Jack McCall & Punishment

Calamity Jane may have dressed in buckskins, cussed with the roughest of men, and drank more than a few rough characters under the table, but there’s no question her heart was fragile. She fell for Wild Bill Hickok and hoped with everything she was that she could turn his head. Such would not be the case. One of the new titles I’m working on is Ten Love Lessons Learned by Women of the Old West. Under Calamity’s gruff mannerism and unfeminine like appearance was a woman who hoped to marry and have the famous lawman’s child. Of course she soon learned that acting like one of the guys would not get her the man of her dreams. Calamity had a rough life. Her parents died at an early age leaving behind several younger children for Calamity to care for. At the age of 14 she traveled from the mid-west to Fort Bridger, Wyoming where she adopted out all of her brothers and sisters. She just wasn’t able to be mother and father to the brood any longer. In order to make it in the rough and violent world of the wild frontier she adopted the look and mannerism of a man. She traveled the territory like other pioneers did and wasn’t about to go where no one had ever gone before in a dress. It wasn’t practical, but neither were her feelings for the dashing Mr. Hickok. She might have exaggerated their involvement with Dime Novelist, but there was nothing exaggerated about her reaction when Hickok was killed. Calamity wept bitterly. Her heart was broken. She never loved another in the same way. She vowed to kill the coward who shot Wild Bill. She warned Jack McCall, the man who shot Hickok in the head, that she would never stop looking for him. “When my name makes you cry in your sleep. When I’ve brought you to ashes – only then will I be through with you.” I couldn’t have said it better myself, Calam. I feel the exact same way about the cowards who cost me my brother. McCall was made to answer for his deeds at the end of a rope. Punishment comes one way or another.