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

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       MESSAGE TO READERS

      What do you do when you unexpectedly find a previously unknown document about a famous person? Sell it to a newspaper? Sell it to a television company? Put it back where you found it? Tear it up as bedding for your gerbils?

      This was exactly the difficulty faced by Clive Dickinson during a visit to Germany. While he was unwrapping a cuckoo clock he had bought, he discovered what looked like a very thick exercise book lining the bottom of the box. Inside were pages and pages of writing, not in German, as he might have expected, but in English.

      To make sure he wasn’t going cuckoo himself, Mr Dickinson flicked through the pages and found dates from the 1880s, which suggested that the book was a kind of journal. All the way through, he spotted the name of Annie Oakley, who was one of the most famous American women in the world one hundred years ago.

      Before going public, Mr Dickinson asked for professional help. In exchange for return flights to Europe, all expenses paid, two experts on the American West, Professor Joe King of Larfinstock College and Dr Rusty Brayne of Imina State University, confirmed that he had made a unique find. In their experience, nothing quite like it had ever been discovered before.

      After careful study, lasting two weeks in an expensive hotel, they agreed that the book lining the box of the cuckoo clock was the personal diary of one Phil McCartridge. He seems to have worked as Annie Oakley’s stagehand during the years in which she became world famous for her amazing shooting act in the show called Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

      Working closely with Annie Oakley, Phil McCartridge was able to record day-to-day details about her and her friends: the cowboys, Native American Indians, animal-handlers, stable-hands and riders, who helped recreate life in the Wild West for spectators on both sides of the Atlantic.

      Now this remarkable document can be published for the first time, bringing alive the thrills and skills, dangers and excitements which Buffalo Bill’s Wild West brought to millions of people in America and Europe a century and more ago.

       24 APRIL 1885 – LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

      Well, I’ll be…!

      I thought I’d seen just about all there was to see about guns and shooting and the Wild West. But not after today. No, sir.

      Colt, Remington, Lancaster, Winchester, Double Gloucester – there ain’t a gun this side of the Rocky Mountains that I don’t know. And there ain’t a champion sharp-shooter I ain’t seen – leastways, not till this afternoon.

      Now, I may not be that quick at book learning, but I know a sure bet when I see one. I reckon I could be on to a good thing if I start writing down what goes on around here. I can see my name in print already on one of those fancy book covers and in the newspapers.

      Things ain’t going to be the same – that’s for sure. And about time, too. Last winter was the worst this show has ever known. First the steamship carrying everything down the river ran into another steamship and sank. We lost animals, wagons and camp gear, not to mention my precious guns and ammunition. That meant the show opened late in New Orleans, which ain’t good for business, especially at Christmas.

      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.

25 APRIL 1885 – LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

      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 СКАЧАТЬ