Calamity Jane by William R. Sanford

Author:William R. Sanford [Sanford, William R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4645-1000-7
Publisher: Enslow Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2013-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Image Credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

A woman and a boy work as bullwhackers, driving a team of oxen in the Black Hills. Calamity Jane sometimes hired on as a bullwhacker for the arduous 150-mile journey from Fort Pierre to Rapid City, South Dakota.

Calamity was as good a driver as she was a storyteller. Urging the slow-witted animals on with a string of curses was second nature to her. Calamity’s rawhide whip, expertly snapped over the oxen’s heads, kept them moving. Cracking a whip for hours at a time took strength and endurance. Calamity had both.

Bullwhacking paid a dollar a day plus meals. By 1882, Calamity was ready to try an easier job. At Fort Pierre, she exchanged her soiled buckskins for an old pink gown. In her new outfit, she embarked on a brief new career as a midwife. A woman about to give birth would call for Calamity. If the woman could not pay, Calamity would help her deliver the baby for free. When children ran underfoot, she sat them in a corner. Once seated, the little ones did not dare stray.

Later that year, Calamity wrote, she bought a ranch on the Yellowstone. If she did so, the money must have come from her mining claims. To bring in extra money, she also opened an inn. It was a place, she wrote, “where the weary traveler could [find] food, drink, or trouble if he looked for it.” During this time, she was thrown out of a dance hall for making a tenderfoot “dance.” The trick was to shoot close to the man’s toes without hitting them. On another night, she leaned out of a hotel window to curse a stingy customer. A crowd gathered to cheer her long, expert performance.

By 1883, Calamity was on the move again. Over the next year or two, she visited Oregon, California, and Arizona. No matter where she went, her fame was there first. Some eastern writers had seen to that.

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