by Cynthia Hand
“No, sir.” Frank glanced around the doorstep where they’d been since Annie had knocked. (Yep, knocked on her own door. That’s how strained things were.) “Do you think we can come in now?”
Mama looked at Annie. “If you’re not the assistant, what do you do?”
“She probably manages the books,” said Grandpap Shaw.
“Annie is the talent,” said Frank. “The star of the show. The headliner. People love her.”
Grandpap Shaw’s mouth pulled down into a frown. “Show business is no business for a young lady like Annie.”
But Annie’s mama had different thoughts. She lowered her voice—although not so much that everyone three farms down didn’t hear the exchange—and asked, “Aren’t you worried about outshining him with your talent? You should probably miss a few shots if you want to keep him around.”
“Mama!” This was worse than Annie could have predicted.
“Why should I be jealous of Annie?” Frank had mused. “I knew I wanted to marry her the moment she beat me in a competition. If anyone’s an assistant, I should be hers.”
“Wait,” Mama had said. “Tell us how you met?”
“Only if you let us inside.”
And so Annie had finally been allowed back in her house, where she and Frank told the whole family about the competition, that first proposal, and all the things Annie had included in her first letter—the one they’d returned unopened.
Before Annie and Frank left a few days later, Mama had agreed to take some of the money Annie had earned. They’d be able to pay off the farm, and no one would go hungry without Annie there to shoot game for them. And when Annie and Frank presented the trinkets—paints, a pendant, and a small book for the children called Goodnight Garou—everyone had descended on the gifts like vultures.
That had been several months ago now, and Annie wrote to her family regularly. (And, even better, they wrote back to her. No more returned mail.) Postage was still terrifically expensive, but the show made them enough money now.
“Are you ready for your closeup, Miss Oakley?” Frank asked, holding the tent open.
“You know it.”
The show, as always, was an overwhelming success.
It began with Calamity Jane making a tin can walk across the main floor, striking it with her whip just so. The crowd loved it, cheering every time the can did a spin before flipping over. Little did they know, the real show had hardly begun. Because after she walked the can across the floor, Jane shifted into her wolf form and performed the same trick.
The first few times she’d done this, people had screamed and there’d almost been a stampede out of the theater, but when Agnes Thatcher Lake—the show’s ringmaster—called for order (and everyone obeyed because no one dared disobey Agnes), the audience took their seats again and watched wolf-Jane whip the can back across the floor, the same as she’d done as a human.
After that first show, when the audience had realized they weren’t about to get eaten up by a garou, ticket sales went through the proverbial roof.
Once wolf-Jane left the stage—to wild applause, we should add—Annie and Frank took their places. Annie with her gun. Frank with the targets.
This is what really happened, and to be perfectly honest, it kind of freaks out your narrators here. But Frank’s job was to hold cards in his hands and Annie would shoot out the hearts. He’d also toss dimes into the air—which Annie would shoot—and every so often he’d balance glass balls on top of his head . . . and, you guessed it, Annie would shoot them, too. It all seems extremely dangerous to us, but the crowds loved it. (Although Annie never had silver bullets in her gun, so it wasn’t quite as dangerous for Frank. . . .) They cheered and called out for more, so at that point, Annie got up on Charlie’s horse and stood on his back like she had during the stagecoach chase. Instead of axles, this time she shot more glass balls, apples, and anything else the audience tossed up into the air.
When she was finished, Frank offered a hand and helped her down off Charlie’s horse (not that she needed help; it was all part of the show). Then, he gave her a quick kiss—and like every time, Annie’s foot popped back—and the audience cheered and whooped.
“How do you do it, Annie?” yelled a reporter from the front row. “How’d you get so successful so quick?”
“Aim at the high mark and you will hit it,” Annie replied. “No, not the first time, not the second time, and maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting, for only practice will make you perfect. Finally you’ll hit the bull’s-eye of success.”
He hurried to write that down.
At the end of the show, Annie, Frank, and Jane (who was human once again) stood in the middle of the floor and took one another’s hands. Agnes encouraged more and more cheering as everyone in the audience stood, clapping and clapping.
When the audience was gone, the stagehand helped disassemble the set, and by stagehand, we mean Wild Bill, who was now calling himself Ted.
