Journal Notes

Stampede!  This one word, more than the warning cry that Indians or outlaws were attacking, made any cowpuncher’s blood turn cold.  There was no way of foretelling it; the sudden bark of a coyote, a rumble of a summer storm, lightning, the rearing of a horse, or the scream of a panther could all start a disastrous stampede.  Sometimes there was no apparent reason; it seemed as though a half-wild but dormant instinct of flight had suddenly flared up in the brain of one of the steers.  As many memoirs recall, it was a terrifying experience.  There would be a sudden rumble like that of a far-off cannon; then the herd would bolt.  Like an army of modern steam-rollers, the steers would move across the open prairie with the speed of an express train.  No one could tell what direction they would take.  Sometimes they plunged off cliffs, filling whole canyons with their broken bodies, or choked a river with their thrashing.  The task of the cowpunchers was to divert that terrifying, fast-moving animal mass into a gigantic circle.  To do that, cowboy and pony became as one.  Sometimes the stampede went on for days.  No one got any sleep.  There was only time for a quick drink of scalding hot coffee and then back into the saddle.  “I didn’t sleep for three days,” one puncher recalled.  “The heard ran for miles…” 

Lewis Holder was an outlaw.  After hearing the news from Judge Isaac Parker that he was going to die on the gallows, Lewis left forth a piteous scream then collapsed to the floor, paralyzed with fear.  There was an immediate concern that Holder had died from fright, but the defendant was still very much alive.  Holder, who had been convicted of murdering his partner George Bickford in the San Bois Mountains in Oklahoma on December 28, 1891, vowed that he would return to Fort Smith in spirit form and would haunt Judge Parker and the jury men if he were indeed hanged.  No one paid much attention to the desperate warnings of a condemned man.  Holder was executed as scheduled on Nov. 2, 1894.  About one month later, jailer George Lawson was startled by a moaning sound coming from the direction of the jail yard gallows.  Upon further examination, a thoroughly inebriated man was found lying prone on the wooden gallows. 

The most decorated American war hero in World War II, Audie Murphy returned home with no place to go but down.  What could top his spectacular battle feats?  After lying about his age to join the army at 17, he had been wounded three times and credited with killing 240 Germans.  Of 235 men in company, Murphy was one of two who survived.  Not yet 21, he won twenty-seven medals, including three from the French and one from Belgium.  After the war, Murphy was recruited to Hollywood by James Cagney, and in 1955 he starred in a movie version of his autobiography, To Hell and Back.  He said it was “the first time, I suppose, a man  has fought an honest war, then come back and played himself doing it.”  Murphy joked about his lack of talent, but in twenty years his boyish face and freckles appeared in forty movies, mostly war films and Westerns in which he played eager fighters.  It was a far cry from his youth as one of eleven children of a Texas cotton sharecropper-and from the battlefields of Europe-and the transition was not smooth.  Murphy said the war left him with nightmares for years.  He slept with a loaded automatic pistol under his pillow, and when he was asked how people survive a war, he said, “I don’t think they ever do.”  One of Murphy’s friends, cartoonist Bill Maudlin, said “Murphy wanted the world to stay simple so he could concentrate on tidying up its moral fiber wherever he found himself.”  Murphy became a quasi law-enforcement officer in the 1960s.  He was made a special officer of a small California police department and rode around with police during drug busts.  In 1970, he and a bartender friend beat up a dog trainer in a dispute over treatment of the friend’s dog.  Murphy was acquitted of attempted murder.  Though he had earned more than $2.5 million in his film career, Murphy was forced by too many bad business ventures to declare bankruptcy in 1968.  Three years later, hounded by creditors and still trying to rebuild financial security for his wife and two teenage sons, he became interested in a company in Martinsville, Virginia, that manufactured prefabricated homes.  He was on a small charter flight from Atlanta to see about making an investment when the plane crashed in a wooded mountain area during a light drizzle.  The region, northwest of Roanoke, was so isolated that the wreckage, including the bodies of Murphy and five company officials, was not found for three days.  The was hero was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. 

After acting as either a cowboy or a soldier in nearly one hundred films, John Wayne finally won a best actor Oscar in 1969 for True Grit.  The quintessential macho man was himself exempt from service during World War II owing to a problem with his shoulder.  Winning the Oscar, some say, added another ten years to his life.  Although he was a longtime smoker, averaging four packs a day, Wayne nevertheless died of gastric cancer at age seventy-two in 1979.  In 1955 John Wayne was among two hundred twenty cast and crew member who worked on the film The Conqueror.  It was shot on a location in Utah, which was contaminated by radioactive fallout from atomic bomb tests.  Much of the soil was transported back to Hollywood for studio scenes.  By 1980 more than ninety of those who worked on the movie contracted cancer; forty-six died.  Even though Wayne knew of the danger, often carrying a Geiger counter onto the set, he believed the risk insignificant.  For more information about the great John Wayne read The Young Duke: The Early Life of John Wayne by Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss. 

