“Jane,” came that warning voice behind her—Charlie, again. Gawl-darned Charlie, who disapproved of Jane spitting. It was bad for business, he always said.
Charlie spoiled all her fun.
So Jane swallowed down the impressive loogie she’d been working up (which we commend her for, as your narrators, but ewwww), cried “Yah!” and galloped ahead.
“You cain’t lose your temper,” Charlie scolded her later as they saw to the horses at the livery. “It reflects badly on the show.”
She nodded dully. “I didn’t. I won’t.” But she knew she probably would at some point. She’d never been skilled at holding back her temper, a trait she’d inherited from her hotheaded ma, God rest her soul.
“Folks can be mean as snakes, I know.” Charlie finished oiling Wild Bill’s saddle and gave Jane a sympathetic smile. “But at least they know your name. That’s good, Janie. That’s what we want. Recognition. Notoriety.”
Charlie was always working on the fame thing—how to get it, how to keep hold of it once they got it, how to turn it into profit. Sometimes it was easy to forget that being their manager was only a cover for Charlie’s true occupation: he was a Pinkerton detective.
(A little background information, dear reader, about the Pinkertons. By the time of our story, the Pinkerton agency was the largest private law enforcement organization in the United States. Pinkerton agents were mostly hired by businessmen to protect their interests, but they also served as bodyguards for Abraham Lincoln, spied on the Confederate army, and worked as “private eyes” sent to investigate crimes before we had the FBI. That last part brings us to Special Agent Charlie Utter, who’d been assigned to track the notorious garou known as the Alpha. Charlie’d been on the job for less than a year when he bumped into Wild Bill Hickok—who claimed to be retired from garou hunting but actually was an undercover US Marshal tasked with bringing down the Alpha. It made sense for the two of them to team up and start the Wild West show as an excuse to move from town to town, gathering intel. And the rest, as we like to say, is history.)
But the Alpha’s trail had gone cold months ago, and even though being Bill’s business partner was only a cover, today Charlie was all about the show. He pulled a tall stack of papers out of a box. “Be a dear, Jane, and put these up around town.”
Jane scowled. “It’s Frank’s turn.”
“Frank’s off with his adoring public, I’m afraid.”
“Simpering ladies, you mean,” Jane scoffed.
“It’s good for business.”
“I guess.”
“You know what else is good for business?” Charlie added good-naturedly. “You putting up these flyers.”
“All right.” She sighed and took the stack from him. “But you owe me.”
He smiled. “Fine by me.”
The trouble wasn’t in people knowing or not knowing her name, Jane thought as she made her way back toward the main street with a hammer and a pocketful of nails. The trouble was that they knew her name but they didn’t know her. Right now, for instance, people passing by assumed she was a man and didn’t give her a second glance. They didn’t think to themselves, Now there goes a genuine hero-eene.
“Hey, mister.” Jane felt a tug at her sleeve and jerked back reflexively, but it was only a kid, come to beg, by the looks of it. Dirty face. No shoes. “You got a penny to spare?”
She dug in her pocket, produced two nickels, and handed the coins over. Not so long ago, she’d been that kid, doing whatever she had to do to fill her empty belly.
The boy took the money and ran off down the street without even thanking her. He’d never know that he’d been face-to-face with the famous Calamity Jane.
If you want to know the truth, dear reader, Jane wasn’t sure she wanted to be famous. She was good at the hero-type things, if she did say so herself (and she did, quite regularly). But celebrity had come on her accidental-like, and she’d rolled with it, because she didn’t have much in the way of options as a woman. It would be enough for her, she thought, to lead a simpler kind of life, get a bit of land someday, a small cabin to call her own, some horses to raise and sell, and a few people she could call friends, maybe even family.
She trudged up to a post and nailed the flyer to it, narrowly avoiding pounding her thumb. The word family was like a burr in her heart—it pained her to think on, but she kept thinking on it all the same.
She’d had a family once.
She walked to the next corner and absent-mindedly nailed up another flyer. Before she’d set off to make something of herself (at the tender age of eleven, we should mention), she’d left the youngest of her siblings, Hannah and Sarah Beth, in the care of a Mormon family in Salt Lake City. Her brother Silas had died of a fever earlier that year, another thing Jane tried not to think on. Lena and Lige, who weren’t much younger than Jane, had gone to a boardinghouse. She sent money back when she could, which wasn’t near often enough.
She hoped they all had shoes.
“Look out!” Right then, Jane was nearly run over by a passing carriage. At the warning she jumped back in the nick of time and ended up sprawled in the dirt in the middle of the street, the flyers strewn around her.
“Consarn it!” she blasted after the retreating carriage. “Watch where you’re going, why don’t ya!”
“Oh dear. Are you all right?” came a sweet voice.
Jane squinted up at the figure who was suddenly standing over her, silhouetted by the sun. The girl was wearing a white dress with lace at the collar. She had fair-colored hair and eyes and a pair of black wire spectacles perched delicately on her nose.
She was the prettiest thing Jane had ever seen.
“Gosh almighty!’ Jane blurted. “You’re the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen!”
“Oh. Well. Thank you,” the girl said in an amused tone. “Here, let me help you up.”
Jane stared at the unblemished white-gloved hand the girl offered. She jumped to her feet. “No harm done to me,” she said. “Thanks.”
Together they bent to gather up the flyers, which were a bit dusty but all right. As they finished retrieving them the girl straightened and read the paper in her hand out loud: “‘Come one, come all, to Wild Bill’s Wild West! Tales of Wild Bill Hickok’s Most Terrifying Adventures with Outlaws and Garou! Exhibitions of Peerless Sharpshooting and Trick Shots by the Pistol Prince, Frank Butler! Wondrous Feats with the Bullwhip, Performed by Calamity Jane, the Heroine of the Plains!’” The girl pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Oh my goodness. You’re Jane, now, aren’t you?”
Jane waited for the girl’s eyes to sweep over her and find her wanting, but the girl only smiled.
“Yep,” Jane said at last. “That’s me. Most days, anyway.”
“I’m glad to meet you,” said the girl. “I’ve been most eager to make your acquaintance since I heard you were coming to Cincinnati.”
Jane nodded. “Uh, likewise.”
The girl laughed. “I’m Miss Harris.” She held out the gloved hand again. This time Jane took it and shook it gently.
“Jane,” she said. She thought it best to omit the Calamity part.