The Lost Diary of Annie Oakley’s Wild West Stagehand

THE LOST DIARY OF

ANNIE OAKLEY’S

WILD WEST STAGEHAND

LASSOED BY CLIVE DICKINSON

Illustrated by George Hollingworth

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Message to Readers

24 April 1885 – Louisville, Kentucky

25 April 1885 – Louisville, Kentucky

26 April 1885 – On the Train

16 May 1885 – On the Train to Chicago

25 May 1885 – Chicago

12 June 1885 – Buffalo, New York State

30 July 1885 – Boston

2 August 1885 – Boston

2 September 1885 – London

11 October 1885 – St Louis, Missouri

29 May 1886 – On the Train to Washington D.G.

26 June 1886 – New York

4 July 1886 – New York

24 July 1886 – New York

24 September 1886 – New York

Thanksgiving, 1886 – New York

4 December 1886 – New York

12 December 1886 – New York

1 April 1887 – At Sea

18 April 1887 – London, England

28 April 1887 – London

6 May 1887 – London

12 May 1887 – London

11 June 1887 – London

20 June 1887 – Windsor Castle, England

22 June 1887 – London

20 July 1887 – London

31 August 1887 – London

31 October 1887 – London (For the Last Time this Year)

20 December 1887 – New York

22 February 1888 – Easton, Pennsylvania

2 April 1888 – Philadelphia

24 May 1888 – Philadelphia

2 July 1888 – Gloucester Beach, New Jersey

8 August 1888 – Troy, New York

31 December 1888 – Philadelphia

31 January 1889 – Chambersburg, Pennsylvania

12 May 1889 – Paris, France

15 May 1889 – Paris

10 June 1889 – Paris

22 July 1889 – Paris

4 March 1890 – Rome, Italy

23 April 1890 – Munich, Germany

23 August 1890 – Berlin, Germany

23 September 1890 – On the Train in Germany (Don’t Rightly Know Where)

31 January 1891 – Banfelt, Alsace (Germany)

The Rest of the Story

Publisher’s Addendum

Other Works

Copyright

About the Publisher

MESSAGE TO READERS

What do you do when you unexpectedly find a previously unknown document about a famous person? Sell it to a newspaper? Sell it to a television company? Put it back where you found it? Tear it up as bedding for your gerbils?

This was exactly the difficulty faced by Clive Dickinson during a visit to Germany. While he was unwrapping a cuckoo clock he had bought, he discovered what looked like a very thick exercise book lining the bottom of the box. Inside were pages and pages of writing, not in German, as he might have expected, but in English.

To make sure he wasn’t going cuckoo himself, Mr Dickinson flicked through the pages and found dates from the 1880s, which suggested that the book was a kind of journal. All the way through, he spotted the name of Annie Oakley, who was one of the most famous American women in the world one hundred years ago.

Before going public, Mr Dickinson asked for professional help. In exchange for return flights to Europe, all expenses paid, two experts on the American West, Professor Joe King of Larfinstock College and Dr Rusty Brayne of Imina State University, confirmed that he had made a unique find. In their experience, nothing quite like it had ever been discovered before.

After careful study, lasting two weeks in an expensive hotel, they agreed that the book lining the box of the cuckoo clock was the personal diary of one Phil McCartridge. He seems to have worked as Annie Oakley’s stagehand during the years in which she became world famous for her amazing shooting act in the show called Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

Working closely with Annie Oakley, Phil McCartridge was able to record day-to-day details about her and her friends: the cowboys, Native American Indians, animal-handlers, stable-hands and riders, who helped recreate life in the Wild West for spectators on both sides of the Atlantic.

Now this remarkable document can be published for the first time, bringing alive the thrills and skills, dangers and excitements which Buffalo Bill’s Wild West brought to millions of people in America and Europe a century and more ago.

24 APRIL 1885 – LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

Well, I’ll be…!

I thought I’d seen just about all there was to see about guns and shooting and the Wild West. But not after today. No, sir.

Colt, Remington, Lancaster, Winchester, Double Gloucester – there ain’t a gun this side of the Rocky Mountains that I don’t know. And there ain’t a champion sharp-shooter I ain’t seen – leastways, not till this afternoon.

Now, I may not be that quick at book learning, but I know a sure bet when I see one. I reckon I could be on to a good thing if I start writing down what goes on around here. I can see my name in print already on one of those fancy book covers and in the newspapers.

Things ain’t going to be the same – that’s for sure. And about time, too. Last winter was the worst this show has ever known. First the steamship carrying everything down the river ran into another steamship and sank. We lost animals, wagons and camp gear, not to mention my precious guns and ammunition. That meant the show opened late in New Orleans, which ain’t good for business, especially at Christmas.

Then it started raining. It rained and it rained until I thought the old man river* was flowing right through the camp. Only a handful of people came to watch the show. Business was so bad that Captain Bogardus, the top trick shooter on the bill, upped sticks last month and left the show for good, taking his four shooting sons with him. With our top gun gone, we didn’t have many shots left in the locker.

