Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI. When at last the years had gone, and Wilhelm Hohenzollern had brought war to the world, Annie Oakley jotted down her memories of that visit, and the causes which had led her to believe that sooner or later this man of the crippled arm would bring havoc to the universe. At the end of the London season saw a disagreement between Annie Oakley and the management of
the Buffalo Bill Wild West, the only rift, in fact, which arose during the seventeen years of their association. The forces of jealousy had been at work. Professional antagonism can as easily exist beneath the canvas of a tented organization as it can upon the stage, and Annie Oakley had become too popular for other members of
the Wild West, some of whom would like themselves to appear as the premiere feminine crack shot. There had been disagreements, arguments. At last the break became apparently unmendable. At the end of the season, after a tour of the provinces, the Buffalo Bill Wild West sailed homeward, but Frank Butler and his wife remained in Europe.
For a time they contented themselves with private exhibitions and the winning of shooting Finally, highing themselves to Monte Carlo where huge stakes dangled and where a golden harvest seemed to await them, the purses there ranging as high as ten dollars to a bird. But the gentleman who chose to dot the Mediterranean with the remains of fast-flying pigeons, cast forth in the very shadow of the casino, also had a great desire to take no risks with their money.
Both Butler and his wife were barred on the grounds that they were professionals, and after a period of rest along the Riviera, the two turned to Berlin for the previously arranged exhibition. Miss Oakley's memories tell the rest. Quote, It so happened that the Emperor and the Crown Prince were both ill, so it fell
to young William to conduct the affair. Never in all my life have I seen so many soldiers. I saw nothing else. The program was arranged at the Union Club in Berlin. When we had submitted a program for approval, William added the shooting of live pigeons
to the events. But when we reached the capital, we discovered that it was strictly against the law to shoot pigeons in the city. So Frank went up to the club to see about it. The club was inhabited exclusively by majors and captains, field marshals and conquerors.
All in full panoply of war and bristling with sidearms and crosses. Frank ventured to explain to the secretary that we were plain American folk who in spite of legends to the contrary were prone to obey the law, and that having discovered the statute against pigeon shooting, we would like to omit that detail from the performance. His answer was to push a button which summoned an orderly, and who presently appeared with
no less a person than the man who was later to be Kaiser Wilhelm of the World War. The situation was explained and as quickly solved. The bell went into commission again, this time summoning an orderly of still more imposing aspect. His majesty spoke.
Next Sunday, Annie Oakley will give an exhibition at Charlottenburg. You will see that the chief of police and none other of the police are admitted while it is going on. This was his manner of doing things while he was still the grandson of the reigning monarch.
Fancy what he became after the government fell into his hands. I remember that at the time I started to say, War Mad to my husband. His use of the same words interrupted me and our next trip to Germany, after Wilhelm had actually become emperor, proved our belief beyond any doubt." Back in America, following an order to cancel an engagement in Paris because of threatened
illness, Annie Oakley announced that she would not again appear with the Buffalo Bill show. For a time, trap-shooting events occupied her entire attention, during which she won the deciding match of the event, begun with the English champion at the time her hand was injured by the premature springing of a trap. Then quite innocently, she took part in one of those queer little tricks of fate, by which
the mills of the gods gained credit for the fineness of their grist. Contracts had been made for a later date to appear in Vaudeville and also in a play, in which Annie Oakley was to become a dramatic star. A space of time intervened and an offer had come from a newly forming Wild West Company to fill in that time as one of its stars.
The contract was accepted for a larger amount of money than Annie Oakley had yet drawn and shortly before the time for the beginning of rehearsals, Mrs. Butler and her husband journeyed from New York to the exposition grounds to look over their new home in the show world. It was a disappointing visit.
A group of Indians were camped on the rehearsal grounds, together with a large number of horses and a small group of men who called themselves cowboys. But as one led forth a horse to attempt an exhibition of riding, Butler shook his head. It's no go, Missy, he said. We can't afford to be connected with a failure.
There was every indication that the show would be nothing but that. It was being promoted by a ferryboat company and a Philadelphia multimillionaire, who, knowing nothing of the Wild West business themselves, had trusted the persons who, according to Annie Oakley's description, wore imitation Stetson hats and were as real as their knowledge of the West as they were in their head gear.
