Clive Dickinson - The Lost Diary of Annie Oakley’s Wild West Stagehand

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.

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.

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.