“A fine show, my dear,” he said as Agnes approached him. “How did we do?”
“Charlie has the final numbers,” she said, “but we sold out here, and we’ve sold out all our shows for the next three months.”
Frank and Jane whooped.
“In fact,” Agnes went on, “a few cities have been building stadiums so we can get even larger crowds.”
“Amazing.” Annie could hardly comprehend all of this. It was just such a huge thing for a farm girl from Darke County, Ohio.
“Annie?” Charlie approached with an elderly man in tow. “You have a visitor. He says you’ve met before.”
The man in question was tall and quite hairy, and a good decade older than the last time Annie had seen him, but she knew him immediately. He was the gentleman from the train, the one who’d listened to her story and given her sweets and bought her ticket home.
“Mr. Oakley!” Annie cried. “How did you find me?”
“Well, you’ve been using my name. But I’m glad to see you again. You’ve done well for yourself.” He motioned around the show floor. “And after what happened to you, I never thought I’d see you working so closely with garou.”
Annie blushed. “It wasn’t easy, but some very smart friends helped me understand that I can’t judge all garou based on that one experience, even if it was really bad.”
“I’m proud of you, Miss Annie. You’re doing good work.”
Annie and Mr. Oakley talked for a while longer, as the set went into trunks around them, and finally it was time to say goodbye. “I’ll write to you,” she promised, and only as they parted did Annie catch the way his eyes reflected the light.
The stagecoaches packed and sent off ahead of them, there was only one thing left to do: mount up and ride, seven horses for seven heroes: Frank and Annie in the lead, Jane and Winnie riding close together, Bill/Ted and Agnes, and Charlie bringing up the rear. Jane’s heartbeat quickened again at the thought that in a short few weeks, they’d reach Salt Lake City and she would come full circle. But this time she had a bunch of money saved up, more and more with every show, and could afford to buy her siblings some shoes. Someday soon, she thought, she’d have enough to quit show business for good, as it had never really given her the thrill it gave to Frank and Annie, and settle down somewhere. Montana Territory, maybe, as she’d heard it was beautiful up that way.
But first, she had a show to do in Salt Lake City.
“Let’s go,” she said.
And with that, the Magnificent Seven (we had to point that out) rode off into the sunset, not because it was a cliché of Westerns, but because it was late afternoon, and they were heading west.
“Well, drat. It sure is bright,” Annie observed.
“My eyes are burning,” cried Jane. “Gah!”
Frank put a hand to his forehead and squinted. “It really is the worst spot, where it’s not blocked by our hat brims, but it’s not low enough for the mountains on the horizon.”
Bill/Ted groaned. “You’d
think I raised a bunch of daisies,” he said.
“I have to pee,” said Jane.
“I told you to go before we left,” said Charlie.
“I did!”
And so it went on for hours. Every ride was like that.
But none of them could have imagined a happier ending.
Acknowledgments
Writing this book involved no fewer than five, ahem, calamities. (Be careful what you name a thing. . . .) We’ve taken a blood oath not to talk about some of them, but you can be assured it’s something of a miracle this book made it to your bookshelf. (Although we will say, many laptops died to bring you this information.)
There were a lot of miracle workers involved with this book, including our agents: Katherine Fausset, Holly Frederick, Lauren MacLeod, Michael Bourret, and Jennifer Laughran; our editors: Erica Sussman and Stephanie Stein; and a whole ton of behind-the-scenes Harper folks like: Jenna Stempel-Lobell, Olivia Russo, Alexandra Rakaczki, Louisa Currigan, Sabrina Abballe, Ebony LaDelle, Cindy Hamilton, and Jennifer Corcoran.
As Jane discovers her family in this book, we are grateful for ours. Thanks to Carter, Beckham, Sam, Joan, and Michael; Jeff, Sarah, and Jill; and Will, Madeleine, Dan, and Carol and Jack, who graciously let us use their house to hide away and write.
