by Cynthia Hand
“Ah now, you’re just saying that.” She swallowed back a sob. “Maybe you should . . . give me the silver-bullet treatment,” she managed to choke out. “I’m a garou, and I cain’t handle myself at all, as you’ve seen. It’d be a kindness, coming from you. You’d make it quick, Bill. Painless. Better than a mob is like to do.” A shudder passed through her, but she braved on. “Best get it over, I think.”
The thing was, though, she really didn’t want to die.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” he said pleasantly. “I’m not a garou hunter anymore. I have officially retired. For real, this time.”
“Oh. That’s nice. Good for you, Bill.”
“Yep. So no one is going to be getting any more silver bullets from me. Least of all you.” Bill placed his hand over hers through the bars. “Don’t worry, Janey. I’ll get you out of here.”
She didn’t see how. “I don’t have the cash to pay for the cure, and I don’t think they’ll let me go, otherwise. I’ve got twenty-three dollars saved, in my boot back at my room, but it’s not enough, and you cain’t go into the Gem, seeing as they’d murder you before you could say howdy, and it’s . . . it’s only a matter of time before the people of this town get sick of waiting and come to get me.”
Tomorrow, Al had said, and her ma wasn’t the type to make idle threats. It was either her way or the—(uh-oh, highways didn’t exist yet)—the way you took to get out of town.
“I’ll get the money,” Bill said. “I’ve got some of my own saved up, and I can win the rest at poker this afternoon—I’ve got a good spot staked out at the Number Ten. I’ll have you free by suppertime, and then we’ll light out of this cursed town and figure out our next move.”
The idea that he would pay that much for her freedom—one hundred dollars—took Jane’s breath away, but she shook her head.
“I can’t let you do that, Bill,” she said. “Why would you want to use your money on me? I ain’t nothing. I’ve never been nothing. Not to anybody.”
His hand tightened around hers. “How can you believe that? All these years, you’ve never wavered in your lively spirit, your generous nature, your humor, your hard work. Besides, I . . . You’re . . .” He coughed. “You’re my family, not by blood, perhaps, but in every way that counts. As sure as Frank is my son, you are my daughter.”
Then he didn’t speak again for several minutes, or maybe Jane was bawling so hard she didn’t hear him. It wasn’t a pretty cry, either. It was the full-out, swollen-eyed, snotty-sobfest kind of cry. But afterward she felt better.
“Oh, Bill,” she sniffled finally. “Thank you for saying that.”
“I meant it.” He smiled that quiet smile of his that was mostly in his eyes. “Now I have to go scrounge us up some capital. I’ll be back in a few hours, I promise.”
“Remember, Al’s gunning for you,” she said, still feeling that the safest course of action would be for he and Frank and Annie to leave town as soon as possible. “Watch your back!”
He patted her hand, and she felt suddenly silly for advising him, the Wild Bill Hickok, the world’s first gunfighter, the quickest eye, the fastest draw, on how to stay alive in the Wild West.
“I’ll just wait here, then,” she called after him as he swept away, his big black coat flaring behind him.
She wiped at her face with her torn sleeve. She might not have much, but she believed what he’d said to her. That she had people who cared. Bill. Frank trying to talk the mob down earlier. Annie crying “Stop!” when they’d whipped Jane in the cage. Which she reckoned was something to keep fighting for.
Time passed quick, because Jane took a nap. She woke when the blacksmith finally appeared and brought her some food—a fat hunk of bread and leg of what might be rabbit, a skin full of water that tasted of mud. She was in the middle of (if you’ll pardon the expression) wolfing down her meal when she received another visitor to the cramped little cell.
It wasn’t Bill come to spring her free, though. It was Edwina Harris.
She was dressed as a woman this time, in a dark gray skirt and fine white blouse, her corn-silk colored hair piled up in a mess of curls at the top of her head, some kind of fancy ivory brooch at her throat, and delicate white gloves.