Then Buffalo Bill told me yesterday that he’s hired some sharp-shooter called Andy Oakley to take Captain Bogardus’s place. I sure hoped this guy would hit the target – the show needed all the help it could get. Only the Andy Oakley who turned up today ain’t what I was expecting at all. No, sir!

For one thing, Andy ain’t no Andy. She’s an Annie! And she’s so dainty and so ladylike, I still can’t make out how she can shoot a gun like she does. But boy (I guess I mean “girl”), can she shoot! Buffalo Bill sure knows how to pull something out of his hat when the chips are down.

There goes the cook’s bell for our dinner. I’d better stop writing now, ’cos I’m going to wash my hands and face for this meal – and that’s something I ain’t done for a very long time.

25 APRIL 1885 – LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

Yesterday was our first day in town, so everyone was busy getting ready for the street parade before the afternoon performance. We only do the street parade on the first day, so this morning I’ve got time to carry on from where I left off.

Nate Salsbury was getting real excited about Miss Oakley yesterday. Mr Salsbury is the business manager and he don’t get carried away like Buffalo Bill does sometimes.

Most of us were at the street parade in town when Annie and her husband, Frank Butler, arrived in camp. Mr Salsbury watched her practising her shooting in the arena and he liked what he saw! She shot clay pigeons as they whizzed from the trap, holding her gun right side up, upside down, in her left hand and in her right. He said those clay pigeons came flying straight one after the other, and she didn’t miss a single one.

Right there he signed her up to join the show – without even talking it over with Buffalo Bill. Here’s another incredible thing – Mr Salsbury ordered $7,000 worth of posters of Annie before they even had a business agreement! I sure hope he knows what he’s doing.

When we got back from the parade, he lined us all up to meet Annie and Frank. Buffalo Bill didn’t need any convincing. He swept off his hat and bowed to her with his long hair flopping over his shoulders. He then welcomed her as “Missie”, which she kind of liked, I think.

Annie walked down the line, shaking hands and nodding hello to everyone in a way that was so open and kind. You could see that the cowboys, the Mexicans, the Indians, the mule-drivers, the buffalo-handlers and everyone else in the show liked her too.

That’s what folks who ain’t seen Buffalo Bill’s Wild West don’t understand. This ain’t no circus, with sideshows and clowns and animals doing dumb things they’ve been taught to do.

Everything in the Wild West show comes straight from the real Wild West. It’s just like the posters say!

It seems to me that that’s why Annie and Frank wanted to join the show. They’ve worked in the circus and in theatres doing trick shooting, but so have too many other so-called sharp-shooters.

Annie’s been there, shot that. Now she wants folks to see how good her shooting really is. If you ask me, she couldn’t have come at a better time.

26 APRIL 1885 – ON THE TRAIN

Goodbye Louisville, it’s been nice seeing you – but it’s even nicer having time for a real good talk with Annie and Frank, seeing as how I’m going to be looking after Annie and her guns from now on.

She’s so excited, you’d think she was a little girl on her first trip away from home. Come to think of it, that’s just what she looks like.

Frank’s kind of quiet. He stays in the background and lets Annie do the talking, but they’re a good team. Folks say he’s a crack shot too. In fact he and Annie met at a shooting match. Frank was an unbeaten champion then, and Annie was just Annie Moses from a small town called Greenville, in Darke County, Ohio. But folks there reckoned Annie “could shoot a little”, and she won that match fair and square.

Frank Butler was a beaten man in more ways than one that day. It wasn’t long before they were married and started appearing in a shooting act called Butler and Oakley.

Why Oakley? Annie says she liked the name and it sounded good. You can’t argue with that, and I’ve a hunch that some day the name Annie Oakley’s going to be famous everywhere.

Annie ain’t had an easy life, that’s for sure. She started shooting when she was just a little girl, so the family could have enough to eat. Soon she was selling the game she shot and earning good money.

Owners of fancy hotels liked her game, because there was never any gunshot in the meat. Annie was so accurate, she always killed the birds stone dead with a shot clean through the head.

Before long, she’d earned enough money to repay the loan on the family farm. Since she was a little girl, Annie ain’t never had a dollar she ain’t earned herself.

She’s had to work for those dollars, mind. Travelling from town to town with Frank, performing in music halls or circuses, staying in cheap hotels. That’s a hard way to make a living.

It’s hard too, when there are so many shooting acts around these days. Annie’s always been different. I guess that’s what makes her stand out. Other lady sharp-shooters dress up all fancy, but Annie dresses real neat and simple. She does all her own sewing, making her clothes, and decorating her dresses and blouses with coloured ribbon and pretty stitching. She ain’t nothing like folks imagine when they think of the Wild West – not till she picks up her guns, that is.

Other shooters, men and women, don’t always shoot fair either. They cheat and, because folks know they cheat, some think Annie cheats too, which ain’t right at all.