For this book, we made our own journey to Deadwood, where we had lots of adventures that included having dinner at the Gem, watching the trial of Jack McCall, and visiting Wild Bill’s and Calamity Jane’s graves in Mount Moriah Cemetery. The Deadwood of today is pretty different than the Deadwood of 1876 (it’s a lot cleaner, for example), but we definitely felt the spirit of the Old West while we were visiting. Thanks to Justin Coupens, our AirBob guy; we loved staying in the jailhouse, our awesome and weird home away from home. Thanks to Jena Sierks, the actress who walks around Deadwood dressed as Calamity Jane; this chance meeting was a highlight of our trip. And thanks to Wyatt and Misty Morse, the owners of Raspberry Hill, who let us look around their beautiful raspberry (not pink!) house.
In this book, we adjusted a few ages, combined various historical figures to create our own characters, and generally messed around with things to suit our purposes. Yes, we usually do this, but in My Calamity Jane, we did it a lot. Presenting a full list of what we changed would take another full book (and this one is already pretty long), so we encourage you to do some research on your own to see what we kept and what we, ahem, improved upon. A few resources to get you started:
The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane by Richard W. Etulain
Searching for Calamity: The Life and Times and Calamity Jane by Linda Jucovy
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
Native Peoples of North America, the Great Courses series by Professor Daniel M. Cobb
Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier’s First Gunfighter by Tom Clavin
Missie: The Life and Times of Annie Oakley by Annie Fern Swartwout
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
“All the Real Indians Died Off”: and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Diana Gilio-Whitaker
The Real Deadwood: True Life Histories of Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Outlaw Towns, and Other Characters of the Lawless West by John Ames
This Land podcast hosted by Rebecca Nagle
The Oglala Sioux Tribe Official Website: www.oglalalakotanation.info
The Northern Cheyenne Tribal Historic Preservation Office: www.ncthpo.com
Also, thank you to our fantastic sensitivity readers, Elise McMullen-Ciotti and Ruth Hopkins. Your feedback was invaluable and we are so grateful for your knowledge, your work, and the time you took to read our book.
We also want to acknowledge some of the incredible people who read and push our books. OwlCrate and LitJoy Crate are two book boxes we love and support. The amazing Sarah Kershaw of Your Book Travels, who works so hard to promote our books; gosh, you’re great. Also, Tiffie van Bordeveld, who drew some amazing My Plain Jane art: thank you!
And, of course, we’re grateful for all the librarians and bookstores who share our books with readers. Special thanks to our local indies, One More Page, Rediscovered Books, and King’s English Bookshop.
And, as always, our readers. Thanks for being so gosh darn wonderful.
About the Authors
Courtesy of the authors
THE LADY JANIES are made up of New York Times bestselling authors BRODI ASHTON, CYNTHIA HAND, and JODI MEADOWS. They first met in 2012, when their publishers sent them on a book tour together, and they hit it off so well they decided to write My Lady Jane so they could go on book tours together all the time. Between the three of them they’ve written more than twenty published novels, a bunch of novellas, a handful of short stories, and a couple of really bad poems. They’re friends. They’re writers. They’re fixing history by rewriting one sad story at a time. Learn more at www.ladyjanies.com.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Books by the Authors
My Lady Jane
My Plain Jane
My Calamity Jane
Books by Cynthia Hand
The Afterlife of Holly Chase
The Last Time We Say Goodbye
The How & the Why
Unearthly
Hallowed
Boundless
Radiant: An Unearthly Novella (available as an ebook only)
Books by Brodi Ashton
Diplomatic Immunity
Everneath
Everbound
Evertrue
Neverfall: An Everneath Novella (available as an ebook only)
Books by Jodi Meadows
Before She Ignites
As She Ascends
When She Reigns
The Orphan Queen
The Mirror King
The Orphan Queen Novellas (available as ebooks only)
The Hidden Prince
The Glowing Knight
The Burning Hand
The Black Knife
Incarnate
Asunder
Infinite
Phoenix Overture: An Incarnate Novella (available as an ebook only)
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Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
MY CALAMITY JANE. Copyright © 2020 by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover photographs © 2020 by anton-tokarev / Getty Images (girl) and AB Photographie / Shutterstock (wolf)
Cover design by Jenna Stempel-Lobell
* * *
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020934468
Digital Edition JUNE 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-265283-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-265281-2
* * *
2021222324PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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