My Calamity Jane

by Cynthia Hand

  He wiped his face on his sleeve, all the while smiling that creepy smile of his. “All right, be that way. Bye, Jane.” He shut the door of the stagecoach and jogged away from it (quickly, as the time was literally ticking away here—they now had four minutes and fifty-one seconds before they’d all be blown to kingdom come). Jane could hear Swearengen and McCall some distance away discussing which of the horses—Frank’s, Annie’s, or Jane’s—they should take for the remainder of their escape.

  Frank dropped his head and groaned.

  Jane thought it might be time for prayer. “Lord,” she said, “whatever I’ve done to piss you off, if you could get us out of this and somehow let me know what it was, I promise to rectify the situation.”

  Annie made a noise like a determined little grunt, but other than that, nothing happened. At least it would be over in four minutes and forty-one seconds, Jane thought. Forty. Thirty-nine.

  “Any ideas for how to get out of this now?” The chains were chafing Jane’s wrists something fierce. Frank’s wrists must have also been chafing. But he had other things on his mind.

  “Annie,” he kept saying, “Annie, hang in there. This isn’t the end.”

  Jane begged to differ.

  Annie didn’t respond. She was probably going crazy about that dirty handkerchief, Jane reckoned, what with her whole cleanliness-is-next-to-godliness bit. But now they were about to die in a pretty messy fashion, so Jane figured it was all relative.

  “I’m so sorry about the dirty handkerchief in your mouth,” Frank said, coming to the same realization. “If we could get out of this mess, I’d get a chance to tell you how I really feel about you. And maybe you’d feel the same way. And then we could get busy growing old together. We could have the whole thing. The porch, the rocking chair, our guns side by side on the wall, George at our feet.”

  Annie didn’t answer, though if Jane knew Annie (and Jane felt she knew Annie pretty well after all they’d been through), Annie likely had a lot to say about such a declaration.

  “Well, I guess this is goodbye,” Jane declared mournfully, as this was obviously a time for speeches. “Annie, it’s been real nice knowing you. Frank, I guess you know this, but you’re like the brother I never had. I mean, I had a brother. I have one, actually. Did I tell you that I have a brother and three sisters, back in Salt Lake City? Swearengen said she was going to send for them in Deadwood, but of course now that won’t happen seeing as how she has to change her identity again, and I’m about to be killed. I always dreamed that someday, somehow, I’d be able to send for them myself and we could all be together again, with some land, maybe, some horses. It sure was a pretty dream. I wish it could have come true. But, oh well.”

  “That’s nice, Calam.” Frank turned his attention back to his deep and abiding feelings for Annie. “Annie,” he declared. “I’ve never been happier than the time I’ve spent with you . . .” He sighed. “I wish I could hear your voice one last time.” He sighed again. “Annie, this might not be the appropriate time, or place, but would you consider . . . I mean, would you do me the honor of making me—”

  “Geez, Frank, this is not the appropriate time,” Jane interrupted. “How about when you’re alone and maybe facing each other and when you’re definitely not about to get blowed up in the next three minutes and twenty-nine seconds?” She could hear that bomb ticking, ticking, ticking away.

  “As I was saying,” Frank said, again ignoring Jane in favor of Annie. “The minute I met you, I thought, Wow, what a girl! And I still think that, Annie, every time I see you.”

  Then he and Jane both yelped, because right then Annie popped up in front of them, ungagged and unchained.

  “Good news! We’re saved,” she announced.

  “But how . . . ,” Jane stammered. “When . . . ?”

  Quickly Annie began to free Frank and Jane. “Many Horses and Walks Looking are here,” she explained, pointing to the opposite door of the stagecoach, where, indeed, the two girls were standing watching them. “When I didn’t show up where I said I’d meet them, they got worried. They tracked us here and saw that we were in trouble. Then they picked the lock here with one of my hairpins, and I shimmied out of the chains.”

  “Thank you,” said Frank to the Lakota girls. “You two are lifesavers.”

  “Don’t mention it. I mean that,” said Many Horses. “Don’t ever.”

  “Any time,” said Walks Looking.

