by Cynthia Hand
Jane was a wolf.
Annie gasped. She didn’t want to be as shocked as she was, but in reality, she’d seen only a few garou before—the Wolf family, the two in the candle factory, and almost the mayor—and those wolves had all been tormenters or strangers. Not someone she cared about. It was easy to think they were evil, but now, she saw only her friend—albeit a much bigger and hairier version. It would have been terrifying if Annie hadn’t realized that Jane was simply scared.
“Oh, Jane,” Frank whispered. “Poor Jane.”
Annie started to touch his arm, to offer him strength, but he shifted away from her and she let her hand fall down to her side once more.
Inside the cage, Jane snarled.
Swearengen nodded at McCall. “It’s time.”
McCall produced a rod with a loop on one end, and quickly, he dropped the loop over wolf-Jane’s head and dragged her toward the side of the cage.
“No!” Annie yelled, stepping forward, but no one could hear her over the cheering crowd.
Frank took her shoulder and drew her back. “We can’t do anything.”
Annie wished she hadn’t given up her gun. She could have shot the whip out of Swearengen’s hand, or the rod out of McCall’s. She could have shot the hinges off the cage to open the door and let Jane free.
“We have to stop this,” she said. “We have to say something.”
“Maybe the serum won’t work,” Frank said, although he didn’t sound very hopeful. “It didn’t work on Walks Looking, remember?”
Annie shook her head. “Walks Looking told me how hard it was to resist, and I don’t want to insinuate mean things about Jane but—”
“Swearengen is Jane’s mother,” he finished. “It’s going to be hard for Jane to resist when there’s probably a big part of her that wants to be with her mother.”
Annie’s heart sank. “Yeah.”
That’s when another man stepped onto the stage, a familiar figure in a long black coat. Everyone went quiet.
Annie looked to where Mr. Hickok had been standing a minute ago, to confirm that he didn’t have a surprise twin running around Deadwood.
“Wild Bill Hickok.” Swearengen touched the brim of her hat in greeting. “I’m honored you’re so interested in the cure that you had to come see it up close.”
Jane gave a faint growl, but she no longer fought; she’d strangle herself if she did.
“I’m here to put an end to this,” Mr. Hickok said. “This business is no good.”
The crowd gasped.
“You’re going to put an end to Calamity Jane yourself?” Swearengen glanced at Mr. Hickok’s empty holsters. “How do you plan on doing that?”
Mr. Hickok shook his head. “Of course I’m not going to hurt her. Calamity Jane hasn’t harmed anyone in this town.”
“She’s harmin’ us just by bein’ what she is,” said a man in the audience.
“Yeah!” someone shouted.
“Well, now wait,” another man shouted. “This is Wild Bill Hickok. Maybe we should listen to what he says.”
A few people muttered, and someone in the back shouted, “Can I have your autograph?”
“This isn’t the USA, and you have no jurisdiction here,” Swearengen said. “This is Deadwood, and Deadwood takes care of its own problems.”
Lots of people nodded.
Annie pushed her way through the crowd. People might listen to Mr. Hickok because he was famous, but they were scared of Al Swearengen.
“You and I both know there’s no cure for the garou,” Mr. Hickok said evenly, “not because it’s incurable, but because it’s not a disease. It’s not a problem that needs to be fixed.”
A few miners and shop owners looked at one another and grumbled.
“Isn’t it?” Swearengen grinned, showing the points of her eyeteeth. “After all, it’s transmitted through a bite—through blood and saliva. It gives people chills and fever, and forces them to involuntarily change shape every month. That sounds like a disease to me. A very dangerous disease that needs curing.”
Annie was in no position to agree or disagree with those claims, but it seemed incredibly hypocritical of Swearengen to make declarations like that, given that she was a garou, too, and sending her minions out to go make more. If there was a garou plague—and that was a big if as far as Annie could see—then Swearengen was the source of it.