The cowboys could not ride. There was no management. There was nothing, in fact, to indicate that the show would go farther than its first performance. Hastily, the pair journeyed to Philadelphia in an effort to break the contract. It was useless.
The agreement had been made and they must live up to it. In the meanwhile, another man was having his troubles. Back in the opening days of the Buffalo Bill show, he had been the one to obtain Pawnee Indians for it, owing to the fact that he was an honorary member of the tribe and a teacher of the Pawnees.
His name was Lily, Gordon W. Lily, his nickname that of Pawnee Bill. A year or so with the Wild West show had given him ambitions to own an organization of his own. Therefore, he had started, with much enthusiasm and little else, fighting his way along from town to town, often but one jump ahead of the sheriff, but struggling nevertheless.
And as he struggled, he realized that a great and powerful foe blocked his way. The foe who once had been his friend. But friendships in the show world last only as long as there is not a clash of canvas. With Pawnee Bill's entrance into the Wild West amusement business, there naturally had come an antagonism of the swift-growing Buffalo Bill organization.
The old rule was that a show must crush or be crushed. Pawnee Bill now was experiencing the efforts of the steamroller. Fresh from its European triumphs and with a bigger show than it ever had known before, the Buffalo Bill Wild West now was throttling everything in its path. It was all-powerful.
The millions were rolling in and there must be no impediment to the steady flow of wealth. Consequently, as it happens, even now in the outdoor amusement world, the agents of the Buffalo Bill show worked unceasingly that the Pawnee Bill aggregation might suffer as much as possible. Time after time, Major Lilly booked his struggling aggregation into a town only to find that
the bill posters of the all-powerful Buffalo Bill exhibition had covered his paper, that is pasted advertisements of the Buffalo Bill Wild West over those of the Pawnee Bill outfit, and announced a show on the same date to which the patrons would flood, leaving Pawnee Bill to gaze at empty seats where otherwise there might have been throngs. As the battle was ending and as Frank Butler boarded a ferry with one of the backers of
the newly forming Wild West, his eye caught a headline of a proffered paper in the hands of a newsboy. It stated, Pawnee Bill Show Stranded in Pittsburgh. Hastily, he read the article which announced the details of an attachment for several thousand dollars which had formed the final blow against the little aggregation.
The news had been given to the papers, quite strangely, by Major John M. Burke, press agent for Buffalo Bill. Butler turned hurriedly to the Wild West impresario. Here's your chance, he exclaimed. I can see through this thing.
The Buffalo Bill outfit has engineered this in some way. It's an old trick to work up an attachment to get rid of an opposition amusement. The thing for you to do is to jump on a train, go out there to Pittsburgh, free this company of its debt, load it on a special train and bring it here. Then you'll have a name to work with, an organization to build on, and something to make a show
with instead of that imitation outfit you've got now. The argument was won. The magnet hurried to Pittsburgh, there to rescue a very lugubrious Pawnee Bill and his entire outfit and bring them to Staten Island. Only a week remained to make ready for the opening, and while the rehearsals were held,
they're thundered from the billboards, from roadway signs, from the walls of barns and every other conceivable place, the fighting announcement of the Buffalo Bill aggregation, so well known to those who have endured the thrills of a circus warfare. Wait for the big show. Buffalo Bill is coming.
The date was exactly four weeks after that of the new aggregation, which then was rehearsing, against odds. Fighting was in a tangle. Two sets of Indians, two sets of bucking horses, two sets of everything, but some way between Annie Oakley, Frank Butler and Pawnee Bill, they managed to straighten it out.
Upon one person alone, did the success or the failure of that show rest. That was Annie Oakley. The old fighting instinct was strong within the girl who had gained much of experience by fighting, in one way or another, for the greater part of her existence. Once the news of her contract with the other management had been announced, there had
come a call to what was then little less than a throne, the office of Nate Salisbury. Don't you take that contract, she was urged, but I've already signed. Then break it or we'll fight you. Just what it was that Annie Oakley said following that statement, she never revealed. But when she was through, Nate Salisbury smiled and rose with the announcement, No, Annie,
you're right. After what happens, we won't fight you. That was said in the personal sense. No promise was made for the show itself and Annie Oakley, now that she had been threatened, was cast for the battlefield.
