My Calamity Jane

by Cynthia Hand

  “I don’t know if I can take any more bad news,” Jane said. “So just give me the good news.”

  Frank felt a pit in his stomach. “I don’t have any good news.”

  “Shoot. Well then, give it to me straight.”

  “Jane, the cure—”

  “I know it’s a lot of money,” she said before he got out more than a few words. “But maybe that don’t matter. I’ve got connections, you see.”

  “It’s not that. The cure doesn’t work.”

  She stared at him. “Sure it does. I’ve seen it.”

  “I don’t know what you’ve seen,” Frank said. “But the cure’s a fake.”

  “What?” She scowled. “No. You’re—You’re wrong.”

  “I’m not wrong. There is no real cure for the garou. You’re going to have to learn to control it. But I’ll help you. And Bill will teach you, the way he taught me.”

  Jane’s right arm shifted, sprouting hair and claws. “I don’t need to be taught to control it,” she said hotly. “Some people would even say it doesn’t need to be controlled.”

  “We both know that’s not true.”

  She really started to wolf out again then. Frank held up his hands. “Jane, calm down. Wooo.”

  “I don’t want to wooo!”

  “Jane, your neck is covered in fur,” he pointed out.

  “I don’t care! I’m getting the cure!”

  “The cure is fake!”

  “You lie!” Jane roared.

  “I don’t!”

  “How do you know?” Jane’s left arm shifted, too.

  “Thorough investigative work!” Frank exclaimed. “Wooo,” he said to himself. This conversation was really starting to test his own control.

  “I don’t believe you! I believe Al Swearengen!”

  “But Al Swearengen is the villain of this story,” Frank said. “It’s so obvious.”

  “That’s impossible,” argued Jane. “Al Swearengen is my mother!”

  The words reverberated through the room. Frank’s eyes widened. “What?”

  Jane’s hands balled into fists. “Besides that, she’s an innocent garou, who was relentlessly hunted her entire life! She told me.”

  “I don’t know about any of that,” Frank said dazedly. “But Swearengen is not who you think she is. If you’ll let me explain—”

  “You know nothing, Frank Butler!” Jane cried.

  With that, she jumped toward the window and smashed clean through it.

  Why can she never use the door? Frank wondered.

  Of all of Jane’s problems, there was only one Frank felt that he was capable of solving.

  He went from hotel to hotel, asking for a guest named Edward Wheeler, and finally hit pay dirt at the Checkmate Hotel. Mr. Wheeler was staying in room 203.

  But when Frank knocked at room 203, a petite blond woman answered.

  “Can I help you?” She looked strangely familiar, but he couldn’t place her.

  “Um, hi, I’m looking for Edward Wheeler,” Frank said.

  She tilted her head and studied his face. “And what do you want with him?”

  “I need to talk to him about a matter of urgent . . . um, urgent matter.”

  “Mr. Wheeler isn’t here right now,” she said. “But if you’d care to leave a message after this sentence . . .”

  Frank’s shoulders sagged. “Please just tell him to . . . not print the article, about a girl named Jane.”

  The blond woman frowned. “I’m sorry,” she said in a soft voice. “But whatever Mr. Wheeler was set to print, it’s already being printed. From what I know about the business, there’s no way to stop the presses.”

  Frank closed his eyes and sighed. “Thank you for your time.” He tipped his hat and turned away.

  “Is she okay?”

  Frank turned back. “What?”

  “This Jane of yours. Is she all right?”

  Frank sighed. “Not really.”

  He trudged around Deadwood until he located Bill, who was watching the Gem from across the street, his expression cloudy.

  “I been pondering over what to do about our Alpha problem,” he said when Frank came up beside him.

  Frank gazed up at the Gem. “It’s worse than we thought.”

  THIRTY

  Annie

  Weirdly—or maybe not weirdly—Walks Looking didn’t wolf out once on the way to the stream where they were supposed to meet Many Horses.

