Wicked Women

by Enss, Chris

  Many of the cowboy customers were spattered with alkali dust, grease, or plain dirt. They stretched their eager, unkempt hands out to touch Libby as she pranced by, but she managed to avoid all contact. At the end of the performance, she was showered with applause, cheers, and requests to see more. Libby was not in an obliging mood. She smiled, bowed, and hurried past the enthusiastic audience as she made her way to the bar for a drink.

  A surly bartender served her a glass of apple whiskey, and she headed off to the back of the room with her beverage. When she wasn’t entertaining patrons, Libby could be found at her usual corner spot by the stairs. A large, purple velvet chair waited for her there along with her pets, a pair of prairie dogs. As Libby walked through the mass of people to her spot, she saw three grimy, bearded men surrounding her seat. One of the inebriated cowhands was poking at her animals with a long stick.

  “Boys, I’d thank you kindly to stop that,” she warned the unruly trio. The men turned to see who was speaking, then broke into a hearty laugh once they saw her. Ignoring the dancer they resumed their harassment of the small dogs. The animals batted the stick back as it neared them, and each time the men would erupt with laughter.

  Libby watched the three for a few moments, then slowly reached into her drawstring purse and removed a pistol. Pointing the gun at the men, she said, “Don’t make me ask you again.” The drunken cowhands turned to face Libby, and she aimed her pistol at the head of the man with the stick. Laughing, the man told her to “go to hell.” “I’m on my way,” she responded, pulling the hammer back on the gun. “But I don’t mind sending you there first so you can warn them,” she added. The cowboy dropped the stick, and he and his friends backed away from Libby’s chair. One by one they staggered out of the saloon. Libby put the gun back into her purse, scooped up her frightened pets, scratched their heads, and kissed them repeatedly.

  Libby Thompson was known by most as Squirrel Tooth Alice. Named for a slight imperfection in her teeth and for the burrowing rodents she kept that were often mistaken for squirrels, Alice was one of the most famous madams on the western front.

  Libby Thompson was born Mary Elizabeth Haley on October 18, 1855, in Belton, Texas. Her parents, James Haley and Mary Raybourne, owned a plantation along the Brazos River. Prior to the Civil War, the Haleys were a wealthy family. Libby, along with her three brothers and two sisters, was accustomed to the finer things in life. When the South lost the war, the Haley fortune went with it. James managed to hold on to his land, and his children helped him work the rich soil. He was never a big success as a farmer, but he did manage to keep his family fed. He was not able to protect them from hostile Indian parties that raided homesteads and stole their livestock, however.

  In 1864 Comanche Indians raided the Haley plantation and took Libby captive. James and Mary searched for their daughter for three years. After locating the tribe that had taken Libby, they learned that a ransom was demanded for her release. The distraught Haleys agreed to pay the price, and Libby returned home in the winter of 1867.

  Speculations as to how the Comanche Indians treated female captives ranged from forcible rape and torture to marriage and servitude. Libby rarely spoke of the harrowing ordeal. Historians at the University of Texas note her behavior was indicative of most captives. Even if she had described the perilous ordeal to the curious Belton population, it would not have changed the way they treated her. Libby showed no physical signs of abuse, and the public took that to mean she willingly submitted to the Indians’ demands. Libby was shunned from polite society and ostracized from the community.

  Rejected by friends, neighbors, and some family members, Libby was driven to keep company with an older man who accepted her in spite of her experience with the Comanche Indians. When Libby brought the gentleman friend home to meet her parents, she introduced him as her husband. James was so enraged at the idea of his teenage daughter being taken advantage of, he shot and killed Libby’s lover. The scandal further tarnished her already questionable reputation.

  At the age of fourteen, Libby ran away from home to start life fresh in a new location. She chose Abilene, Kansas, as the spot to begin again. She took a job as a dance hall girl in one of the town’s many wild saloons. It was in one of these establishments that she met a cowboy gambler named Billy Thompson. Billy was ten years older than Libby. He swept her off her feet with his boyish good looks, irresistible charm, and promise of an exciting life on the frontier. The two left Abilene together in 1870 and made way for Texas.

