The Lost Diary of Annie Oakley's Wild West Stagehand

by Clive Dickinson

  12 MAY 1889 – PARIS, FRANCE

  I like Paris in the springtime! In fact I could get to like Paris all year round, though I guess I’d like it just that little bit more if I could understand what folks here say and if they could understand me.

  The whole of France is celebrating this year. One hundred years ago the French Revolution brought in a new way of governing the country without kings and queens and emperors, just like we did back home after we beat the British in the American Revolution.

  Here in the French capital they’re holding the Paris Universal Exposition, and they’ve built a huge metal tower designed by a guy called Gustave Eiffel. This is 320 metres high (as they say in France) – that’s 985 feet high to folks like me – which makes it far and away the tallest building on earth. Best of all, you can take a seven-minute ride right to the top in a kind of cage, and that’s been designed by an American.

  I got to hand it to this Eiffel guy. He’s real smart when it comes to making things out of big metal girders. Why, he designed the framework inside the Statue of Liberty back in New York harbour. We used to sail past it when the Wild West was in Staten Island four years ago, and it was officially opened the November we played Madison Square Garden.

  We’re going to be here for the whole summer, like we were in London. I don’t know if business is going to be as good as it was then, though. French folks don’t know too much about the Wild West. They ain’t read too much about it neither, seeing as how they speak French and folks out west speak English.

  15 MAY 1889 – PARIS

  Our first dress rehearsal showed the kind of trouble we might have getting through to the French. A good few thousand of the most important people in Paris, including the president and his wife, came to watch that afternoon. And they sat watching as dumb as clay pigeons when the show started.

  The grand parade at the start of the show was the quietest I can remember. When the Deadwood stage rumbled on, the spectators didn’t understand why it is so important in the history of the American West. Even the Indians charging in to attack it didn’t mean anything to them. Mr Salsbury was watching at the entrance to the arena, and he looked mighty worried. Annie was next on and I saw him having a word in her ear.

  Two riders cantered ahead and leapt from their ponies to hold up her targets. Annie ran in like she always does and bowed to the stands. Still there was silence. She started shooting with a pistol and a rifle. Targets shattered and the spectators started to stir. Next she shot the flames from a revolving wheel of candles.

  You could tell all eyes were on her now as she broke two targets with one shot from her shotgun. Four targets followed, smashed with two shots. Up flew four disks, Annie shot two, grabbed a new gun, spun round twice and blasted the other pair into smithereens. Then, from the target line, she tossed two glass balls high in the air, ran back and jumped over the table, seized a gun, swung it round and hit the two balls while they were falling.

  French folks may not understand the Wild West yet, but they understand shooting. As Annie tossed her last smoking gun on the table, roars and cheers rose from the stands, followed by a hail of handkerchiefs and parasols.

  Mr Salsbury sent Annie right back on for her riding act. Astride her spotted pony, she dropped her hat on the ground and then picked it up at a gallop. Sliding head-down from the saddle, she tied her handkerchief round the pony’s flying pastern. She grabbed a pistol from the grass and smashed six glass balls tossed in the air by another rider. Annie may say “You can’t win a man with a gun”, but that day she sure won over the whole of Paris. Now, folks could see what makes the Wild West so special.

  10 JUNE 1889 – PARIS

  That clever inventor, Mr Edison, has brought his latest invention over from America. It’s the most popular thing at this exhibition, apart from the Eiffel Tower. Though I’m mighty pleased that the Wild West comes a close third!

  What Mr Edison has come up with is a machine that stores sounds and then lets folks listen to them. Every morning long queues are waiting for his stand to open, so folks can take it in turn to put kind of cups over their ears to listen to music or to other folks talking. It seems to me that Mr Edison could be on to a good thing. Who knows, some day we might be able to listen to all kinds of sounds on machines like his in our homes. Wouldn’t that be something!

  22 JULY 1889 – PARIS

  Annie ain’t letting her success go to her head. Now the show’s all the rage in Paris, no one could blame her for taking things easy. But that ain’t Annie and Frank’s way. Ever since we got here, she’s been practising a new pistol stunt.