She was the new show's star performer. She the one upon whom everything depended. The show opened. Annie Oakley performed on horseback, on foot, at press agent stunts. She gave interviews.
She displayed the innumerable cups and medals which had come to her as the result of her shooting prowess both in America and abroad. She had become the backbone of the whole show. The reason for its existence, the recommendation for it. And she drew the crowds.
The show prospered. Even the overpowering strength of the Buffalo Bill Wild West could not keep the crowds from its gates. Now for the sequel. In the formation of that show, Major Gordon W. Lilly formed associations which lasted
through the entire life of his showmanship. Men who would come to his rescue in times of stress, who would back him for new ventures and upon ideas which others might have denied. It was his true beginning, with the exception of the time which he spent in southern Kansas as one of the boomers of the new state of Oklahoma.
His life for a quarter of a century after that was given to the Wild West business. He met reverses and beat them. Steadily he climbed. The impetus given him during the time Annie Oakley was associated with the show, the possibilities of the business, sent Pawnee Bill higher and higher in the amusement world, despite every
effort of rival shows to hold him down. At last there came the time when rich, powerful Major Gordon W. Lilly was approached by the executor of the estate which owned the Buffalo Bill Wild West. The show had passed from the hands of Nate Salisbury. It had passed from the possession of Buffalo Bill himself.
Now moneyless, in debt, what small interest he held in the show mortgaged, the millions which had flowed into his hands gone to the four winds. Colonel William Frederick Cody was a beaten man. And it was Pawnee Bill, the young showman whom he had fought nearly a quarter of a century before and whom Annie Oakley had rescued as Stranded Broke, he looked over the wreckage
lot at Pittsburgh, who bought the Buffalo Bill show, threw it into the old shrewd system of management which it had known back in the days of Nate Salisbury, enabled it to make money and practically gave back to William Frederick Cody the half interest which had been dissipated. When Annie Oakley and her husband had saved Pawnee Bill's show that it might be used as
a weapon of defense against the great Buffalo Bill organization, they in reality began the upward career of the man who someday could call himself the true owner of the big show which once had all but caused his downfall as a showman. These days might be called barnstorming ones for Annie Oakley. When her short contract with the new Wild West expired, she hurried to a waiting one
which called for exhibitions in Vaudeville. Then that done she went to another in which she learned the rather eventful life of a melodrama star. The life of a stage character had been painted in bright colors, principally because the promoter possessed little more than a play, and saw in Annie Oakley a chance to capitalize
a name which now was known throughout America. But Miss Oakley didn't know that at the time. Little details like that are sometimes carefully concealed. The contract had been made, in fact, before she gained the slightest inkling of it, and the play was in rehearsal.
It should have been worse seen, that play. The name of it, least there be some belief that it had to do with Lavender and Old Lace, was the he-man title of Deadwood Dick. There were engines and prospectors, and bad men galore. There was a sweet, innocent, starry-eyed child, who, out upon the broad prairie, knelt before
the footlights and said his prayers, just before the Indians attacked, in a manner which the management guaranteed to bring tears to an iron hitching post. There was the inevitable man gone wrong through drink, a fine stalwart rough diamond of a fellow, who, had it not been for the demon Rum, might have made his mark in the world. As it was, about the only marks he could make were by becoming crocked to the gunwales and
denting the ground by doing wing-dings on his head. There was the motherly pioneer's wife, the sturdy, silent, bearded man coming into the West to make his fortune, and then there was Annie Oakley. One review of the play read, Quote, regarding the play, the shooting of Annie Oakley was very good.
End quote. As for Miss Oakley's comment, it was crisp, going but little farther than to still wonder, years afterward, why the audiences had refrained from throwing vegetables. After a time, the suspicion became more than well confirmed that this was an outlandish attempt to make money upon a name, a gambling venture taken upon a shoestring.
Miss Oakley so shaped her affairs that it was possible for her to leave, and this she did. The show ran a few weeks, became faulty in the payment of salaries, and suddenly collapsed overnight. It was about this time that Nate Salisbury and Buffalo Bill, planning for the future, remarked to Annie Oakley that perhaps their differences were not too great for eradication after all. Miss Oakley held the same opinion.