  When Libby wasn’t following her man over the Chisholm Trail while he punched cows for any cattle drive crew that needed him, the pair was holed up in a saloon. Billy would gamble, and Libby would dance. Dance hall girls were paid well and could earn even more if they engaged in acts of prostitution. Libby was not opposed to entertaining gentlemen in that manner if it brought in extra cash. As long as she shared her income with Billy, he didn’t object, either. The carefree couple drifted from town to town, staying long enough to tire of each place and then moving on.

  In 1872 Libby and Billy left Texas and headed back to Kansas. This time they settled in Ellsworth. Work was readily available there. Numerous cattle drives came through the area, and there was a lot of money to be made and won at the busy saloons. In less than six months, Libby and Billy had amassed a small fortune. Most of the pair’s wealth was lost after a few luckless nights of gambling. By this time Libby was expecting their first child. Broke and desperate, Billy decided to join a drive heading south.

  Cohabitation without the benefit of marriage was illegal in the Old West, so Libby and Billy lied about their marital status. They did so not only to get away with living together but also for Libby to go along on the cattle drives. As trail boss Billy was permitted to have his family accompany him. Holed up in the back of a wagon, a pregnant Libby followed the herd from Kansas to Oklahoma. On April 1, 1873, she gave birth to a son and named him Rance. Three months later, in a formal setting, Billy decided to legally marry the mother of his child.

  The Thompsons were vagabonds; it was not in their natures to lay down roots, and even having a son did not inspire the couple to settle down. They wanted nothing more than to drift freely from cow town to cow town plying their individual trades. A deadly, impulsive act ultimately robbed them of their uninhibited, wandering lifestyle.

  On August 15, 1873, after an all-night drinking spree, Billy accidentally shot and killed a Kansas sheriff. He was arrested, and the cattle company he worked for bailed him out of jail. Worrying about reprisals from the sheriff’s friends and family and fearing for their lives, Billy and Libby took Rance and ran from the cow town. Their itinerant lifestyle then became a matter of necessity rather than choice.

  Libby and Billy sought refuge from the law in Dodge City. Libby found work as a dancer, madam, and part-time prostitute. Billy gambled at the saloons around town. They befriended some of the area’s most famous residents, namely Wyatt Earp and his lover, Mattie Blaylock. After Kansas the Thompsons traveled to Colorado and then back to Texas. Along the way Libby gave birth to three more children. One of those children died from fever.

  Libby Thompson was one of the most popular prostitutes and dance hall girls in Dodge City, Kansas. She was rarely seen without her pet prairie dogs, which many mistook for squirrels.

  Kansas State Historical Society

  By the summer of 1876, Libby and her family were settled in Sweetwater. She and Billy purchased a small ranch outside town and a dance hall on Main Street. Libby was the main attraction on stage, but the stable of women who worked for her behind the scenes brought in the lion’s share of the business. Billy protected his wife whenever he needed to but spent much of his time away from the saloon, leaving the daily operations of the brothel and tavern to Libby.

  Libby was not shy or ashamed of how she earned a living. She openly confessed her profession to anyone who asked. When the census was taken in
the area, she boldly listed her occupation as “one who diddles and squirms in the dark.” Libby’s frankness drew customers to her place, but that wasn’t the only reason. Her pet “squirrels” also garnered a lot of attention. The prairie dogs were good pets. She took the small animals with her wherever she went.

  Early in their relationship, Billy accepted and encouraged his wife’s profession. In later years, however, it was a source of tension between the two. Billy’s absence while on long cattle drives took its toll on the marriage as well. Both began to look to other people to make them happy and fill the voids. Each had a succession of lovers, but they never lost the connection that initially brought them together. They always found their way back to each other. During the course of their twenty-four years of marriage, the couple had nine children. History recorded that Billy was absent for much of their children’s upbringing.