  Pistols ain’t that accurate, as any cowboy will tell you. Most of them can’t hit a target more than a few yards away. Annie can, though. In this new trick, she puts a bullet right through the ace of hearts on a playing card ten paces away. Then Frank holds the same card edgeways to her, and Annie slices it right through, edge to edge!

  With shooting like this, it ain’t hard to see why so many important people want Annie to shoot for them. Mr Carnot, the president of France, has told Annie that if she ever wants to give up showbusiness for a different kind of work, there’s a job as an officer in the French army open to her any time. Not long ago, the King of Senegal, down on the west coast of Africa, asked if Annie would work for him back home. It seems Senegal has a whole load of wild animals which keep attacking and eating his people. Annie told them both that she is happy where she is right now, but she’d bear their offers in mind.

  4 MARCH 1890 – ROME, ITALY

  It’s been another bad winter for the Wild West, but spring’s here once more and we’re in Rome, so things are starting to look up!

  After the show closed in Paris, we sailed to Spain, where we were supposed to appear in Barcelona. Barcelona’s best forgotten, however. The Indians didn’t like the place as soon as they saw the huge statue of Christopher Columbus. “It was a bad day for us when he discovered America,” one of them complained.

  Then thousands of people in the city took sick. In camp, the Indians took sick, and ten of them died. Frank Richmond, the show’s announcer, died. Barcelona was a real sad city, and we were glad to leave in January.

  Today was like the Wild West should be – folks having a good time and seeing life on the prairie like it really is. An Italian nobleman called the Prince of Sermoneta had heard how skilled our cowboys are at taming wild horses. So he matched some of his best bucking broncos against them. No one in Europe could ride these horses, and the prince was real sure none of Buffalo Bill’s cowboys could ride them either.

  I guess the prince didn’t understand bronco-busting back home. The word bronco means ‘wild’ in Spanish, and wild horses have been tamed out west for as long as Spanish settlers, Mexicans and every other type of cowboy have been riding the range. You can’t live and work on the prairie without riding a horse, but a wild horse has got to be controlled and taught to obey its rider. That’s a dangerous business which needs a lot of skill and a lot of guts. It ain’t for me, I don’t mind admitting.

  All cowboys out west learn skills that Mexican riders learned before them. They use lariats, ropes with special slip knots, to catch wild horses. Then the horses are tied to a “snubbing post” to hold them steady while a saddle or thick leather strap is fitted tightly round their flanks. Then a bronco-buster gets on the horse, the horse is released and the cowboy holds on for dear life as the bronco bucks and leaps, trying to throw him off. Folks like watching this so much that bronco-busting is a big part of rodeo shows.

  Well, Rome ain’t used to rodeos, and it took several days to get everything ready. Strong fences had to be built to keep the horses away from the crowds. Today 20,000 turned up to watch, and 2,000 carriages were parked round the field.

  When the time for the contest began, two of the prince’s wildest horses were let into the arena, without saddle or bridle. They looked mighty mean, but Buffalo Bill announced that his cowboys would tame them, and he gave the signal to start them off. The horses
bucked and jumped in all directions, and bent themselves into every kind of shape.

  In spite of this, it only took the cowboys five minutes to catch the horses, saddle them, stop them bucking and ride them round the arena while the spectators clapped and cheered.

  Buffalo Bill didn’t get to keep those horses, but his cowboys showed the prince a thing or two about riding.

  23 APRIL 1890 – MUNICH, GERMANY

  We had a visit from another prince today. He also learned something about horses in the Wild West.

  This was Prince Luitpold of Bavaria, who dropped in during a rehearsal. He was so impressed when he saw Annie shooting that he asked if she could shoot a coin he tossed in the air. Of course, Annie can shoot coins as easy as most folks can spend them! The prince was admiring his coin with a hole in it, which I guess he won’t be able to spend now, when Jim Mitchell, one of the cowboys, yelled out a warning cry.