The Buffalo Bill Wild West was home to her. There were meetings, a consideration of the causes which had led her to leave the show after its London engagement, and then a welcomed announcement went forth. It was that the Buffalo Bill show was returning to Europe, there to begin its tour by forming one of the main attractions at the Paris exhibition of 1889.
Again, Miss Annie Oakley would be its shooting star. Luck plays its part in more than one success, especially in the amusement field. Annie Oakley was taken back to the fold simply because friendship and worth demanded it. Nate Salisbury and Buffalo Bill looked upon her as little less than a daughter. Her affection for the two men was as deep, and the disagreement had caused pain on both sides.
She was a star who drew the crowds, and they wanted her for that reason, just as Annie Oakley was glad to go back because the prestige and the background of the great Wild West enhanced her act. But had these things not come to a point of settlement just at this time, and had Annie Oakley not gone to Europe on the second trip of the Buffalo Bill Wild West, there might
have been a different story of that second tour, and it is highly possible that the Buffalo Bill show at Paris would have been a failure. The place of exhibition was the Bachs de Nuit, just outside the turnist gates of the Paris fortifications. Today, one would reach it merely by proceeding along the Avenue de la Grande Amie, from the
Place de l'Etoile, at the end of the Champs-Elysees. A scant ten minutes in a careening taxi cab from that most American gathering place in the center of Paris, the Café de la Baie. A most convenient showgrounds, this and the London representation of the show, the favors of royalty, the command performance before Queen Victoria, the gathering of practically
every ruler and potentaint during the Jubilee year, had caused considerable comment on Buffalo Bill's show in Paris. The result was that the opening day found the President of the Republic, his wife, artists like Maisonnier, de Tailly, and others accompanied by 20,000 French men and women crammed in the place of exhibition with the typically Missourianese attitude of desiring
to be shown. The grand entrée of the show arrived, without as much as a ripple of applause from the audience. The first acts went on and still the tremendous mass of 20,000 persons sat graven. Buffalo Bill began to pull at his goatee, a sure evidence of nervousness, while Nate Salisbury adopted a short jerky pacing step at the rear entrance, with quick glances toward
the audience as though any instant might change its demeanor. But Paris, such of it at least that was crowded into the Buffalo Bill amphitheater, gave no evidence whatever of changing in any particular. A cowboy, fresh from having fought a sun fishing outlaw horse over most of the arena, slipped from the arms of his pick-up man, dropped to the ground, made his grand eloquent bow,
and received silence. "'Sure is cold here in Paris, ain't it?' he asked as he reached the exit. "'Must be full ten inches of frost on that audience.' As the show progressed, it became even more frosty. Colonel Cody began to emit suppressed bellows of concern, somewhat like the rumblings of
Vesuvius heard at a distance. Nate Salisbury turned hurriedly and summoned an interpreter. "'Get up into the grandstand,' he commanded, and see what the trouble is. Ask some of those people, if they're not deaf and dumb, why they don't like the show.' Then, as the interpreter moved away, he switched the program slightly, that he might send the
old Deadwood stagecoach careening about the arena, with the red flare glaring and the Sioux and Kiowas pursuing it in the approved style. This brought no more enthusiasm than the rest of the entertainment, and Salisbury hurried forward anxiously at the sight of the interpreter. "'What is it?' he asked.
"'Well,' said the interpreter, "'these people, they do not understand what it is about. They object to all this pretending.' "'Pretending?' asked Cody and Salisbury in one breath. "'What pretending?' "'The bucking horses, for instance, they feel that it is just a show, because they say that
if horses were that mean, why should anybody try to ride them?' "'They call that pretendin?' asked Cody. "'Dog my cats! That last cow-puncher came pretty near being killed.' "'That is exactly the case,' said the interpreter.
I told that to the people with whom I talked, and they asked me, "'Viola, why should he want to kill himself?' "'But the Indians,' interjected Salisbury, "'you'd think that they'd get up some interest in the Indians. Don't they know that these are actual chiefs and braves who fought against the United States
Army for the possession of the West? Don't they?' "'They don't,' the interpreter answered. "'You see, I brought up that point also, and they answered me by saying, Mowndo. Do you expect us to believe that they would actually turn such fierce savages loose to
kill everybody in sight if they cared to? It is an imitation,' they say. William Frederick Cody allowed his tongue to sag from the corner of his lips and wagged his head in solemn despair. Their problem had gone beyond him.'