Jane’s heart thundered at the sight of her, but she wiped rabbit grease off her mouth with the back of her hand and conjured up a smirk. “Oh, good. So next it’s to be torture, then?”
Winnie frowned and twisted her hands together in front of her. Ironically she seemed at a loss for words. “Martha, I—”
“I got nothing to say to you,” sniffed Jane. “And my name ain’t Martha, not anymore.”
“Jane, then. Jane,” amended Winnie. “I came to explain myself.”
“No need.” Jane put out a hand. “You wanted a story. You got one. That about sum it up?”
“You know it’s more complicated than that.”
“Is it, though?” Jane pulled her tattered shirt more tightly around her. She hated that she must look like a fallen woman, but she supposed that’s what she was. “It feels pretty simple to me. You used me. Then you threw me away.”
“No, that’s not what I wanted to—” Winnie stopped and closed her eyes, then tried again. “I did it because of Buntline. He’s been working on a story about Wild Bill, and he has this theory that all of you—Wild Bill, Frank, you, perhaps even Annie Oakley, are all garou. It’s the perfect cover, see, as you’re garou hunters. You’re hiding in plain sight. Buntline thinks it will be the story of the century.”
A chill trickled down Jane’s spine. She thought about how careful Frank had been to keep that part of himself hidden. How the Wild West show, Frank’s pride and joy, would crumble to nothing if people knew Frank was a woof.
“So you thought you’d beat him to the punch, huh?”
Winnie shook her head. “That’s not what my story was about. Of course you didn’t read it, but—”
Jane’s jaw tightened. “Yeah, of course not. I’m dumb as a bag of rocks.”
“Jane—” Winnie sighed. “I wrote about how you were bitten back at the candle factory in Ohio, how you were injured in the line of duty, so to speak. And I plan to write a follow-up piece, on how you came to Deadwood for the cure.”
“Yeah and you saw how well that turned out.” Jane gestured around herself.
“I think I can help you,” Winnie said almost pleadingly. “I can write—”
“No, thanks. I think you’ve written enough.” It was a lesson Jane would take to heart this time. Never, ever, ever trust a writer. As a whole, they’re a no-good bunch. (Ouch. That smarts.) “Why do you care if my story has a happy ending? Will it sell more papers that way?”
“I’m sorry,” Winnie said. “I know I promised you.”
“Yeah. You did.”
“I wanted to get the true story out there first, so Buntline wouldn’t be able to spin it.”
It made a fair bit of sense, but Jane could not forgive her. Not this time. “It wasn’t your story to tell, though,” she pointed out. “And now I’m here. Because of you.”
Winnie nodded. “I didn’t know how people would take it. I thought they would see how brave you were, how selfless, even, but all they saw was the wolf. I’m so sorry, Jane. I know you won’t believe that, but I am.”
They gazed at each other. Jane couldn’t help drinking in the sight of Winnie, one last time, she told herself, just looking at her, and then she’d put what had happened between them away and never take it out again. She noted the sweep of her dark lashes, the slight upturned nose so small she had to keep pushing up her glasses. Those green eyes. The dainty, heart-shaped mouth that Jane had kissed.
Then Jane gave the girl a look made of iron. “Apology not accepted. Now get out of here. Get out of this town, if you know what’s good for you.”
“I meant what I said. I could—”
“Get out,” Jane snarled, and turned to face the wall. “I never want to see you again.”
When she lo
oked that way a few minutes later, Winnie was gone.
More time passed, which felt like a year, and still Bill didn’t come. Jane leaned against the wall and sang about bottles of beer until the blacksmith came and threatened to chain her up if she didn’t stop.
He didn’t get a chance, though, because right then there was a ruckus outside.
Jane went to the window and peered out. The first thing she saw was Jack McCall—her stomach twisting at the mere sight of him. But Jack was in trouble now. His expression was something akin to panic. He was holding a gun, but he suddenly threw it down onto the ground and kept on running, like he meant to run right out of town.