  “Wait, you want to help us?” Jane said, scratching at her head. If this was true, she was going to have to rethink those stories she’d told about battling the Sioux all this time, as part of her being the hero-eene of the plains. Clearly it weren’t so heroic to fight them, after all. She’d have to set the record straight.

  “Yeah, don’t ask me why,” said Many Horses wryly.

  “Stop it. Annie’s our friend,” admonished Walks Looking, smiling at Annie.

  “What about the bomb?” asked Frank, which seemed like a more pertinent question.

  “I disabled it,” said Annie brightly. “It was only a matter of carefully disconnecting the dynamite from the detonation device. First I cut the white wire, then the blue, then the yellow with black stripes. But everyone knows it’s always the red wire you have to be really careful about. I ripped that one out, not cut it. Cutting it would have killed us all. It was simple, really.”

  (You, reader, may be wondering how Annie knew which wires to cut and in which order, especially since movies that depict those kind of bomb-disarming scenes had not yet been invented. But as you know by now Annie was ingenious and resourceful, and although we, the narrators, really don’t know how she knew about the wires, we have since researched disabling bombs, and we can verify that, as usual, Annie was very, very right.)

  Annie smiled triumphantly.

  “Wow,” Frank breathed.

  “Now all we have to do is catch up to my ex-ma and that no-good, murderin’, cowpie-lovin’ Jack McCall,” said Jane.

  This turned out to be easy enough, as Swearengen and McCall were still working out the horse situation.

  “I don’t want that one,” McCall was saying as Frank, Jane, and Annie quietly snuck out of the stagecoach and worked their way around the back side. “It nodded at me. That’s weird.”

  “Well, make up your mind,” sniffed Swearengen, already astride Bullseye (crud, she was even stealing Jane’s horse) and ready to go. She glanced back at the stagecoach. “The imminent explosion is bound to attract attention.”

  “But the brown one looks grumpy, and it walks funny,” complained McCall.

  Next to Jane, Annie stifled her gasp of outrage at such an insult to Charlie’s horse.

  Frank met Jane’s eyes and pointed at Bullseye.

  She understood him completely. Al Swearengen was a horse’s ass.

  But then Frank was mouthing something.

  The guns, she finally picked up on the fourth or fifth attempt, after Frank quietly pantomimed shooting with a rifle and Annie nodded and smiled and pointed at Bullseye’s butt again. Where, tucked into a saddlebag, Jane finally noticed Annie’s rifle poking out.

  The plan, she understood then, was to get the guns. Which made sense, considering. And of course she should be the one to do this, since she was the stealthiest of the three of them. Jane moved silently forward toward her ex-mother and the horse. She could be like a shadow lurking in the corner of a darkened room. She could be a crow gliding through the silent air on a moonless night. She could—

  “Quick!” barked Swearengen. “Someone’s coming.”

  They all turned toward the road, where, sure enough, the sound of hoofbeats was fast approaching, maybe some kind of backup, Jane thought hopefully, but this was also bad because turning to look in that direction caused Swearengen and McCall to see Jane standing right there.

  “Hey!” yelled Jack McCall.

  “Look out!” yelled Frank.

  “Why can’t you ever stay where I leave you?” yelled Swearengen.

 
; “Get me a gun!” yelled Annie at the same time.

  It was too late. Jack McCall had his pistol out lickety-split. He cocked it and aimed it at Annie’s head. The group froze, except for Walks Looking and Many Horses, who were still in the stagecoach for some reason. Something to do with the bomb?

  “Well, drat,” Jane tried out. “Nope. That won’t do at all. Well, crud.”

  “I’m rethinking our decision not to kill you earlier,” Annie said primly, wagging a finger at McCall as he stepped toward her, the gun still trained on her head. “I was trying to be accepting because you’re a garou, and I wanted to be sensitive to your experience, but I think you may simply be a bad dog.”

  “Kill them,” said Swearengen, lifting her own gun and pointing it at Jane. “I’m done with these games. Let’s kill them all and be done with it.”

  This was really going to happen this time. Here it was: the meeting of the Maker. The kicking of the bucket. Giving up the ghost. Being called to a better place. Resting in peace. The end.

  But then came a loud, horrible noise.