Nate Salisbury frowned, stared about him, then suddenly started forward at the sight of Annie Oakley, just coming forward to make her entrance, followed by her attendant with the guns. "'Missy,' he commanded, "'you've got to do something. You're the last card.
These Frenchmen out here can't tell a Comanche from a drug store or a horse from a walking beam. They think everything in the show is just an imitation. Get out there and prove that it isn't.' It was about the most difficult assignment which Annie Oakley ever had received, but
there was nothing to do except to make an honest attempt to carry out the commands. Since the audience was giving but scant courtesy to any performer, Annie Oakley adopted the toward the audience and walked into the great bear arena with a perceptible chip on her shoulder. She acknowledged the audience and that was all.
A scant bob of the head, as though she were speaking to a bear acquaintance. Then she turned with a command to her assistants and object holders. The guns came forward. Annie Oakley began to shoot with as little concern for those who watched as though she were conducting a rehearsal.
One by one the rifle tricks were gone through and Annie Oakley heard the audience, with a perceptible rustle, settle as with a concentration of interest. Before this, there had been a constant current of conversation. The rustle of newspapers, the calling of gamons one to another. Now however, that had ceased and Miss Oakley, realizing that the audience at last had found
something it could understand, the art of shooting, became more friendly. Finally, at a difficult pistol shot, there was a slight ripple of applause. Annie Oakley acknowledged it, realizing that her contest not yet was won. So far she had done things which had been seen upon the stage and which could be faked by a clever performer.
But when she came to her shotgun work, there was no such possibility. With that came the climax. The little missy lifted a double-barreled shotgun and commanded that two glass balls be thrown into the air at once. There was a double report and the objects shattered, while the first real applause of
the premiere performance broke forth from the packed stands. Out in the entrance, Nate Salisbury turned to his worried partner. By God, Bill! he exclaimed, she's saved the show. Dog my cats if she ain't, answered Buffalo Bill, only to be interrupted by another burst of applause.
Four balls had gone into the air, working like lightning with two guns, Annie Oakley had shattered them all. Gun work was something that this French audience knew. Practically every man in the audience had served his time in the standing army. Many sportsmen were there, officers, members of the Foreign Legion.
Shooting and its difficulties were well-known affairs. But Annie hadn't ceased. She tried the trick of laying down her gun, jumping over a table, springing two birds from a trap and landing them both before they struck the ground. She did her trick of turning around while the objects flew through the air and getting
them before she stopped whirling. Everything she ever had done to amaze an audience, she did now. Finally, turning to a trick which she did not often perform in the ring. That of using three shotguns to demolish six glass balls thrown into the air. Like the reports of a machine gun came the banging of those shotguns.
One after another, the missiles broke so quickly that it was almost impossible to follow the destruction with the eye. Then bowing, she retired. While hats waved, arms went into the air, men and women rose from their seats and even the president stood to bow to her.
It was as though this little woman, by demonstrating feats deemed impossible by the audience, had given a guarantee of the reality of the entire show. If this wonderful shooting could be real, then the Indians were real, and the stage coach and the riders and the wild horses and everything else in keeping. Annie Oakley strove to retire.
Impossible. The show had been stopped by cries of Bravo and Viva le Annie Oakley. Salisbury pushed her to the entrance. Go back and give him some more, he commanded, and the laughing Annie Oakley obeyed. Only to be called back again and again and again to a repetition of her act for the fifth
time before the audience subsided. After that, there was no doubt of the success of the Buffalo Bill show in Paris. The name of it was on the tongue of everyone, with the principal emphasis, however, upon the adjunct, that of the Little Missy. Time worn and weather beaten, there is in the collection left by Annie Oakley one of
the tickets used to gain admission to the Buffalo Bill Wild West show during that engagement. Like all French billets, it bears the inevitable advertisements of aperitifs, confidential detectives, cafes, mineral waters, and whatnot. But in one particular, it is different from most admission cards, for it bears a double announcement which reads, on one side,
un billet premier classe Buffalo Bill Wild West, while on the other is a statement, which in English would read, This ticket enables the bearer to see the great Marx woman Annie Oakley. End of chapter 11.
