Free The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley by Glenda Riley Page A

Annie Oakleyand she is with us . . . fresh from her London triumph with Buffalo Bill."
During July, Pawnee Bill also wagered two hundred dollars that Annie could kill forty of fifty pigeons with her light 20-bore guns. On July 31, before an audience of twelve thousand people, Annie eclipsed herself; she broke a record by downing forty-nine out of fifty live pigeons. Still, Annie found some of Pawnee Bill's other publicity stunts repugnant. When he made the wedding of a Kaw chieftain named Wah-Ki-Kaw and a white woman named Annie Harris into a public affair before eight thousand viewers, Annie turned disdainful.
In the meantime, Oakley's association with Pawnee Bill an-
     

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noyed Cody and Salsbury. When Salsbury threatened to fight any company she joined, Frank Butler counterthreatened that he "might tell the reasons" that Annie had left the Wild West. As it turned out, Annie left Pawnee Bill of her own volition in early August. Pawnee Bill, after competing with Buffalo Bill's Wild West for the rest of the season, in October once again found himself broke and stranded, this time in Easton, Maryland.
Annie and Frank, however, had several of their own projects in mind. Annie continued to play with Tony Pastor while she made arrangements to take her own company on the road in a blood-and-guts western melodrama titled Deadwood Dick, or the Sunbeam of the Sierras . She also shot exhibitions and matches. While in Dayton, Ohio, she skirted a challenge from Lillian Smith, who had parted company with the Wild West and, according to the Daily Herald , now existed only on "what little reputation she can gain by matches with reputable persons."
Smith's departure from the Wild West may have opened the way for Oakley's return. Shortly, Frank Butler and Nate Salsbury resolved their contretemps and began to negotiate. On February 25, 1889, the Baltimore Sun announced that Annie would sail for Paris with the Wild West in time to help inaugurate the new Eiffel Tower and celebrate the Paris Universal Exposition in honor of the one hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution. The company left for the port of Le Havre in April, took a train to Paris, and played to an elegantly dressed but stony-faced audience of twenty thousand Parisians.
When Annie entered the arena and noticed "clackers"men employed to start the applausestationed around the arena, she asked Frank to shoo them away. "Mr. B.," as she called Frank, informed the men that she "wanted honest applause or none at all." Annie recalled, "As the first crack of the gun sent the stiff, flying targets to pieces, there came 'ahs,' then the shots came so fast that cries of 'bravo!' went up." The Parisians had a "show me'' attitude, and Annie showed them. At the end of her act, Annie bowed to what she described as the ''roaring, hat-battering, sun shade-and-handkerchief throwing, mad 20,000." The Parisians were icebergs no longer, Annie said; they were now to fight for her during her six-month run in Paris.
     

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The rest of the season at the "Buffalodrum" passed in a blur of sold-out performances, dignitaries and royalty, parties, dinners, and balls. Annie received a number of accolades from her fans. For instance, President Sadi Carnot assured Annie that when she felt like changing her profession and nationality, a commission awaited her in the French army. The king of Senegal had a better idea. He offered Buffalo Bill one hundred thousand francs for Annie. "The lady is not for sale," Cody bellowed. Then he thought to ask, "What do you want her for?" To destroy the vicious tigers who devastate the country's villages was the king's reply. The monarch might also have added that Annie was pretty, sexually appealing, and wielded a certain amount of power. When Annie said she preferred to stay with the Wild West, the king dropped to his knees, kissed Annie's hand, and according to her, then ''departed with the air of a soldier."
That fall, when the Universal Exposition closed, the