My Calamity Jane Read online

  Now, the caravan had stopped for the night, and everyone was checking the wagons and stagecoaches for broken wheels or snakes, or anything else that might set them back again. Assuming nothing else went wrong, they’d reach Deadwood tomorrow afternoon at the latest, and Annie was filled up with nervous energy. Tomorrow, she’d finally reach Jane. And—maybe—Frank.

  You’re not as nice of a person as you think you are.

  Her heart twisted up at the thought of seeing him again. Why did everything have to be so complicated?

  As the caravan set up for the night (Annie was already finished, of course), she grabbed her gun (habit) and headed into the woods. A walk would help. A walk always helped.

  Sunlight shone long and golden through the pine trees, and the tall hills cast deep shadows across the deer trail where she walked, but she kept moving deeper into the woods, letting her feet take her wherever they wanted. (No, she wasn’t worried about getting back to the caravan; Annie had a great sense of direction, unlike some of your narra— Ahem, you know what? Never mind. Annie had a great sense of direction, and that’s what matters.) Anyway, she was walking and thinking, thinking and walking, and letting the forest sounds soothe away the worst of her anxiety.

  After about an hour, the sun dipped behind the hills and Annie stopped by a swiftly running stream to rinse the sheen of sweat off her face. The cool water felt good, and she almost missed the soft voice on the far side of the water: “You should know that I just peed upstream.”

  Annie yelped and scrambled away, scrubbing at her face as she tried not to wonder if she’d gotten any water in her mouth.

  The voice, a girl’s, laughed but abruptly cut off with a meep.

  Annie looked up—past a dark nose, down a long muzzle, and straight into the golden-brown eyes of a grizzly bear.

  The bear stared back at Annie, neither of them moving while they tried to figure out what the other was up to. “Were you just laughing at me?” Annie whispered to the bear.

  With a roar, the bear drew onto its back legs and raised its front paws . . . which would have been cute if it weren’t for the enormous claws, yellow from dirt and age and the blood of all its victims.

  Quickly, Annie considered everything she knew about bears.

  First, she knew this: bears were always hungry, and so it was wise to avoid acting like food.

  Annie was currently on her feet and backing away from the bear, not looking like food at all. So that was covered.

  Second, one was supposed to make themselves look bigger than they were, to discourage the bear from attacking.

  Well, that was harder. Annie was quite petite, but she grabbed the skirt of her dress and held it wide.

  All right, next.

  The third thing she knew about bears was that she should use any weapon at her disposal, so long as she didn’t have to bend down to get it, as that would make her even smaller and more vulnerable.

  Well, drat. Her gun was on the ground where she’d left it to wash her face.

  “Well, drat,” she muttered. Maybe she should play dead. No, that would only make her look like food.

  Darn it all, why hadn’t she read more books about bears? Why had she focused solely on garou? After all, there was more than one kind of predator in North America, so skipping the books about bears had been really shortsighted of her.

  Wait, weren’t bears supposed to be nearsighted? In that case, all she had to do was get far enough away and she’d be saved.

  (Reader. Hey, it’s us. So that whole thing about bears and nearsightedness? It’s a myth. Yeah. It turns out that bears have pretty decent vision—at least as good as humans’, and likely better than two out of three of your narrators’—and bears have pretty good night vision, too. Like cats and dogs and garou, they have a reflective layer on the backs of their eyeballs, called tapetum lucidum, which makes them appear to glow. So yeah, bears can see just fine—better than your narrators, and if it sounds like we’re taking this personally . . . well, you’re not wrong. Anyway, let’s get back to Annie making poor life choices.)

  Annie darted for the trees, hoping to climb one and stay really, really still, but the bear was a lot faster than it looked. It crossed the stream in three long strides and circled around in front of Annie, teeth bared and dripping with slobber.

  With her intended path blocked, Annie glanced left and right, looking for another escape, but there wasn’t much in the way of climbable foliage and the craggy rocks looked as likely to slice open her hands as give her a height advantage.

