Little Miss Sure Shot: Annie Oakley's World

By Jeffrey Marshall

In his debut novel, jeffrey marshall re-creates the life of legendary sharpshooter annie oakley. the book is based largely on actual events and timelines but imagines the places she saw, conversations she had and people she met. the book spotlights annie’s years with buffalo bill’s wild west show, which catapulted her to international fame in the late 1880s, and details some of her amazing skills. it also chronicles the loving marriage between annie and frank butler, her husband and manager for 50 years, which was far and away the central relationship in her life.
"little miss sure shot" is not a "literary" novel, but a fast-paced narrative that strives to put readers into the past and experience the places and events that shaped her life and made her such an iconic figure in american lore.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeffrey Marshall
• Release date: Nov 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311057716

Jeffrey Marshall

Jeffrey Marshall is a writer, novelist and poet from Scottsdale, AZ. He's the author of five books, including the novels Squeeze Plays, Little Miss Sure Shot and Undetected; Undetected and Squeeze Plays were named ShelfUnbound Notable 100 Indie books in 2020 and 2022, respectively. A retired journalist and the former editor of two national business magazines, Marshall has freelanced to more than 30 publications as varied as The New York Times, High Country News and Tail Fly-Fishing Magazine, and his short fiction has appeared in online magazines like Bright Flash Literary Review, Ariel Chart and Vocal.com, among others. A short story he wrote took first place in the 2022 Arizona Authors competition.

Book preview

Little Miss Sure Shot

Annie Oakley’s World

By Jeffrey Marshall

Copyright © 2014 Authored by Jeffrey Marshall

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition.

ISBN: 1495450600

ISBN 13: 1495450600

Library of Congress Control Number: 201490208

To Jed and Judy, to the astonishing skill of Annie Oakley, and to the pioneering spirit of the American West so wonderfully captured by Buffalo Bill Cody and the Wild West Show.

Contents

Prologue—Annie Defends Her Name

One—Growing up Fast

Two—1885–86: The Wild West Show

Three—1887–89: Europe and More

Four—1889–90: Back in Europe

Five—1901: Trials and Tribulations

Six—Winding Down

Epilogue—Frank’s Journal

Author’s Note

Prologue

Annie Defends Her Name

Annie Oakley stepped out of the hansom cab, paid the driver and walked purposefully to the gray stone building in front of her. She peered at the embossed script on the black metal sign and knew she was in the right place: It read, BROADHURST AND STEVENS, and it had the right degree of elegance for an office on Madison Avenue. As she pushed through the heavy door and headed down the dim hallway, she took note of the dark walnut paneling and the rich deep-blue carpet.

After a brief word with an efficient secretary, Annie was ushered into the office of Henry Broadhurst, Esquire, one of the most celebrated libel attorneys in the country. The room was furnished in dark wood and leather, and red brocaded curtains let in a modest amount of pale morning light. It seemed right for a man, and certainly for a lawyer, she thought. Broadhurst sat behind a large desk, dressed in a navy blue suit and a deep-blue tie with narrow yellow stripes. A tall man with an air of solemnity, he stood and showed her to a burgundy leather armchair facing him.

Miss Oakley, I would be delighted to represent you, he said. His face was flushed over a black beard streaked subtly with gray, and he was a bit stout; his watch chain bulged over the vest on his suit. But I must warn you that the outcomes in these cases are unpredictable at best. And we know the Hearst forces probably will fight you at every turn.

Annie had come to his office with real purpose: Her name had been sullied, and she wanted desperately to do something about it. She may have been a country girl from Ohio, unschooled and largely unlettered, but in the previous generation, she’d become a star, celebrated from New York to Paris and countless small towns across the United States. Now newspapers across the country owned by William Randolph Hearst had published a scurrilous report that linked her to theft and cocaine, something she found unimaginable.

The year was 1901, and the Hearst papers had circulated an item reporting that Annie Oakley was in prison, having been sentenced for stealing the pants of a Negro man in order to get money to buy cocaine. Annie discovered from another newspaper the real source of the story: A woman in a burlesque show who called herself Any Oakley had been the culprit, and some reporter had sprinted off with the news without checking out the facts more carefully.

Friends and acquaintances assured Annie that no one would believe the story was about her; it seemed like a hoax, or a sick joke that could be laughed off. But Annie was adamant about clearing her name. It was quintessential Annie Oakley: proud—even a touch self-righteous—and highly protective of her hard-earned reputation as a performer and extraordinary markswoman in a career that had made her the toast of Manhattan, London, and even Venice.