  There wasn’t even a hint of wolfiness. She remained a girl for the entire duration, albeit a girl clothed in Frank’s coat and hat, and Annie tried again not to be jealous that someone else got to smell Frank’s scent the whole way.

  “Are you nervous about seeing your sister again?” Annie asked.

  “No. Should I be?” Walks Looking led the way uphill, even though Annie was supposed to be the one doing the rescuing.

  “I just thought if you haven’t seen each other since you were bitten, you might be worried she . . .” Annie wasn’t sure how to finish that question without hurting Walks Looking’s feelings.

  The girl gave Annie a serious side eye. “My people don’t care about that as much as you seem to. Garou are given as much respect as anyone else, and they make excellent warriors and scouts.” She paused a beat. “We, I suppose.”

  “It’s very new to you,” Annie said.

  Walks Looking nodded. “I am not afraid, though. I’ll learn to control the wolf, as others do.”

  “Do you think it will be hard?”

  “For some it is. For others, it isn’t. Your friend Frank is very good at controlling his wolf.”

  So good at it that Annie hadn’t had a clue he was a garou.

  “Does it bother you?” Walks Looking asked. “Him being a wolf?”

  Tears stung Annie’s eyes, but she blinked them away. “It did, because I didn’t know, and I said some really mean things about garou that I shouldn’t have—”

  “You wouldn’t have said them if you’d known he was a wolf?”

  “Well, no.” Annie frowned.

  “And you don’t see a problem with that?”

  Annie’s shoulders dropped. “I didn’t think he could be a garou. He’s so kind, and the only garou I’d ever known were horrible. They threatened to eat my liver. And then the garou I saw at the factory tried to kill him and Jane . . .”

  Walks Looking nodded. “And now there’s Swearengen, who sends her wolves to bite others, and then enthralls them.”

  Annie swallowed hard as they moved higher up the hill. “Yeah. I don’t know a lot of good wolves.”

  “You know Frank,” Walks Looking said. “And you know me. You probably know a lot more good wolves than you realize, but you’ve had your eyes closed to them. Open your eyes, Annie Oakley. Wolves can be good and bad, like anyone else. Most people are both. The world is complicated.”

  “You’re right,” Annie whispered.

  They walked for a ways longer, not speaking as the night deepened and even the birdsong faded. When they found the stream and started following it up to the meeting point, Annie said, “I didn’t mean to talk about me. You’re the one who just escaped captivity and has to learn how to live with a new part of yourself.”

  Walks Looking shrugged. “It benefits me if you learn to accept wolves. It benefits Frank, too, and all the other wolves who did nothing to harm you.”

  At last they reached the clearing where Annie and Many Horses had fought off the bear, but the clearing was empty. There was no sign of Many Horses (or the bear).

  Annie turned to Walks Looking. “She was here yesterday.”

  “I’m still here!” Many Horses emerged from inside a small, cleverly hidden tent. She ran to throw her arms around her sister. “You’re safe!”

  The girls hugged, laughing and crying, their emotions so raw that Annie had to look away. Tears stabbed at her eyes again and she couldn’t help but wonder where her own sisters were. A wave of missing them swept over her so strong and fast that she worri
ed she might drown.

  Many Horses and Walks Looking wiped the tears off each other’s faces, laughing in sharp relief. They spoke a few times, but in their own language, so Annie couldn’t follow, but we, your narrators, can say for certain that they spoke of that unbreakable bond of sisterhood and how they held on to it any time they were scared or worried, and that they had always believed they would be together again. And here they were.

  Annie couldn’t understand the words, but she understood the emotions just fine.

  After several minutes, the sisters pulled apart and turned to Annie.

  “Thank you,” Many Horses said.

  Annie’s voice was tight. “It was the least I could do.” The last of the day’s heat had faded, and Annie shivered.

  “Oh, here.” Walks Looking removed Frank’s coat and hat. “Your friend will probably want these back.”

  Annie shrugged into the coat, then pulled the vial from the inside pocket. “And this is yours,” she said, offering it to Many Horses.