  Rustling sounded in the trees behind the bear. More deadly predators? It would be Annie’s luck.

  Behind her, at the bank of the stream, she heard the click of a gun being cocked. Her gun.

  “Well, drat,” Annie said again.

  The bear roared in her face, lumbering closer.

  “Do you want me to shoot it?” That was the voice—the same voice that claimed to have peed in the stream. It was not, Annie noted, coming from the bear. “I can do it, if you want.”

  “ROAR!” roared the bear, so loud Annie’s ears hurt, and then it pressed its nose against Annie’s stomach and took a good, long sniff.

  Annie squeaked, feeling remarkably like food.

  “Do you want me to shoot?” asked the voice with Annie’s gun. “You’re a few seconds away from becoming a midnight snack. Probably should let me know one way or another.”

  “It’s not even close to midnight,” Annie said, even though that was the least important thing right now. The bear snuffed against Annie’s stomach, and teeth dragged across the front of her dress. She was about to be a twilight snack, if that was a thing. If it wasn’t, the bear was about to invent it.

  “Well?”

  “Don’t shoot it.” Annie kept her tone as level as possible, considering the powerful jaws were a breath away from closing around her midsection. And speaking of breath, the bear’s smelled like whatever it had eaten for lunch. Annie inhaled as shallowly as she could without passing out.

  “Then do exactly as I say.” The voice—and the girl the voice belonged to—moved closer. Strange, because Annie couldn’t remember another girl on the caravan. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”

  “I’m not.” Annie sucked in her stomach as the bear gave another long whuff there.

  “Don’t make eye contact.”

  “That’s the first thing we did,” Annie admitted.

  “Then I’m afraid I’m about to witness your untimely death.”

  “Really? But I haven’t found Jane yet.”

  “Who’s Jane?”

  “My friend who stole money from me. She was going to Deadwood.”

  “That sounds complicated.”

  “It is.” Annie gazed down at the bear’s round ears. They were really cute, considering they were attached to the same creature as those teeth and claws. “So, my untimely death . . .”

  “Try backing away slowly and try not to look like a threat.”

  Annie backed away slowly, looking as nonthreatening as she could manage. (Which was pretty darn manageable, considering she was teeth to tender juicy guts with a grizzly bear.) “If only we had some sort of spray,” Annie said, sounding calmer than she felt. “Something that could disorient the bear while we escaped.”

  “Good idea,” said the other girl. “We could call it bear spray, to keep its purpose clear.”

  “That’s really smart.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m Annie, by the way.”

  “Many Horses.”

  “I like horses.”

  “Me too.”

  “Grrr,” said the bear, drawing their attention back, which was pretty self-centered seeing as how they all just wanted the bear to go on its way. But Annie’s heart thumped painfully as the bear—whose eyes she continued avoiding—gave a soft oof and glanced between the two girls.

  Urgently, Annie worked to avoid looking like a threat but also not like food. It was far more difficult than she’d ever ima
gined.

  “I think it’s calmer now,” said Many Horses, as the bear snuffed the ground in front of them. “Let’s back away slowly and show it we don’t mean any harm. . . . Uh-oh.”

  Somewhere in all that, Many Horses had lowered Annie’s gun, and the metal clicked, drawing the bear’s immediate attention. Or maybe it was the scent of gunpowder. Either way, the bear knew a threat when it saw one, or maybe smelled one, and abruptly it didn’t matter how good its eyesight was: the other girl was about to get mauled.

  The bear roared, front legs up and claws gleaming in moonlight. It was about to come crashing down on Many Horses when Annie did the first thing that came to mind.

  She let out a roar of her own and jumped onto the bear’s back.

  Annie’s breastbone hit the large hump at the bear’s shoulders, and all the air whooshed out of her, but she shoved her hands deep into the bear’s fur and hung on for dear life.

  The bear screamed.

  Many Horses screamed.

  Annie screamed.