But the crowd was shouting out their agreement, calling for an end to all the wolves. They booed and tossed more things at Jane. A hand clamped on Annie’s shoulder. She jumped and spun around, but it was Frank. He’d followed her to the fore of the crowd, although his eyes never left the players on the stage.
“Thanks to me,” Swearengen went on, “dozens of people have been cured of their garou disease. Thanks to me, the world is a safer place.”
Mr. Hickok shook his head, slow and thoughtful even as the jeers continued to rise. “You, ma’am, have been pulling the wool over these people’s eyes.”
“Ain’t no sheep in Deadwood,” said McCall.
Before anyone could speak another word, Swearengen turned up the syringe and plunged it into Jane’s arm.
“No!” Annie and Frank surged forward, but it was too late. The liquid pushed into Jane and that was that.
Everyone waited, watching the cage as the serum flooded through Jane.
“How long is it supposed to take?” Annie asked.
Frank shook his head. “I don’t know.”
They stood there, in the middle of the audience, watching as wolf-Jane howled and shook the bars of the cage, trying to escape, and as the minutes wore on, a dangerous grumble spread throughout the audience.
“It’s not working,” a man said.
“She’s still a wolf,” observed another.
“What if Wild Bill was right?” asked a third, but he was quickly shouted over.
“Down with wolves!”
Annie and Frank glanced at each other. Of course the “cure” for being a garou wasn’t working, but what about the important part? What about the mind control?
Swearengen shook her head, deepening her voice. “Unfortunately, we have a difficult wolf,” she said. “Remember, they don’t all want to be cured. Some wolves love chaos.”
The crowd booed.
Swearengen looked at Jane. “Come, dear. You know you want to be cured. You must become human again. So we can be together.”
Jane growled and rattled the bars of the cage.
“Now, Jane. You should turn back to a human for what happens next.”
Annie held her breath.
Jane lunged at Swearengen, growling loud enough to make Annie’s stomach knot. This was the test. The real test.
“Turn back into a human,” Swearengen commanded, but Jane roared and reached through the bars, claws sharp and gleaming. She didn’t change back.
A fist loosened its grip around Annie’s heart. Jane wasn’t enthralled. She was still in control of herself.
Unfortunately, Swearengen knew it, too. She turned to McCall and nodded slightly. “Well, if she doesn’t want to do what she’s told, then we have no choice. Calamity Jane is a danger to society. And what do we do with folks who are a danger to society?”
“We toss ’em in the clink!” McCall said.
“Lock her up!” shouted the mob in frenzied unison. “Lock her up!”
“Stop all this,” said Mr. Hickok. “It’s not a crime to be a garou, and Jane didn’t commit a crime.”
Swearengen shot him a look of murder. “This land is lawless, except for the law we make. Besides, I gave her the cure in good faith that she’d pay for it once she saw the light, but now I’m out a hundred dollars.”
“She’s a crook!” McCall yelled. “She didn’t intend to pay for the cure!”
That sent everyone into a frenzy.
As the chanting of “lock her up” intensified, Annie wanted to vomit. There was no reasoning with these people. They were all crashing toward the stage, taking the loo
p on a stick, and grabbing at the cage. Jane jerked back in horror, but it was too late. The loop went around her neck and they dragged her out of the cage.
“Shame!” someone shouted. “Shame!”
“We need to stop them!” Annie turned to Frank.
He pulled her close to keep her from being crushed by the mob. “How do you propose doing that? This isn’t a room full of people right now. It’s a room full of monsters.”
Annie pressed her cheek to his chest. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I’ve been a monster.”
He didn’t say anything. Maybe he didn’t hear.
After several minutes of people yelling and screaming and hauling Jane out of the theater, the only people left were Annie, Frank, and Mr. Hickok. Swearengen and McCall had led the charge to the jail, probably hoping to keep the residents of Deadwood as angry as possible.
“We should have stopped them from taking her,” Annie said. “We could have.”
“How?” asked Mr. Hickok. “At least they can’t do lasting harm to Jane, not without silver.”
Not all harm was physical, Annie wanted to say. Jane would remember this moment for the rest of her life. But Frank looked so distraught she didn’t dare make it worse.