  “You didn’t need it?” she asked.

  “Nope. Not a drop.”

  Many Horses smiled. “Good. I was curious if it would work, though—if the bond between Swearengen and the thralls could be interrupted and broken.”

  “We may never know.” Annie folded the sleeves back to her wrists. “I should go back to Deadwood.”

  “Do you want to camp with us tonight?” Walks Looking asked, motioning toward the tent. “You can go back in the morning.”

  Annie did want to stay with the girls. They were fun and friendly, and she really wanted to get to know them better. But she shook her head. “You should catch up. Still, I hope we see each other again.”

  Both sisters smiled. “You can count on it,” Many Horses said. “Just try not to get eaten by any bears.”

  The next day, back at the Marriott, Annie sat down at her desk and began a letter. She was tired, but her conversation with Walks Looking had made her realize she needed to say something to Frank, not just run around Deadwood rescuing people with him. She’d hurt him before—hurt him a lot—and now she needed to apologize. Hopefully he would forgive her.

  Dear Frank.

  She crossed it out.

  Dearest Frank.

  She sighed and tried again.

  Dear George.

  There. That was better. She wrote the date across the top: August 2, 1876

  There’s something I want to tell you, but it’s hard to talk about. Something happened to me when I was young—something with garou. I’ve never shared this with anyone outside my family, but I think I should tell you—not as an excuse for my behavior, but as an explanation.

  The short version is that a family of garou nearly killed me when I was a child, and for years they were the only garou I’d ever known. I thought all garou were like that, and I held on to my fear for so long that it turned into hate. I allowed that hate to shape my views of all garou.

  I know now that I was wrong. Garou are not all the same. In fact, you are Frank is one of the kindest, warmest people I’ve ever met.

  Recalling some of the things I said about garou . . . I can only imagine how I hurt you Frank. I shouldn’t have said them, not only because Frank’s a garou, but because it wasn’t right.

  I was wrong. And I am sorry.

  I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to make up for this, but I am going to try my best. I want to start with taking down Swearengen. Not only is she biting people who did not ask to become garou, but she is exploiting their fears of everyone else. It’s attitudes like mine that make so many garou desperate for the “cure”—desperate enough to spend a hundred dollars on something they know nothing about.

  I will help make this right.

  Yours, if you want,

  Annie

  Annie read her letter over again, feeling raw and revealed, and wildly uncertain what he would think when he read it. A letter by itself wasn’t much—it wasn’t nearly enough to make up for the way she’d been—but maybe it was a start.

  Maybe.

  She folded the letter and put it aside for now. There were more people she needed to write to.

  Dear Huldy and Sarah Ellen,

  I have so much to tell you about what I’ve been doing . . .

  She kept writing until she ran out of paper, telling her sisters about the show, about the scandal in Cincinnati, and finally about how she had met Many Horses and Walks Looking.

  Seeing them together made me miss you more than ever, and I want you to know that no matter what it looks like, I didn’t leave you. You have been in my thoughts every day, and I will write to you so often you get tired of reading my words. I’ll keep trying even if the letters continue getting returned to me.

  Maybe soon I’ll be back in Ohio and see you again.

  Annie sighed and folded up this letter, too, and stuck it in an envelope. She was worn out and ready for a nap, but the sun was working its way toward noon, and below Annie’s window, the streets bustled with activity. She wouldn’t be able to sleep with all this noise.

  (Narrators here: yeah, we remember that Annie is a heavy sleeper and that she could sleep straight through a tornado, but Annie didn’t know that. She still had a few more things to discover about herself.)

  She put the letters in her pocket and headed outside.

  It was even louder down on the street, cacophonous with people shouting about gossip and mining tips, someone pushing toilets (not—we shudder—even new ones) at people, and the splat of horses leaving their marks on the street.

  This was truly the worst town. But then she heard it: Calamity Jane.