  Wisely, Many Horses turned and ran. From between the bear’s ears, Annie caught a flash of a tall figure and dark hair, but that was all as the bear lurched after the girl. Annie shrieked as the bear’s body jarred her up and down, side to side, and vainly, she tugged fur this way and that, trying desperately to steer it away from Many Horses.

  It didn’t work.

  “Run faster!” Annie shouted, but with the bear jostling her, her voice bounced and it sounded like “Ru-uh-uhn fa-ass-st-er-rrrr.”

  Many Horses ran faster, but she didn’t have a lot of options as to where. Until suddenly, she was gone—and Annie was trapped on the back of the bear and no idea which way to go.

  She made another choice. Possibly a poor one.

  Annie pulled the bear’s fur to the left. The bear twisted its head around as far as it would go (which was not very far) and roared, and before Annie realized what was coming, the bear slammed its back—and therefore Annie’s back—against a large pine tree . . . and started rubbing.

  “It’s going to scrape me apart!” Annie yelled as her clothes started to shred against the bark of the tree.

  “Let go of the bear!” The other girl’s voice came from overhead now.

  “Then it’ll eat me!”

  “Let go of the bear and lift your hands!”

  That sounded like a horrible plan, but already Annie’s back stung from the repeated contact with the rough bark.

  Annie let go of the bear and lifted her hands.

  Strong fingers wrapped around her forearms, and as the bear leaned forward—so it could slam Annie against the tree again—Many Horses pulled.

  It took some effort and maneuvering of their body weight as leverage, but eventually they conquered gravity and Annie and Many Horses were both in the tree, climbing higher until they were out of the bear’s reach.

  If this had been a regular brown bear, the two would have been in even worse trouble. Those bears can climb. But grizzly bears have that big hump on the top part of their back and straight claws, which makes it difficult to climb very high. A fortunate thing for our heroine and her new tree companion.

  Below, the bear roared and scratched at the tree, shaking it violently. Annie sat on the branch below Many Horses, keeping her feet tucked under her, determinedly ignoring the stinging pain in her back where the bear had slammed her against the tree.

  “You’re bleeding,” Many Horses observed.

  “It turns out that bears are really strong.”

  The bear grabbed at the tree again and shook.

  “You’ll probably live,” Many Horses said, “but I’ll look at the scrapes when we’re not under attack.”

  “Thanks.” Annie wasn’t a fan of the word probably in there, but she didn’t want to argue with the person who’d just offered to tend her injuries.

  “What were you doing out here?”

  Annie looked up through the dark tree to find Many Horses looking back down at her, and suddenly she realized why she hadn’t seen the other girl on the stagecoach train: she was a Native girl. Lakota, probably. She looked about Annie’s age, tall and pretty, with twin black braids and tawny skin, and a no-nonsense sort of expression.

  “I’m going to Deadwood tomorrow—”

  “After your friend Jane, who stole money from you.”

  Annie nodded. “Yep. After my friend Jane, who stole money from me, but I’m nervous about it, so I decided to take a walk through the woods. I didn’t expect a bear to pee in the stream, laugh about it, and then chase me around the clearing.”

  “No one ever does,” agreed Many Horses. “It wasn’t the bear who said that, though. It was me.”

  “I figured.” Annie started to smile, but then realized she had to ask: “Did you really—”

  “No.” Many Horses sniffed. “I was just seeing how you’d react. I’ve actually been following you since you left the stagecoaches.”

  Annie looked up. “What? I didn’t see you.”

  Many Horses shrugged. “Pay better attention, I guess.”

  Annie bristled. She paid attention! She paid better attention than anyone in her whole family. But— “I was distracted.”

  “Yep. I noticed.” Many Horses passed Annie’s gun down. “This is yours.”

  Annie accepted the long rifle, looping the strap over her shoulder. It hurt, but she was glad to have her gun back. “Would you really have shot the bear if I asked?”

  “No. I would have let her eat you.”

  Annie paled. “Really?”

  The other girl shrugged. “Maybe not.”