  It seems that Dynamite (now, there’s a good name for a bucking bronco) had escaped, and was charging straight at Annie and the prince! Annie saw the danger and, small as she is, she threw herself at the prince and pushed him to the ground, just in time for Dynamite to jump right over the two of them.

  The Prince was mighty pleased, and sent Annie a beautiful diamond bracelet as a present. All she said was, “I suppose I am the only person alive that ever knocked a ruling sovereign down and got away with it.”

  23 AUGUST 1890 – BERLIN, GERMANY

  My, how time races by! It seems like it was only yesterday we were sailing away from Barcelona, and now we’ve travelled all over Germany and are playing Berlin for a month.

  All this travelling has kept the Wild West team busy, packing and loading, unpacking and unloading.

  In most places folks don’t take too much notice of this, but in Germany it seems like we can’t drive in a tent peg without some German army officer watching and noting how the teamsters do it. We’ve had groups of officers taking notes on how we break camp, how we load the railcars with all the animals and gear, how we take everything off the trains, even how many men it takes to do each job. For some reason the German army can’t get enough information about our camp kitchens. I reckon they’ve copied so many details and diagrams that if Germany ever goes to war, her army will be the best fed in Europe.

  23 SEPTEMBER 1890 – ON THE TRAIN IN GERMANY (DON’T RIGHTLY KNOW WHERE)

  Annie had another visit from a German prince a couple of days ago. He is Crown Prince Wilhelm, who’s going to be Emperor of Germany one of these days. The Crown Prince had heard about Annie’s stunt, the one where she shoots the ash from the end of a lighted cigarette in Frank’s mouth.

  Some fake shooters play tricks with this sort of stunt, and I guess the prince wanted to find out if Annie and Frank were faking it too. So he asked Annie to let him hold the cigarette while she shot away the ash.

  Well, knocking a prince to the ground is one thing, but shooting at a prince could land a girl in a whole lot of trouble. Annie wasn’t too keen on the idea. But Crown Prince Wilhelm insisted, and they agreed to let him hold the cigarette in his fingers. That way she wouldn’t be firing the bullet just an inch or two from his head.

  Annie ain’t never missed with this stunt, and she didn’t miss this time. The ash flew away and the crown prince could see that the trick weren’t no fake. Of course, if Annie had missed, the history of Europe could have been a whole lot different in the years ahead.*

  31 JANUARY 1891 – BANFELT, ALSACE (GERMANY)

  This ain’t been the start to the year anyone in the show was expecting. It don’t feel right when a year begins with bad news.

  News reached us from Buffalo Bill and Major Burke, who are back home this winter while the rest of the show is holed up in this old castle in Germany. From what they tell us, it seems like there was some kind of uprising on Sitting Bull’s reservation, way out at Standing Rock. Annie’s kind of upset about her friend Sitting Bull, as you can imagine. Word reached the government in Washington D.C. that there was going to be trouble among the Indians, and Buffalo Bill and Major Burke were asked to travel out to meet Sitting Bull, to see if they could persuade him to stop the uprising. This was in late November last year.

  I can see why the government thought Buffalo Bill might be able to win Sitting Bull round, after he had been in the Wild West and all. But I reckon he might not have been the best choice. With a name like Buffalo Bill, you ain’t going to be popular with most Indians. It seems to me that a fellow who made his name from killing buffalo might have a hard time calming down a band of Indians on the warpath.

  Not many folks understand how important buffalo are to tribes like the Sioux. For thousands of years they have depended on buffalo for just about everything: food, shelter, clothing, blankets – the works. That’s why they think the buffalo is sacred.

  When the buffalo disappeared, the Indians’ way of life disappeared with them, and white folks started taking over Indian lands. I guess that’s why the tribes around Sitting Bull were real worked up.

  In the end, Buffalo Bill never got to see Sitting Bull. A troop of Indians in the police force went to arrest him ten days before Christmas. At first, Sitting Bull seemed to be going with them quietly. But something went wrong. Someone started shooting, and as the bullets flew, Sitting Bull was gunned down.