“How could Swearengen say those things about wolves?” Annie whispered. “Being a wolf herself, I mean.”
Mr. Hickok sighed. “She’s a con man. Woman, I guess. And those kind of folks like to project what they are onto other people, to make themselves look like the good guy. So Jane’s a danger to society because Swearengen is. And wolves are a plague on this world because Swearengen knows that’s what she is.”
Annie bit her lip. “And now she has Jane.”
“We’ll get Jane out of there,” Mr. Hickok said. “Don’t you worry. I’ll get the money to pay for her release.”
“How?” Frank asked. “We spent all our money getting here.”
“I have some,” Annie said. “Not a hundred dollars, but enough to get us started.”
Mr. Hickok nodded. “Good. Now, both of you make yourselves scarce.” He glanced at Frank. “Last thing we need is someone finding out about you, son. You need to be careful—more careful than ever.”
“I will be.” Frank summoned up a smile.
Mr. Hickok touched Frank’s shoulder, squeezed, and then turned and strode out of the building.
Annie looked up at Frank. “Are you—” Not okay. She couldn’t ask if he was okay, because he clearly wasn’t. “Do you want to talk?” she asked instead.
“Not right now,” he said. “Can we just sit together for a bit?”
She hauled herself up onto the edge of the stage and patted the place beside her. He followed, and when she reached for his hand, he was already reaching back.
THIRTY-FOUR
Jane
“You need a time-out here to calm down and think about your behavior,” Al Swearengen said as her men dumped Jane in a heap in the back room of the blacksmith’s shop, which served as Deadwood’s makeshift jail.
Her mother’s tone was almost sweet, parental-like, but Jane knew better.
“I’ll come back tomorrow. Maybe by then you’ll be ready to make better choices.”
Jane scrambled to her feet and threw herself against the slatted iron door of her “cell,” feeling the tight brick walls closing in around her. It was dark in there, even in the middle of the afternoon, the only light a narrow barred window at the far wall. It smelled like death. “Ma,” she panted. “Don’t leave me in here.”
Al’s eyes flashed. “Don’t call me that unless you’re ready to be a true daughter of mine. Not until you do what you’re meant to do.”
“I can’t kill Bill,” Jane said. “I don’t want to kill nobody.”
“Then you’re weak, and I have no use for you,” pronounced Al, turning away.
Jane wiped at her nose, which was bleeding from a blow she’d taken back at the theater. She hurt all over, but she tried to stand up straight. “If I’m so weak, why can’t you control me?”
Al stiffened and pivoted slowly to face Jane again. “I believe it’s because you’re already under someone else’s thrall,” she said coldly. “But not for long.”
Jane shivered. “Ma, please,” she pleaded. “It don’t have to be this way.”
“You’re a traitor to your own kind,” Al said. “You need to be punished.”
Jane’s chin lifted. “We don’t harm a garou unless that garou’s hurting people or trying to hurt us. You act like you’re helping the garou, but then you lie to them and make them your slaves. So which of us is really a traitor to our kind?”
Al made a sound like a growl and stepped forward with her hand raised, her lip curled into a snarl. Jane could see the sharp points of fangs in her mouth. But then her mother shook her head and smiled, the fangs receding, her hand closing into a fist and dropping to her side. “You always could rile me, girl. You’re just like your father. He never did know how to see the big picture.”
“I’m not like him or you.”
Al sighed. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you want to be like Wild Bill Hickok,” she said in disgust.
Jane said nothing.
“To think, you chose to protect that tired old has-been.” There was hurt behind the anger in Al’s eyes, a jealous wound. “You chose him over me, your own mother.”
“I don’t want to choose,” Jane murmured.
“That man shot me, nearly killed me, but you don’t seem to care. What’s worse, he killed your father, murdered him in cold blood in front of your brothers and sisters, no less. That’s your hero.”
“I know,” Jane said. “He—”
But Al had started to pace and rave. “Why don’t you want to take revenge? Don’t you understand? That man ruined everything!”