  “That’s comforting.” Annie gazed down at the bear, who’d (good news) gotten bored of shaking the tree but (bad news) was now camped at the bottom, waiting for them to come down. This was far from ideal. “Why were you following me?”

  “Because I wanted to see who you are. You’re awfully good with that gun.”

  Annie got the sense that Many Horses had been following her a bit longer than she’d claimed. “Thanks,” Annie said, because her mama told her to never let a compliment go to waste. “I’m Annie Oakley, by the way.” (She liked the name. No point in letting that go to waste, either.) She reached up to shake the other girl’s hand.

  Many Horses glanced suspiciously at it. “No thanks.”

  “I saved you from the bear,” Annie said.

  “I saved you first.”

  “You gave me tips about not looking like a tasty midnight snack.”

  “In that case, I saved you last.”

  “I jumped on the back of a grizzly bear for you.”

  They stared at each other. “Fine,” Many Horses said at last, and shook her hand. “I saved you, you saved me, but mostly I saved you, so let’s not get into pesky details about who was braver, even though it was clearly me.”

  Annie glared up, because she really wanted to win this, but then she remembered Many Horses was going to look at her injuries later and that definitely counted for something. “All right, fine. I’ll let you have this one, but know that I’m keeping track from now on.”

  “What makes you think there’s going to be another time?” Many Horses asked.

  “I just assumed bear hijinks makes us best friends.”

  “It’s going to take more than bear hijinks.”

  “Oh.” Annie frowned. All those people on the stagecoach trail had adored her, so why was she having such a hard time making people she liked like her back?

  “But I figure you owe me now,” Many Horses went on, “seeing as how I saved you extra, so there’s opportunity in there somewhere.”

  Below them, the bear rolled over and went to sleep, and two smaller—although still plenty big—bears ambled up to the tree. Cubs. They made adorable baby bear sounds, and Annie was glad she hadn’t asked Many Horses to shoot the mama bear, but one thing was increasingly clear: Annie was never getting out of this tree.

  “Is it safe to assume,” Annie asked, “that you have a way you want me to pay you back
, and that it’s connected to the reason you’ve been stalking me?”

  “Stalking is such a strong word.”

  “There’s a young man I really like—his name is Frank—and the first thing I did, before we met, was follow him through a creepy, dark factory, and then to the Wild West show.”

  “Ah, so you’re familiar with the art of collecting information by long-distance observation.”

  “Very,” Annie assured her.

  “Then yes,” Many Horses said. “There’s a connection.”

  “You may as well tell me about it now,” Annie said. “I don’t think we’re going anywhere until the bears finish their nap.”

  “It’s kind of a long story.”

  “I think bears can sleep for a long time.”

  “That’s during the winter. But all right. The short version is this: Deadwood is an illegal town. It violates treaties your government made with us.”

  Annie swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s nice. But not the point. All these Americans are here to rip open the land and settle down, like they didn’t just sign a treaty saying they wouldn’t do that. But they found gold, so here they are. Violating yet another treaty.”

  “Breaking treaties is unforgivable,” Annie agreed. “Please note that I came after my friend Jane, who stole my money, and I have no interest in ripping up the land or settling.”

  “I believe you.”

  “You should.”

  “Right. Moving on. Deadwood’s illegal. All these people are here illegally. And then there’s Swearengen.”

  Annie’s breath caught. Was she supposed to know that name? It sounded important.

  “Swearengen is a garou—”

  A chill worked up Annie’s spine, and not only because her clothes were in tatters. A garou. Here in Deadwood. But Frank was a garou, too, and . . . Her thoughts started to spiral back to the confused mess they’d been since he’d fired her, said he was a garou, and stormed out of her life.

  You’re not as nice of a person as you think you are.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Many Horses asked.

  “I was thinking about something else. Sorry. Will you start over?”

  Many Horses sighed dramatically. “Fine, but only because I want your help. As I was saying, Swearengen is a garou, which is fine. That doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is that the Pack is out biting other people.”