  In 1896 Billy returned to Sweetwater after having spent several months in Colorado gambling. During his stay in Cripple Creek, Colorado, he contracted consumption. When he arrived in Texas, he was dying from the disease. Libby was unable to provide adequate care for her husband, so she sent him to his family in southern Texas. Billy passed away on September 6, 1887, at the St. Joseph Infirmary in Houston.

  Libby didn’t stay single for long. She moved in with a man simply known as Mr. Young. Young was a cattle rustler who’d had several run-ins with the law. Historians suspect that Mr. Young—not Billy Thompson—was the father of Libby’s ninth child, contrary to what she had led her late husband to believe. Regardless, Mr. Young proved to be just as bad at parenthood as Billy. Libby was lacking in that department as well. In addition to the nine children she had with Billy, and possibly Mr. Young, she had three more children with two different men. Several of her sons chose a life of crime, and many of her daughters followed her into the prostitution trade.

  Libby’s days as a madam came to an end in 1921. She retired at the age of sixty-six and lived with her children on an alternating basis. The last month of her life was spent at the Sunbeam Rest Home in Los Angeles. Squirrel Tooth Alice died of natural causes on April 13, 1953. She was ninety-seven years old.

  Kitty LeRoy

  The Deadly Paramour

  “Spirits of the good, the fair and beautiful, guard us through the dreamy hours. Kinder ones, but, perhaps less dutiful, keep the places that once were ours.”

  Poetic editorial in memory of the slain Kitty LeRoy from the Black Hills Daily Times, 1883

  A grim-faced bartender led a pair of sheriff’s deputies up the stairs of Deadwood’s Lone Star Saloon to the two lifeless bodies sprawled on the floor. One of the deceased individuals was a gambler named Kitty LeRoy, and the other was her estranged husband, Sam Curley.

  The quiet expression on Kitty’s face gave no indication that her death had been a violent one. She was lying on her back with her eyes closed and, if not for the bullet hole in her chest, would simply have looked as though she were sleeping. Sam’s dead form was a mass of blood and tissue. He was lying faceup with pieces of his skull protruding from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. In his right hand he still held the pistol that had brought about the tragic scene.

  For those townspeople who knew the flamboyant twenty-eight-year-old LeRoy, her furious demise did not come as a surprise. She was a voluptuous beauty who used her striking good looks to take advantage of infatuated men who believed her charm and talent surpassed any they’d ever known.

  Nothing is known of her early years: where and the exact date she was born, who her parents and siblings were, or what she was like as a child. The earliest historical account of the entertainer, card player, and sometime soiled dove lists her as a dancer in Dallas, Texas, in 1875. She was a regular performer at Johnny Thompson’s Variety Theatre. She had dark, striking features; brown, curly hair; and a trim, shapely figure. She dressed in elaborate gypsy-style garments and always wore a pair of spectacular diamond earrings.

  Kitty’s nightly performances attracted many cowboys and trail hands. She received standing ovations after every jig and shouts from the audience for an encore. The one thing Kitty was better at than dancing was gambling. She was a savvy faro dealer and poker player. Men fought one another—sometimes to death—for a chance to sit opposite her and play a game or two.

  In early 1876, after becoming romantically involved with a persistent saloonkeeper, Kitty decided to leave Texas and travel with her lover to San Francisco. Their stay in Northern California was brief. Kitty did not find the area to be as exciting as she had heard it had been during the gold rush. To earn the thousands she hoped as an entertainer and gambler, she needed to be in a place where new gold was being pulled out of the streams and hills. California’s findings were old and nearly played out. Kitty boarded a stage alone and headed for a new gold boomtown in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

  Deadwood Gulch, South Dakota, was teeming with more than six thousand eager prospectors, most of whom spent their hard earnings at the faro tables in saloons. Kitty hired on at the notorious Gem Theatre and danced her way to the same popularity she had experienced in Dallas. Enamored miners competed for her attention, but none seemed to hold her interest. It wasn’t until she met Sam Curley that the thought of spending an extended period of time with one man seemed appealing.