  It was a whistle—a high-pitched noise that instantly made Jane’s head feel like it was about to pop like a balloon. She screamed and clapped her hands over her ears, but it didn’t block out the sound. The noise went on and on and on. It was hard to make sense of anything—but she saw Jack McCall writhing about on the ground like he was also in the same kind of pain. She saw Frank and Al Swearengen clutching at their ears as well, everything else forgotten. Her eyes focused on Annie, who was standing up straight like she alone didn’t hear the terrible whistling, staring off down the road.

  “Put ’em up,” said a low and gruff, distinctively male voice. There was the undeniable click of another gun being cocked.

  “I said, put ’em up,” came the voice again, a familiar voice that, even though Jane was half wild with the agony of the infernal whistling, made her cry out in amazement and wonder and sheer, incredulous joy.

  Everybody, Swearengen and McCall, Frank and Annie and Jane, even, lifted their hands into the air.

  The whistling faded.

  Then Wild Bill Hickok himself stepped out of the shadows.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Frank

  Bill put away the silver dog whistle (an ingenious way to subdue a bunch of werewolves, if we’ve ever heard of one) and removed two balls of cotton from his ears.

  Frank could scarcely believe his eyes.

  “Dad?” he said.

  “Bill?” Jane said.

  “Mr. Hickok?” Annie said.

  In a flash, Bill drew his ivory-handled pistols (which he must have received back from Charlie) and pointed one at Swearengen and the other at Jack McCall, whose face had gone pale, as if he were seeing a ghost.

  “I killed you,” Jack McCall said incredulously.

  “Guess it didn’t take,” Bill said.

  Frank still had his hands up in surrender. “Dad? You’re alive!”

  “Yep,” Bill said. “It takes more than a lead bullet to put me in the ground.”

  And then Frank understood what Bill meant by that. “You’re a garou?”

  Bill nodded. “We all have our secrets, I reckon, and we get to decide when to tell them. So I guess now I’m letting you know.”

  “Wait. You’ve been a woof this entire time?”

  “Since you were a toddler,” Bill confessed. “You went through a bit of a biting phase.”

  Frank’s mouth dropped open. “You’re a garou because I was teething?”

  “I didn’t take it personally. I was just relieved you didn’t bite the nanny.”

  “Dad! You should have told me!”

  Bill shook his head. “You had your own burdens. I didn’t want you to carry mine.”

  “I don’t care. You’re here. That’s all that matters.” There weren’t enough words in the dictionary to pin down all the emotions that were washing over Frank. His father was alive!

  “I knew they’d never really get you down, Bill,” sniffled Jane.

  Frank glanced at Annie, who had been watching the exchange with her hands clasped beneath her chin and a wide smile on her face. She loved happy endings and family reunions, even at the most inopportune times. But then she frowned. “Wait a minute. Am I the only one who isn’t a garou here?” she asked.

  “You hate garou,” Frank said.

  Annie tsked. “I don’t like being left out. Besides, I can think of a few garou who I love.”

  Frank’s breath caught. “Is that so?”

  “Jane is my best friend,” Annie said.

  “Is that so?” said Jane. “That’s nice.”

  “Oh,” said Frank.

  Someone in the stagecoach cleared a throat. It was Walks Looking. Still in there with her sister doing something with the dynamite.

  Annie gasped. “Oh, and Walks Looking’s a garou too, and also one of my best friends.”

  Bill chuckled. Then Annie gestured to him. “And Mr. Hickok. I don’t really know him that well, of course, but I’m already growing quite fond of him.”

  Jack McCall cleared his throat.

  “Not you,” Annie said.

  “And not me, either, huh?” Frank couldn’t stop his smile.

  “Well.” Annie smiled right back. “You’re growing on me.”

  Jane gave an exasperated snort. “Cut it out! Isn’t this supposed to be the part where we all reunite with Bill?”

  Oh, yeah. Frank strode over and threw his arms around his dad.

  Then Jane came over and threw her arms around Frank and Bill.

  And then Annie followed behind Jane, trying to throw her arms around all three, but really getting no farther than putting them around Jane and touching Frank with her fingertips.