Frank told me the story of a faker he knew. This son-of-a-gun played a tune on a piano by shooting disks hanging from each piano key. That looked and sounded pretty smart until, halfway through the act, his gun jammed and he couldn’t shoot any more. The trouble was, the piano tune kept on playing! Down in the orchestra pit, his accomplice hadn’t seen what had happened and kept on thumping out the notes.

16 MAY 1885 – ON THE TRAIN TO CHICAGO

I ain’t never been to Chicago, so I can’t wait till the train pulls in tomorrow! Chicago has a special place in the story of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, because that’s where Buffalo Bill got his first taste of stardom, back in December 1872.

At that time he wasn’t called Buffalo Bill. He was plain William F. Cody, buffalo hunter, army scout, hero of the Indian wars and soon-to-be actor. He’d never acted in a theatre before and everyone could tell the only stage he’d ever been on was the overland stage out west.

But I guess the truth is, he didn’t need to be an actor. He was the real thing from the time he started working as a rider, carrying mail for the Pony Express, when he was just fourteen years old. Then the Kansas Pacific Railroad offered him $500 a month to supply twelve buffalo a day, to feed the 1,200 men laying the new railroad track across the Kansas prairie. In eight months, Cody killed 4,280 buffalo and got the name Buffalo Bill.

It wasn’t just buffalo he killed. In July 1876, when he was an army scout, he fought an Indian warrior called Yellow Hair single-handed, shot him dead and took his scalp. On top of all this, Buffalo Bill could shoot anything that moved. No wonder he was a showbiz hit from day one.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West has been going since July 1883, and this summer, folks can’t get enough of it. Here’s hoping they like it as much in Chicago.

25 MAY 1885 – CHICAGO

Yep – Chicago loves Buffalo Bill’s Wild West! And Chicago loves Annie Oakley.

The papers say that 40,000 people came to the show yesterday. That’s one person in twenty in the whole of Chicago. Good business in anyone’s book.

They cheer right from the start as the big canvas curtain at the far end opens and a band of real Indians in full warpaint gallop into the open-air arena, yelling war cries. After them come the cowboys, whooping and waving their Stetson hats, then the Mexican cowhands waving their sombreros.

Buffalo Bill gallops in on a big grey horse to the sound of trumpets from the Cowboy Band. He stops and salutes the audience packed into the horseshoe-shaped stands. Then he calls “Are you ready? Go!”, which sends all the riders galloping round and round the arena, whooping and firing guns in the air. That gets the crowds going every time.

Annie comes on midway through the show, after the riding of the Pony Express and Buffalo Bill’s re-enacted fight with Yellow Hair. She don’t just walk into the arena – she skips in from the grandstand gangway, waving, bowing and blowing kisses. After the rough men of the Wild West, she sure is a change.

Out in the centre of the arena, Frank has all her rifles, shotguns and revolvers loaded and laid out on a wooden table covered with a silk cloth. He loads and fires the clay pigeons from spring traps and reloads Annie’s guns during the act.

Annie don’t miss too often. In fact, she tells me that sometimes she misses on purpose, to prove that the targets don’t just explode on their own. One day I counted fifty-five hits out of the fifty-six glass balls Frank tossed in the air for her, and she only missed one because she tripped as she pulled the trigger.

She’s shoots so fast too – and with both hands. I’ve seen her hitting targets holding the gun over her head and lying on her back across a chair. She can hit glass balls tied to the end of a rope Frank spins round his head. She can even toss two glass balls high in the air herself, then pick up a rifle, shoot the first ball, spin round and shoot the second before it hits the ground.

The audience’s favourite stunt is Annie’s mirror trick. In this, she turns her back on the target, takes aim with the rifle over her shoulder using a polished knife blade as a mirror, and still manages to hit the target. Sometimes she’ll even jump the table after Frank has let fly a clay pigeon, run ten yards to pick up her gun and still hit the target before it lands. That’s pretty snappy shooting, seeing that from start to finish the clay’s only in the air for four or five seconds!

12 JUNE 1885 – BUFFALO, NEW YORK STATE

I don’t know. That Annie! She seems to spring surprises as easy as she springs clays from a trap.

I guess I should have expected something to happen to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, seeing that we’re here in the town of Buffalo. A special supper of buffalo tongue, or perhaps a buffalo hide for Buffalo Bill?

But when I saw who Major Burke, the publicity manager, brought into town today, I thought my eyes were playing tricks. Down the steps from the railroad car came the great Sioux warrior, Chief Sitting Bull himself! Some folks claim he’s the one who killed General Custer at the famous battle of Little Bighorn nine years ago.

Major Burke says Sitting Bull’s going to be touring with the Wild West this summer. You can’t blame the major for looking mighty pleased with himself for getting a famous Indian chief like Sitting Bull to join the show. I’d say Major Burke is sitting pretty.

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