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

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.

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!

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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