  Now what had Jane done? Annie followed the sound of her friend’s name, hoping the worry knotting in her chest was for nothing. But then, like a scene from the not-yet-invented moving picture, the crowd parted and revealed the front of a newspaper.

  The headline stood out, dark and daring:

  CALAMITY JANE IS A GAROU!

  THIRTY-ONE

  Jane

  Jane stared up at the ceiling, listening to a bed creak rhythmically from the room above hers, which is how she remembered where she was: the Gem, her mother’s “theater,” which was actually a brothel. Which was supposed to be Jane’s new home sweet home.

  So why didn’t it feel that way?

  She sighed and rubbed her eyes, which felt swollen from crying. Last night Frank had told her that Al Swearengen was the bad guy of this story (or, to be more accurate, bad lady—ladies can be bad guys, too), but that couldn’t be true. It was a misunderstanding, was all. People had obviously been misunderstanding Charlotte Canary her whole life, as people had always been misunderstanding Jane. She just needed to talk to her ma, sort things out, get them straight. There was an explanation for everything, Jane was sure.

  Which led to her first dilemma of the day: what to wear?

  The fancy dress was lying where she’d left it on the floor, a crumpled mess with several popped buttons. Her own clothes—the buckskins she normally wore—were in an unpleasantly fragrant pile next to the empty bathtub, and she remembered her mother saying something about a pigpen and something about “no daughter of mine” being dressed as a filthy miner. This left her painfully short of options.

  On a whim she walked over to the wardrobe in the corner and opened it. Inside she found a row of dresses, shirts, and skirts, neatly hung. Al must have had the clothing sent over—it all looked like it was Jane’s size. None of it was so highfalutin as the dress she’d worn last night, but that was a good thing. Jane didn’t need fancy. She needed to be—what had Ma called it?—presentable.

  She picked a simple, dark brown skirt and a white button-up shirt, bypassing the corset and lacy pantaloons in favor of a simple petticoat underneath. Over top she donned a dark gray jacket that accentuated the strength of her shoulders. She looked—if we as the narrators may say so—nice, and more important, she looked like herself.

  As for her hair, well. There was no way to replicate the updo he
r mother had done. Jane found the brush on the armoire and spent a good twenty minutes removing the remaining pins from last night and brushing out the tangles. Then she awkwardly braided her hair in one thick plait and called it good. Her gaze fell on the bottle of perfume on the armoire. She picked it up and spritzed it into the air, filling the room with the scent of lemon.

  Winnie.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to the empty room. “Winnie. I need you to know—”

  But what did she need Winnie to know? Winnie seemed to already know everything, which was the problem, wasn’t it? Jane scoffed. Everything was spoiled between her and Winnie. If they’d ever had a chance in the first place, which she supposed they didn’t. There was no point in having imaginary conversations.

  “Never mind,” she said.

  She left her room and made her way into the main lobby of the Gem, which is when Jane knew, without a doubt, that something had changed about her situation. The male patrons of the Gem smirked and muttered to each other just out of her hearing in such a way that she knew they were talking about her. But it seemed different from the way they’d treated her last night after Al had announced her as her daughter. This morning there was something jeering about their smiles, and the painted ladies eyed her warily, even moving to one side as she passed to avoiding touching her.

  She put a hand up to check the state of her hair, but nothing was amiss. She checked her shirt—no buttons askew, no stains or holes. Maybe they all thought she was ridiculous, trying to act a well-behaved woman, but last night, in front of her ma, they hadn’t dared to show their disdain.

  She wandered up to the main door, where the leader of the painted ladies—Ida, the woman who’d brought Jane to Al after the show—was sitting behind the desk looking bored.

  “Have you seen my— Al?” Jane asked.

  Ida fixed her with a no-nonsense stare. “Al is out attending to some business,” she said in a monotone.

  “What kind of business?”

  “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

  Jane decided not to argue. “When’s she going to be back?”

  Ida shrugged.

  “Well, thanks for nothing,” Jane stormed, and then she, well, stormed out.