Free The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley by Glenda Riley

again. They soon settled into an apartment opposite Madison Square Garden, and
     

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Annie began to demonstrate one of her great strengthsknowing how to survive the ups and downs of life. Frank too had learned early to expect adversity and change and knew how to adapt. Whatever depression, bitterness, or loss of hope they may have experienced, they kept it to themselves.
Frank placed an advertisement in the New York Clipper announcing that Annie would take a new melodrama called Little Sure Shot, the Pony Express Rider on the road and would welcome the assistance of a financial backer. Butler also organized shooting matches for Annie and negotiated a contract with Tony Pastor. On April 2, Annie opened with Tony Pastor's variety show at the South Broad Street Theater in Philadelphia, then traveled with the troupe to the Criterion in Brooklyn, the Howard Athenaeum in Boston, and Jacob & Proctor's in Hartford.
On the vaudeville circuit, Oakley helped draw capacity crowds and received good reviews but failed to overshadow the other performers, which included singers, dancers, comedians, vaulters, and Little Tich, who stood three feet tall and delighted audiences with his "big shoe dance." One critic called Annie a "modest, pleasant-looking young lady," and another noted that she was a "good" shooter. Annie appeared at the end of the program, perhaps because her guns fouled the air and created litter on the stage or perhaps because her name lacked clout in the world of vaudeville.
Annie and Frank's situation improved in mid-April when Annie presented a private shooting exhibition at the Boston Gun Club grounds. "There were a large number of spectators, fully one-half being ladies," the Boston Daily Globe reported on April 20. They flocked around Annie to see the elegant gold bracelets that the club secretary presented to her. In May, she played theaters from Toronto to New Jersey with Tony Pastor, giving shooting exhibitions along the way. Near the end of the month, one reviewer called her a "decided acquisition in the vaudevilles"; the Syracuse Standard referred to her as "a rattling shot" who gave "a spirited exhibition." Although reviewers then, as now, pounced on performers' flaws and lapses, not one critic panned her act.
Annie's stock was clearly on the rise. She and Frank knew how to whet appetites and garner publicity. By midsummer, Annie had
     

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even returned to the arena, but with Comanche Bill's Wild West rather than with Buffalo Bill's Wild West. The salary of three hundred dollars and hotel expenses for both Annie and Frank must have lured them, but when Butler discovered that the Comanche Bill Wild West, probably backed by empresario Charles M. Southwell, was a sloppy outfit and employed cowboys and Indians who originated no farther west than Philadelphia and had difficulty staying on horseback, he canceled the contract. "I can't afford to have you connected with a failure," he told Annie.
Butler then persuaded Comanche Bill's backer to merge with the Pawnee Bill (Gordon W. Lillie) Historical Wild West Exhibition and Indian Encampment, which sat broke and stranded in Pittsburgh. Annie recalled that with six days left before the opening performance, "rehearsals began in earnest." On parade day, July 2, 1888, spurs and the trim on saddles gleamed in the sun, and the show opened to a packed grandstand in Gloucester Beach, New Jersey.
Although Pawnee Bill's wife, May Manning Lillie, performed in the show and wore costumes remarkably like Annie's, the two women had no difficulties, perhaps because Pawnee Bill gave Annie top billing and otherwise treated Annie with the respect that she and Frank felt she deserved. Although Pawnee Bill called himself the "White Chief of the Pawneesa young daredevil who performs miracles with a rope and six-shooter and rides like a fiend on a big black stallion" and referred to May as the "World's Champion Woman Rifle Shot," his posters proudly announced, "There is but one