“I know.”
“He’s a monster! He killed your pa!” Al cried.
“I KNOW!” Jane yelled, just to get her voice heard. Then, softer: “I always knew Bill killed Pa.”
Al stopped pacing. “What do you mean, you knew?”
Jane swallowed. “He told me. Years ago. He told me what he did, and why, and I forgave him.”
Al gave an incredulous laugh. Then she nodded, like she’d made up her mind about something. “You need some time to think about what’s important here. Blood is thicker than water, my dear. You are my daughter, like it or not, and you belong with me. You could still have everything you desire. I would give it to you. A home here. Your family, by your side. Wealth. Prosperity. Why, I’m sure I could even find you a suitable husband, given time, and then you could have children of your own.”
Jane said nothing.
Al glanced at her pocket watch. “As I said, I will be back in the morning to check whether you’ve seen the light. If not, the townsfolk are bound to be upset. Those mobs can get ugly, can’t they, especially when they’re scared, and nothing scares them more than a dangerous and uncontrollable female. They’re like to want to hang you, and I don’t believe even I could stop them.”
“All right, then,” said Jane.
Al sighed. “Being a good mother is so hard.” She snapped her fingers at Jack McCall, who jumped to attention from where he’d been leaning casually against the wall. “Let’s go. You’ve still got an errand to run for me.”
“Bye, Jane.” Jack smiled his usual smile, but this time there was something extra creepy behind it.
“Come, Jack,” Al commanded, and swept from the room, Jack jogging along at her heels.
Jane sank onto the cold dirt floor. She tried to lie down and get comfortable, seeing as she was going to be here for a while, but there was no way to relax. It was cold. Damp. Smelly. She hugged herself for warmth. She wished for her man clothes—her buckskins and her breeches instead of this torn, flimsy shirt and cumbersome skirt. She wished she hadn’t sassed her ma—that always made things twice as bad, in her experience, but she never seemed to learn that, did she? She wished . . . well, heck, she wished for a lot of thing
s, but wishing was a waste of time, she thought bitterly. Wishing can’t make a thing true.
She was a garou—everybody knew it now, everybody—and it turned out there was no magic cure that would make it not so. She was in jail, possibly about to be hanged by an angry mob come morning. But more than anything else, she was really, really hungry. Her stomach rumbled, and she clutched at her middle and groaned. She hadn’t eaten or drunk anything since that steak she’d had the night before. (We’d like to point out that this wasn’t that long ago, so Jane wasn’t exactly starving to death. But still, she was hangry.)
“Hello!” she called into the rest of the blacksmith shop, hoping that there’d at least be some kind of guard. “Hey, is anybody there?”
Nothing. Folks trusted the strength of the brick walls and the iron doors to hold her. She rattled and pulled at the bars, but all that accomplished was making her arms more tired and her throat even more dried out. She licked her lips. “I need water!” she hollered. “I need food! Hey!”
No one came.
She dropped back to the floor. “Who do I have to bribe,” she bellowed, “to bring me some grub around here?”
“You know, in order to offer a bribe, a person might first want to have something to barter,” came a gruff but dear voice out of the darkness.
Jane sat up with a gasp. Her eyes searched between the slats of the door. “Bill! That you?”
“I’m here, Jane.”
Jane was seized with worry. “You should get out of town,” she warned. “Al wants you dead.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” he laughed.
“This ain’t a joke,” she said. “She will kill you, or send someone to do the job.”
“Then we better leave town quick as we can, I reckon,” Bill said, “but I’m not going anywhere without you, and you don’t seem to be going anywhere, so that’s a problem.”
“I’m sorry, Bill,” she lamented. “I’ve brought you nothing but trouble, haven’t I?”
“This isn’t your fault, Jane. It’s mine.” She could see him now, standing on the other side of the door, still a grand figure in his billowy white shirt with the laces up the front, his long auburn curls and carefully trimmed mustache. Jane crawled to the door and grabbed the bars to lift herself up. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. “You’ll see.”