  Apparently Sitting Bull’s followers joined forces with Chief Big Foot, and fought the US army at Wounded Knee, but they were defeated. They didn’t fight no more after that. Instead, they went back to live on their reservations, and now there ain’t nothing to stop white folks taking all the lands that once belonged to the Indians.

  Buffalo Bill writes from home to say he’ll be coming over to Europe this spring to begin a new season touring Buffalo Bill’s Wild West around Europe. If it wasn’t for him and the likes of Annie Oakley, no one would know what the real American Wild West was like. They won’t find it back home no more, that’s for sure.

  *

  * the river Mississippi

  * 12,541 square metres

  * Not underpants, stupid – trousers!

  * Crown Prince Wilhelm became the German Kaiser. Many people blamed him for starting the First World War in 1914.

  THE REST OF THE STORY

  Phil McCartridge, whose diary ends at this point, was right. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West continued to thrill audiences in America and Europe with its real-life action for another twenty-two years. By that time, Buffalo Bill had been forced to sell most of the show to other businessmen. In 1908 he had teamed up with Pawnee Bill, but his money problems didn’t get any better and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West closed for the last time in September 1913.

  Films had taken over from big outdoor shows by then. People were still eager to see cowboys and Indians, stage coaches and buffalo in action, but now they flocked to see western movies instead. Out in the west itself, new cattle ranches and huge farms had changed the way of life that the Indians had known only a hundred years earlier.

  Annie Oakley continued to appear with Buffalo Bill until 1901, when she and Frank retired from public life. She carried on shooting, giving private exhibitions for another twenty years, until she retired for good in 1923. Only a short time afterwards, she was seriously injured in a car accident which left her weak and frail. She died at the beginning of November 1926. Frank followed her eighteen days later. They were buried together, back in Darke County, Ohio, where Annie had grown up and where the most famous woman shot in the world had fired a gun for the first time as a little girl.

  Annie’s fame lived on in the theatre, in the cinema and later on television. Twenty years after she died, she achieved Frank’s theatrical dream in a way, when a musical based on her life story opened in New York. This was called “Annie Get Your Gun”, and it became a big hit on Broadway, where it ran for three years before being turned into a film, which made over $4,650,000.

  This way, the memory of Annie Oakley lived on, and for many years she continued to be as popular as she had been durin
g her years of thrilling audiences in the dusty arena of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

  PUBLISHER’S ADDENDUM

  Although it cannot be denied that many of the people, dates and events recorded in this book are real and correct, we have to confess to a few concerns, not unlike those Frank Butler had about the fake cowboys he met in 1888.

  Annie Oakley kept a scrapbook and a diary for more than forty years, but nowhere in those can we find any mention of a personal stagehand, let alone one named Phil McCartridge.

  Our concerns grew when we tried to contact the two so-called experts, who had flown to Europe at Mr Dickinson’s expense to prove that the diary was genuine. No university directory in North America lists either Larfinstock College or Imina State University. We did find over 50,000 men named Joe King, however. So far, six have answered our enquiries and 597 have messages on their answerphones.

  Attempts to trace Dr Rusty Brayne have been less successful. After a number of rude replies, our staff have stopped telephoning people listed as “R. Brayne” and asking, “Have you got a Rusty Brayne in your house?”

  While the search continues, we have reluctantly concluded that both “experts” were probably fakes, and that Mr Dickinson was tricked into giving free European holidays to a couple of con-men.

  Sadly, it looks as if Mr McCartridge is a fake as well. For a so-called stagehand to sharp-shooter Annie Oakley, his diary contains very little detail about guns and ammunition. Indeed, at the beginning of the diary, he gives the name of one make of gun as Double Gloucester.

  Double Gloucester is, of course, a type of English cheese. It is now our opinion that the whole thing stinks.

  OTHER WORKS

  Also by Clive Dickinson:

  The Lost Diary of Tutankhamun’s Mummy