  Thirty-five-year-old Sam was a cardsharp with a reputation as a peaceful man who felt more at home behind a poker table than anywhere else. Kitty and Sam had a lot in common, and their mutual attraction blossomed into a proposal of marriage. On June 10, 1877, the pair exchanged vows at the Gem Theatre on the same stage where Kitty performed. Unbeknownst to the cheering onlookers and the groom, however, Kitty was already married. Her first husband lived in Bay City, Michigan, with her son, who had been born in 1872. Bored with the trappings of a traditional home life, Kitty had abandoned the pair to travel the West.

  When Sam learned that he was married to a bigamist, he was upset, and the pair quarreled. He was not only dissatisfied with his marital status, but also fiercely unhappy with the law enforcement in the rough town. He didn’t like Sheriff Seth Bullock’s “strong arm tactics,” and within six months of marrying Kitty, he left Deadwood Gulch for Colorado.

  Perhaps she was distraught over the abrupt departure of her current husband, but Kitty’s congenial personality suddenly turned cold and unfriendly. She was distrusting of patrons and began carrying six-shooters in her skirt pockets and a Bowie knife in the folds of the deep curls of her hair. She moved from Deadwood Gulch to Central City, where she ran a saloon. Because she was always heavily armed, she was able to keep the wild residents who frequented her establishment under control.

  Wearing a come-hither look and inviting smile, lovely lady gamblers enticed trailblazers and cowhands to frequent saloons.

  Searls Historical Library

  Restless and unable to get beyond Sam’s absence, Kitty returned to Deadwood and opened a combination brothel and gambling parlor. She called her place the Mint and enticed many miners to her faro table, where she quickly relieved them of their gold dust. On one particularly profitable evening, she raked in more than $8,000. A braggadocious German industrialist had challenged her to a game and lost. The debate continues among historians as to whether Kitty cheated her way to the expensive win. Most believe she was a less than honest dealer.

  Kitty’s profession and seductive manner of dress sparked rumors that she had had many lovers and had been married five times. Kitty never denied the rumors and even added to them by boasting that she had been courted by hundreds of eligible bachelors and “lost track of the number of times men had proposed” to her. Because she carried a variety of weapons on her at all times, rumors also abounded that she had shot or stabbed more than a dozen gamblers for cheating at cards. She never denied those tales, either.

  By the fall of 1877, the torch Kitty carried for Sam was temporarily extinguished by a former lover. The tw
o spent many nights at the Lone Star Saloon and eventually moved in together.

  News of Kitty’s romantic involvement reached a miserable Sam, who had established a faro game at a posh saloon in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Sam was furious about being replaced and immediately purchased a ticket back to Deadwood. Hoping to catch Kitty alone with her lover, he disguised his looks and changed his name.

  When Sam arrived in town on December 6, 1877, he couldn’t bring himself to face the pair in person. He sent a message to Kitty’s paramour to meet with him instead, but the man refused. In a fit of rage Sam told one of the Lone Star Saloon employees that he intended to kill his unfaithful wife and then himself.

  Frustrated and desperate, Sam sent a note to Kitty, pleading with her to meet him at the Lone Star Saloon. She reluctantly agreed. Not long after Kitty ascended the stairs of the tavern, patrons heard her scream followed by the sound of two gunshots.

  A reporter for the Black Hills Daily Times visited the scene of the murder-suicide the morning after the event occurred. “The bodies were dressed and lying side by side in the room of death,” he later wrote in an article for the newspaper. “Suspended upon the wall, a pretty picture of Kitty, taken when the bloom and vigor of youth gazed down upon the tenements of clay, as if to enable the visitor to contrast a happy past with a most wretched present. The pool of blood rested upon the floor; blood stains were upon the door and walls. . . . The cause of the tragedy may be summed up in a few words; aye, in one ‘jealousy.’ ”

  A simple funeral was held for the pair at the same location where they had met their end. Although they were placed in separate pine caskets, they were buried in the same grave at the Ingleside Cemetery. According to the January 7, 1878, edition of the Black Hills Daily Times, Kitty had “drawn a holographic will in ink on the day prior to her death.” Her estate amounted to $650. A portion of the funds was used to pay for the service, burial, and tombstone.