  “Okay, okay,” Bill said. “That’ll do, kids. That’ll do.”

  Then they heard the distinct sound of a gun cocking. All that hugging meant that Bill hadn’t been able to keep aiming his pistols at Swearengen and McCall.

  “What a touching scene,” Al Swearengen drawled.

  The hugging quartet froze. Frank glanced over his father’s shoulder to see Al Swearengen with a small shiny pistol pointed at the back of Bill’s head. Not this again, thought Frank. He was getting so sick of this hostage situation that kept happening tonight.

  “No, really, I’m shedding a tear.” Swearengen wiped an imaginary tear from her cheek. “I’ve got a silver bullet right here with your name on it, Bill.” Swearengen purred. “I guess if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.”

  Frank didn’t want to imagine going through Bill’s death a second time. He decided right then that he’d give his own life, to keep that from happening again.

  “Enough of the group hug,” Swearengen said. “Let go of Wild Bill.”

  Frank sighed. He was out of time. “Annie, I want you to know that I love you.”

  “Crick your leg up,” Annie replied.

  “Huh?” Frank said eloquently.

  “I’m talking to Jane,” Annie whispered.

  “Huh?” Jane said just as eloquently.

  “Bend your leg. So I can step on it,” Annie said. “My best friend and I are working on a plan.”

  “It’s nice that I’m your best friend, Annie, but now’s probably not the time for stepping on legs,” Jane said. “Swearengen’s about to kill Bill. Again.”

  “Do it,” Annie commanded.

  “Okay,” Jane grumbled.

  Swearengen stepped closer. “Stop hugging.” She cocked the pistol again, even though it seemed only for show.

  Suddenly there was an explosion off to the side of the road. Fire bloomed into the night air. At the same time, Annie catapulted upward, somersaulting over the group hug, and kicked the pistol out of Swearengen’s hand. “I did it!” she exclaimed upon landing. “Oh, and thank you, Walks Looking and Many Horses. That was a dynamite idea.”

  She would have continued to congratulate everyone on their success at disarming the bad guy, but Swearengen pu
lled a knife from her cleavage and held it to Annie’s throat. “I’ve got your girl!” Swearengen cried. “Don’t make a move.”

  “Not again!” groaned Frank. He and Jane were still facing Bill, and away from Swearengen. Bill quietly handed one of his guns to Frank. He looked at Jane, but Jane just touched the bullwhip at her hip. Bill gave a slight nod.

  “Now, everybody is gonna settle down,” Swearengen said. McCall grabbed the pistol from the ground and tried to cock it a third time.

  Frank side-eyed Jane, who side-eyed him back. Jane glanced at the ground, where an empty sardine can lay in the dirt. (Littering was a problem in 1876, too.) She raised her eyebrows.

  Frank winked.

  With her toe, Jane kicked the can up, caught it, and put it in front of Frank, who used the reflection to target the perfect shot. He swung Bill’s revolver over his shoulder, aimed, and fired.

  He missed.

  But a small hole appeared in Jack McCall’s hand. The creepy son of a biscuit then dropped the gun, doubled over, and cradled his fingers.

  Then, while Swearengen was looking at McCall, Jane dove to the side, tucked into a roll, and cracked her whip.

  Swearengen’s knife went flying.

  They all stood still for a few minutes, panting, reassessing the situation. It seemed (for the moment anyway) that the bad guys were down again. The good guys had their victory.

  Walks Looking and Many Horses came out from inside the stagecoach, holding sticks of dynamite. Jack McCall moaned and clutched at his hand. Swearengen started to swear profusely. Jane stuffed the dirty handkerchief into her ex-ma’s mouth. “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you,” she said.

  Bill rubbed his hand over Frank’s hair. “You did well, kids. Now let’s tie up those dirty rats.”

  Jane hog-tied McCall and Swearengen in eight seconds and seven seconds flat, respectively.

  “We’re gonna need them to walk,” Frank pointed out.

  Jane untied their feet in five seconds and six seconds flat, respectively. “Now, you guys better get ready to walk.”

  In the meantime, Annie, Walks Looking, and Many Horses had gathered up the stagecoach horses. “I think there’s enough for everybody,” Annie said.