Jane tried to ask him a question as he sprinted past the blacksmith’s shop, but he didn’t even see her. That’s when Jane noticed the mob behind him. They were coming with a cloud of dust, holding rifles and shovels and even some literal pitchforks, churning with noise and fury like a coming thunderstorm.
What is it with angry mobs today? Jane thought, feeling, in spite of her best judgment, a sudden flash of pity for Jack McCall, seeing as a few hours earlier these same people had been coming for her.
But then she went ahead and thought, Well, that guy has it coming.
“Hey!” she called through the bars as the mob began to pass by. (She probably should have laid low and stayed out of sight, considering that these people were likely to come for her next. But in Jane’s experience, angry mobs were single-minded, and she was curious, so she risked it.)
“Hey, what’s going on?” she tried again. “Why are you after Jack McCall?”
They paid her no mind. She yelled and waved her hand out through the bars, but no one stopped. When almost everyone else had rumbled by, she caught sight of the doctor, Babcock, she thought his name was.
“Hey, Babcock,” she hollered.
He looked at her.
She gestured for him to come over, and he did.
“What happened?” she asked him.
Doc Babcock stared at her with a mixture of sadness and excitement, that he would be the one to tell her.
“Jack McCall just killed Wild Bill Hickok,” the man said.
Jane’s lungs emptied of air. “What’d you say?”
Babcock nodded grimly. “Shot him, right in the back of the head, in the middle of a crowded room in broad daylight.”
He might have kept talking, but Jane didn’t hear. She was vaguely aware of her legs giving out under her, and then her arms extending before her like she had fallen into a kind of desperate woefully belated prayer.
And then her hands were paws, clawing at the floor, huge clods of dirt flying out behind her.
Digging.
Digging under the wall of her cell.
Digging out.
Because she had to go.
THIRTY-FIVE
Frank
“Miss Mosey wins,” the dealer at the Shaggy Dog Saloon said. Frank and Annie were not making themselves scarce, the way Bill had told them to. Instead, they were playing poker, trying to raise the money to free Jane.
They had decided to sit at the same table, under the assumption that Frank would win all the money, and Annie would provide company, but it turned out that Annie was on a hot streak and Frank was card dead.
“Who, me?” Annie responded to the dealer.
Frank smiled. She really was good at playing the novice. At least, he hoped she was just pretending.
The next hand of cards was dealt, and Joe “the Player” Fletcher was acting as if his hand was the “nuts,” which is a poker term for the best hand. (Incidentally, the term the nuts originated in the Wild West, because if a player wanted to bet his horse and wagon, he would have to remove the nuts from his wheels and place them in the pot.)
“All in,” he said.
Frank folded, and the play turned to Annie.
“I don’t know.” Annie shrugged. “I guess . . . all in?” She said it as a question, and Frank knew then and there that Annie had a genuine hand.
But Joe didn’t.
Everyone else folded, and the dealer called for cards up.
“Her first,” Joe said.
“She called you,” the dealer said.
And here’s the thing, Joe just threw his cards into the muck.
“Why don’t you want to show?” Annie said. “You were all in.”
“You show,” Joe said.
“I don’t think those are the rules,” Annie said. “And I’ve read the rules extensively.”
The dealer shoved the chips toward Annie.
Annie leaned over to Frank. “Would you mind stacking my chips while I . . . ahem . . .”
“Of course,” Frank said.
Annie excused herself, and Frank started stacking her chips. She had won thirty-five dollars so far. Frank wondered how Bill was faring. Perhaps with Annie’s contribution, they were close to their hundred-dollar goal.
Frank thought about Jane, and her ordeal up on that stage. He couldn’t imagine what she would be feeling now, alone in a cell.
George lumbered over and put his chin on Frank’s leg. (Oh my gosh! George is back! Hey, George!) Is Jane going to be okay? George thought.
“I hope so,” Frank said out of the corner of his mouth. He’d perfected the art of ventriloquism so no one knew he was talking to a dog.
Where’s Annie? George thought.
“You mean your girlfriend?” Frank said. George’s tail wagged. “I think she’s doing her business.”