Senorita Rosalie was the Mexican star of the Wild West Show. She was a stunning, black-haired woman who had achieved fame as a trick rider. She would jump over walls and ride holding the reins in her mouth while standing on the back of her horse. With her feet firmly placed on the ground, she would spur her horse on and jump on its back. While the animal was in full gallop, she would fling her body in and out of the saddle and dangle precariously off the sides of the horse. She could even lie down in the saddle and retrieve items left on the arena floor. Senorita Rosalie’s expertise on a horse made her a highly sought after riding instructor. Many Wild West performers benefited from her horseback-riding advice.

Ethyle and Juanita Parry

The famous cowgirl twins were a major attraction to Bill Cody’s program in the early 1900s. The twins were called Cossack Girls because they performed all the reckless and daring feats of horsemanship attributed to the Russian Cossack cavalry men. The twins were adept at riding wild broncos and were exceptional ropers. Newspaper reviews hailing the ladies’ performance at a show in Minnesota noted that not only could the Parrys ride well but “they were pretty and attractive, and nice to look at on or off a horse.”

Fannie Sperry came into this world on March 27, 1887. She was born and raised on a horse ranch in the Beartooth Mountains of Montana. She parlayed her natural easy way with horses into a lucrative career riding in rodeos and performing in various Wild West shows including Buffalo Bill Cody’s.  Fannie’s parents helped mold her into a fine equestrian. They taught her how to transform horses into first-rate cowponies. She used her skill for breaking horses in her act with Cody’s Wild West Show. When Fannie joined the program in 1916, she had a number of roping and riding titles to her credit. The Women’s Bucking Horse Championship of Montana and the Lady Bucking Horse Champion of the World were two of the most prestigious. She died of natural causes on February 11, 1983 at the age of ninety-five.

Annie Oakley was born Annie Moses on August 13, 1860, in Drake County, Ohio. Her father’s untimely death when she was still a child forced Annie to find work to help support her seven brothers and sisters and their mother.  Annie first learned to hunt with a rifle when she was eight. She used her natural markswoman ability to provide food for the evening meals. She became such a good shot that she was hired on by a merchant to supply his store with fresh game.  A shooting match between Annie and Western showman Frank Butler in 1875 changed her life forever. The challenge was for each marksman to shoot twenty-five clay pigeons. Frank hit twenty-four of the twenty-five targets. Annie hit all of them.  Buffalo Bill Cody hired Annie to join his Wild West cast in 1885. Annie packed the house nightly with her trick riding and trick shooting. Cody called Annie “the single greatest asset the Wild West ever had.”  Annie and her husband Frank enjoyed seventeen seasons with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. She retired from the program in 1902 and died of pernicious anemia in 1926 at the age of sixty-six years old.

Lillian Smith was born on February 3, 1871, in Coleville, California. Her first performance with the Wild West Show was in St. Louis in the later part of 1886. Her proficiency with the rifle left such a lasting impression on the audiences that within six months she had earned a spot on the regular show lineup. Lillian’s remarkable target-shooting act kept audiences on the edge of their seats. Each performance ended with her firing at a glass ball that was tossed into the air. She would purposely miss it three out of four times. The bullet from the last shot would shatter the ball into pieces. It was that display of skill that prompted U.S. and European newspapers to proclaim her to act to be “spellbinding and captivating.”  Lillian Smith, who was billed as the California Girl, left Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in 1889 and formed her own short-lived western program. Lillian retired from performing in the mid-1920s and lived out the rest of her days in a cabin along the banks of the Salt Fork River in Oklahoma.

Tombstone, in the Arizona Territory was notorious as the meanest mining town in the western frontiers, and Tombstone’s Oriental Saloon was similarly renowned.  As many as 200 men may have been shot to death there in pointless even idiotic arguments that originated in the Oriental.  On one occasion, John Ringo invited Louis Hancock to have a drink with him.  When Hancock agreed and asked for a beer, Ringo said, “No man drinks beer with me.  I don’t like beer.”  Ringo finally shot Hancock who allegedly was buried with a bottle of beer.  The original Oriental was started by Jim Vizina in a canvas tent with two wagon loads of whisky.  It later moved to an actual building that was lavishly decorated by the new owner, Mike Joyce.  Joyce later sold out to Lou Rickabaugh, who gave a quarter interest to Wyatt Earp for protection purposes.  Gunmen Bat Masterson and Luke Short ran the gambling tables, with Earp and his friend Doc Holliday often present.  Earp and Doc Holliday left town following the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.  Tombstone’s silver mine died out, and the Oriental folded with it.

Standing in the shadows of a ghost town.