugged at his vest, pulling it straight, for my excited grip had knocked it askew. “Won this right off his back in a hand we played at—”

  “Is he still there? In Lander?”

  Now the fella could see the hunger in my eyes—and, I suppose, the desperation. He flushed, uncertain what my keenness meant. “I don’t know, mam. He was there this winter past. Played almost every day down at the Horse Trough Tavern.”

  I realized then what I must look like to him—to all the men. A woman keen for a man—and one man in particular. If they had spoken of Wild Bill, still living and sitting in for a round of faro, I wouldn’t have minded their assumption. But it was my own brother they spoke of! I let go of Paul’s shirt and laughed as easy as I could, and set their minds at peace with some off-handed comment that I’d like to try my luck against that famous card player. Soon enough, they returned to their work, and I drove away the moment my wagon was empty, at once troubled and intrigued. Lander wasn’t terrible far away from my base of operations in Boulder. Only a few days’ drive with my team. I had only to convince myself to make the trip—and I wasn’t a-tall sure I could do it.

  For more than a year and a half, I wrestled with thoughts of my brother. Assuming he had remained in Lander all that time, I could only guess whether Lije wished to see me again. So many years had passed. Perhaps all my ponderings was futile, I told myself; perhaps Lije had moved on, or cultivated a deep hatred for me. By day I would make up my mind to ride to Lander and call on him, if the was there a-tall. But by the time I crawled into bed at night—or wrapped myself in my bed roll if I was out along the trail—I convinced myself Lije wanted nothing to do with me, and thought me a terrible stain on his past for having given him up to the Richardson ranch.

  Finally, though, I grew weary of the endless conflict within my heart. I knew I would never rest easy till I saw Lije face to face. If he hated me, then let him profess his hate and have done with it. At least then I would know what esteem my brothers and sisters still held for me—if any. The time had come to seek Lije out, and learn what I could of his life, and the lives of the other children I had sacrificed so much to protect. Whether they loved me or hated me, or even regarded me with indifference, at least that part of my past would haunt me no more. I put the sharpest fella on my crew in charge of the business and saddled up Pie, my youngest and sturdiest horse. Then I set out alone for Lander. It was 1885. I was twenty-nine years old.

  I reached Lander late in the month of May, and promptly set about inquiring after Lije Canary. The man I’d met in the rail camp claimed Lije was a card player of some renown, so I thought to check the taverns and saloons. I hadn’t seen Lije since he’d been a small boy, of course, but even so, I suspected I could spot the Canary features—tall, broadly built, and black of hair—at a hundred paces or more. But searching from tavern to saloon, I located no man who might pass for my brother, and so I began to inquire about the famed faro player.

  “Lije Canary,” said a grizzled old fella at one bar. “Yes mam, he does still live here in town, but you won’t find him playing cards these days. He has turned a new leaf, I’m afraid. Just recently got himself sprung from jail.”

  “Jail, you say?”

  The old man chuckled. “Landed himself in a spot of trouble. Had something to do with rustling cattle, I understand—a sordid business. But you’d have to ask Lije himself for the details; I don’t know any more than that.”

  “Where can I find him, if not playing cards?”

  “Don’t rightly know, mam, for I’ve only seen him now and then at the general store. But you might ask his sister.”

  At those words, all the blood rushed to my face in one surging beat of my heart. “His sister, you say?”

  “Yes mam, Missuz Lena Bourner. Her husband John runs that big farm right at the mouth of the valley on the other end of town. Lena operates a laundry in a shed out back of the house, and it’s the finest laundry in Lander. If anybody knows where Lije has got himself off to, I reckon it’s bound to be Lena Bourner.”

  I hadn’t counted on finding Lena, too. I wasn’t prepared to face my sister. Lena had always been a prim and proper girl, which was a real accomplishment, considering she’d been born a Canary. She certainly wouldn’t approve of me as I was—dressed in a bullwhacker’s trousers and chaps, with a grim history and no small amount of infamy dragging along behind. I had never forgotten what Lena looked like the last time I seen her in Piedmont—walking away, hand in hand with her brand-new ma, hardly sparing a backward glance for me. She had seemed relieved to renounce her family, and I can’t say I ever blamed her. I knew straight away that Lena wouldn’t weep tears of joy to find me, come knocking on her kitchen door.

  But hadn’t I come to Lander for that very purpose—to see my kin again? Though I trembled over the prospect of confronting Lena face to face, I swung up onto Pie’s back and headed for the valley at the edge of town. All too soon, I located the very farm that must belong to my sister and her husband. It was a pretty place, neat and tidy with a small but beautiful farmhouse all painted up in white with snappy green trim. I reined in my horse at the end of the lane and stared at the place for a good long while. A tidy garden surrounded the farmhouse. I could see a flock of hens pecking and scratching near the porch steps. A pasture, gold-struck with afternoon sunshine, stretched from the house to the banks of a crick lined in willows and cottonwoods. A field of green hay rippled in a soft springtime breeze, giving up its scent of lush grass with an undertone of damp, dark earth. The place was like something out of a dream or a storybook. It was the kind of home I had never even dared to hope might one day be mine, peaceful and picturesque. Lena had done well for herself. Whatever would come from this day’s work—whatever tears might wait for me on the road just ahead—at least I could feel grateful that Lena (perhaps she alone, of all the Canarys) had landed on her feet.

  By and by, I became aware of a dog barking, and then a man calling out to silence it. I looked around, past the hay field, and spotted a sizable patch of po
tatoes. The man came strolling up the furrows towards me at an unhurried pace. A hoe was slung over his shoulder. His leisurely stride told me he assumed I was a rider with a message or a delivery. I should have turned and ridden away before he ever got to me, but I sat transfixed, staring—for indeed I recognized my brother Lije, even at a great distance. I should more rightly say, I recognized my mother. Everything about Lije reflected my dead ma: his upright frame, his slow but confident stride, that black hair tousled by the wind. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, and so I sat and waited for my past to catch up with me.

  Lije came to the edge of the field and lifted a hand in greeting. “Hullo,” he called out. His voice was so low, so manly. That startled me. I realized with a foolish tremor that I had expected him to still speak the way he had when I had seen him last, in the high, sweet tones of a little boy.

  He paused, taking in my face. His jaw fell first. Then the hoe toppled from his shoulder. “Martha? I’ll be damned. Martha—can that really be you?”

  I swung down from my saddle and ran to him, and he came a-running towards me. We threw our arms around each other, laughing, pounding one another’s backs. Of course I got all mistied-up with tears. After a moment, we pulled away from one another, and Lije took me by my shoulders—my ungainly Canary shoulders. He grinned at me. I could see my pa in that smile, for certain. Maybe my mother hadn’t carried on with other fellas as often as I assumed.

  “Thought I’d never see you again,” Lije said.

  “I thought the same. I tried to get back to you, when you was at that ranch outside Piedmont—you and Cilus. I tried.” But my face went hot with shame, for I knew I hadn’t tried hard enough.

  Lije’s eyes took on a glaze of distance at mention of the ranch. His smile slipped. But he recovered himself quickly, almost before I had a chance to notice. “That’s all right,” he said. “All’s well now.”