To Annie the story threatened everything she had built over the years: her image as a maiden from the Great Plains (a promotional ploy that had clung to her), pure as white linen. The reality was a bit different, like an image in a refracted glass. She had married at age 16 to fellow marksman Frank Butler, and she also had been onstage—generally not considered a place for ladies—though her career as an actress was hardly the stuff of legend.

Ordinarily, as her husband and manager, Frank would have been there with her. But he had come down with a heavy cold two days earlier and was still saddled with a hacking cough. So they agreed she would go alone; the appointment had been made a week earlier, and Annie was anxious to get the process underway.

So here she was, dressed in a gray suit, laced leather boots, and a small black hat slung at an angle over her long chestnut hair, which tumbled well past her shoulders. She sat forward in the chair, almost primly, and waited for Broadhurst to continue. The lawyer, who never had met her before, saw a petite, well-kept woman with gray eyes that sometimes hinted at shyness but met his gaze squarely.

Are you determined to fight all these incidents of libel? I think you indicated there are more than fifty instances.

Indeed I am, she replied. As long as one remains, I’m afraid my reputation is in danger.

Very well. He pursed his lips slightly over his well-groomed beard. Then he paused for a moment and put his hands together, flexing his fingers slowly. We will do whatever you wish. I wish I could say it will be a matter of months, but in truth, it could be much longer. Are you prepared to wage a long fight?

I am, absolutely. She was soft-spoken, but her tone was firm.

There could be a great deal of travel involved, Broadhurst continued. You will almost certainly be asked to personally testify in each of these cases. The court will want to hear how you have been personally harmed by these falsehoods.

Annie chuckled. Mr. Broadhurst, travel is something I’m very used to. As I say, I will do my best to make myself available. I’m not a rich woman, of course, but this is more important to me than I can say.

In the end, Annie won a few jury trials and more than fifty settlements. She traveled the country—Chicago, Boston, Lexington, Cincinnati, Baltimore, and dozens of other cities—over a period of nearly ten years, testifying earnestly about her innocence. It cost her more in fees, she was told, than she ever collected, but to her it was worth it. Others said it was the largest libel action the country ever had seen; the trials stretched to 1910, when Annie turned fifty.

Hearst himself never shied from a fight and even sent investigators to Greenville, Annie’s hometown in Ohio, to try to find something to smear her with. His minions found nothing, but the newspaper mogul’s actions showed her what the press—especially the Hearst press—was capable of. Americans had come to know him a few years earlier as an architect of the Spanish-American War – turning the sinking of the Maine into a full-chorused cry for combat – and critics had come to label his type of breathless, opinionated news coverage as yellow journalism.

One certain reason for the string of libel actions was the fact that Annie’s image was impeccable and her honesty unquestioned; nothing about her act was fake or sensationalized. For many years, drawings of her in different shooting positions had adorned posters, along with the sobriquet Little Miss Sure Shot. Legend had it that the nickname had been given to her by the legendary Indian warrior Sitting Bull, who had watched her perform shortly before she’d joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Audiences loved this diminutive woman, five feet tall and girlish long past her years, picking off targets with a rifle or pistol with breathtaking accuracy from a variety of positions—on the run, riding a pony or a bicycle. There was no one else like her, man or woman.

It was late in 1912 when Annie and Frank—or Jimmy, as she always called him, after a family nickname—were living in a small suite at the Metropolitan Hotel in New York. They had a view of Fifth Avenue through the tall windows, and the street was decorated like a winter wonderland for the Christmas season, with lights snaking up and down each street lamp and fragrant boughs set in the recesses of store windows. Automobiles lumbered up and down the avenues like an army of black beetles, and men and women, all wearing hats and overcoats, filled the sidewalks in ceaseless motion. It was a favorite time of year for Annie, who relished the smell of roasted chestnuts in the chilly air and the bustle and good cheer that emanated from the crowds.

Annie and Frank, who was ten years her senior, had settled into a kind of comfortable middle age. They had sold their house in Nutley, New Jersey, in 1904, and traveled more and more, often going to Georgia and Florida in the winter to shoot game and relax in the warmer weather. For many years they had lived out of steamer trunks and made do easily in a series of rented houses and apartments; Annie and Frank’s bedroom in Nutley had been famous for having no closets—it was said she didn’t feel comfortable with them.