Should we go to her? George said.
“I’m sure she wants to be alone,” Frank said.
Frank thought of that one time (like, yesterday) in the Gem where Annie was dressed up and they’d shared their first kiss. The memory made him smile. Maybe if her feelings about garou had changed, for reals, Frank could see himself down on one knee.
Yes, Frank’s thoughts turned this way. Because this was the Wild West, and life spans in the Wild West were short, and life spans in Deadwood were even shorter, and eighteen years of age was old enough to contemplate marriage . . . and then around twenty you could contemplate your own mortality.
Suddenly, there was a ruckus outside. Shouts and guns going off. Wails and screams. Frank and several other patrons went to the window. Dozens of men, and even some women, were chasing someone down the street.
“Don’t let him get away!”
“Jack McCall’s a murderer!”
Somewhere in the cacophony of sound, a name floated toward the poker room. Bill. And then Wild Bill. And then . . . the Wild Bill Hickok.
Frank stumbled backward, caught a heel on a broken slat of the floor, and fell.
He scrambled up and darted out the door.
Once on the street, he grabbed the first man he saw. “What happened?”
“Jack McCall shot Wild Bill Hickok!” the man said.
“Is he dead?”
The man shrugged and continued chasing after McCall.
It seemed the entire town was involved in the pursuit. But Frank ran in the opposite direction, toward the No. 10 Saloon, where he knew Bill had been playing poker.
He was barely aware of anything around him, until his wolf ears picked up the sound of delicate footsteps running in the same direction beside him. He turned his head to see Annie. Their eyes met. Neither one said anything, but their expressions held the same fear.
From the outside, the No. 10 Saloon was eerily quiet. Whatever had taken place there was over. The action was now on the other side of town, but Frank didn’t care about that. He only wanted to find Bill.
He burst through the swinging doors. Annie slipped in behind him.
And there he was. Bill. Slumped over a table.
“Bill.” Frank rushed to Bill’s side. “Bill!” He stepped back and put a hand over his mouth. There was a ringing in his ear. A cold shock down his spine. “He’s okay,” he said.
Annie touched his arm.
“He’s okay!” Frank said again, even though somewhere deep inside, he knew that was
n’t true.
Annie’s grip on his arm tightened.
“Everything’s okay.” Frank turned Bill over and shook his shoulder. “Dad. Wake up. Wake up!”
And then, there was a miracle. Bill’s eyes slowly opened. “I’m okay, son,” he said.
“Thank God.” Frank scooped his father into his arms.
“Frank,” Annie said. “Frank, he’s gone.”
“No. He’s awake.” Frank eased his grip on his father to show Annie that he was alive. But Bill’s eyes were shut. He wasn’t breathing.
“He just said . . . he just said . . .” Frank’s voice trailed off.
“He didn’t say anything,” Annie murmured.
Frank gently lowered his father to the floor. He got up and ran to the corner of the bar and lost the contents of his stomach. Annie followed. She rubbed his back softly as he heaved and heaved.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Don’t say that,” Frank said. “It’s not done.” He began to shake uncontrollably. He knew what that meant. “Annie,” he grunted, doubling over. “The wolf is coming.”
Annie paused for a split second, looking at him wide-eyed, and then burst into action. She rushed over to the windows and closed the shutters. Then she dowsed the brightest of the lanterns. The saloon became dark.
“It’s happening,” Frank groaned.
She took his hand and led him away from his sick, toward the back of the saloon.
“Get away,” Frank warned her. There was no amount of wooo-ing that would help him now. The truth was sinking in. His dad lay dead on the floor. Murdered. No meditation could overcome that. “Please.” Frank tried to push Annie away, but she stood her ground.
He looked at Bill again. There was a pool of blood around him. Frank could smell it.
His bones cracked and bent. His nose shattered and formed a snout. His shoulders cranked and cricked. His arms stretched, and claws sprouted from his fingers. For the first time in years, Frank involuntarily became the wolf.