Annie was still giving shooting exhibitions and entering contests, and still beating all comers. It was amazing to many—she was over fifty yet as steady and confident on the rifle as she’d ever been. In one contest in New Jersey, she struck every live pigeon released: one hundred straight. But her days of touring with Buffalo Bill Cody were long over, and exhibitions didn’t pay very much. The bills were starting to mount.

In mid-February 1913, a letter arrived from a group calling itself the Young Buffalo Wild West Show. The organizers had nothing to do with Cody, but they wanted Annie to tour with them as a featured act; she would be shooting much as she had with Buffalo Bill years earlier. They offered her a very nice sum of money for the season, and Annie and Frank latched on to it, even though he would have to resign from his directorship at the Union Metallic Cartridge Company to become her manager again.

Jimmy, they want me! It’ll be like old times in a way. Annie had a hard time keeping the excitement out of her voice. We should meet with them as soon as we can.

They all want Little Miss Sure Shot, he said simply, with the trace of an Irish lilt in voice hinting at his background. You’ll be playing to people who know you only by reputation. It’ll be a new generation. They’ll get to love you all over again. As Frank smiled, the creases deepened on either side of his mustache, now heavily flecked with gray.

But I can’t do all the tricks I did back then, Annie said. Riding the pony, jumping over the gun stand—some of that will have to go. After all, I’m a middle-aged woman with white hair. A half-smile played on her lips, thin and unaccented by any lipstick, which she never used.

Yes, things will probably be different. But you can still shoot the lights out, and that’s what they’ll want to see.

Two days later Annie and Frank walked under the covered entrance to Delmonico’s, an elegant restaurant they’d been to several times over the years. It was a bracing day, with a cold north wind swirling the branches overhead and sending puffs of snow dancing along the sidewalks. Annie pulled up the edge of her scarf to cover her cheek as they approached the door and asked for the man who would be hosting this lunch.

So this is the famous Annie Oakley. Delighted to meet you. Harlan James, the general manager of the Young Buffalo Wild West Show, shook Annie’s hand warmly and did the same with Frank. He made a good impression;

Reviews for Little Miss Sure Shot

[sarah_gruwell · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I loved the wealth of information this book had on the figure of Annie Oakley and her husband, Frank Butler. I was immersed into her life at all stages and got a real feel for the woman. I felt like I got to know her: her modesty, her self-confidence, her belief in women being independent and being able to shoot, and the intricacies of life on the road with the Wild West show. I especially adored reading about her and Frank's relationship. It seemed to be a very unique one for the times, one filled with self-sacrifice, understanding, and based on friendship and mutual respect. But I do feel that I have to question this book's claim to be a "novel" (as the back of the book does). It in no way is one. Yes, there are fictional encounters with people she probably never met and conversations that may or may not have happened. But the sheer amount of told scenes and how information is presented in this book reads more as a light presentation of her life than anything else. Enjoyable to the hilt, yes. An in depth novel that I now have a major craving for, definitely not.All in all, I did enjoy this book. I learned a lot, both about Annie and life in the late 19th century, and enjoyed the learning. Though I do feel that calling this book a "novel" or anything resembling that a misnomer, that in no way should keep you from enjoying it for what it is, a light presentation of her life in a very readable way.Note: Book received for free via Good Reads First Reads program in exchange for review.

[fictionzeal · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

She was a natural. When she was eight, she was simply trying to help provide for her family since her father’s demise two years before.“She spotted the [squirrel] sitting on the branch of an oak and raised the rifle almost instinctively. Annie had never shot an animal before, but the family needed food, and she knew what she needed to do. It was a cold day, but her hands were sweating slightly as she sighted the rifle and pulled the trigger; she needed only one shot, and she gave a little yelp when she saw it fall.”She was born in 1860 in North Star Township, Ohio as Phoebe Ann Moses, one of seven children to Jacob and Susan Moses. They were Quakers, and nearly every day of Annie’s life, she read from the Bible. The prologue is an older Annie, but chapter one picks up with her life mostly in chronological order. There were several things I knew or thought I knew about Annie Oakley, but this novel fills in … the rest of the story. It wasn’t until 1884 that she changed her surname to Oakley. Oakley was the name of a neighborhood near where her sister lived, and Annie just “judged it to be a good name.”This is a fictionalized account, but it shared more fact than fiction and provided little in background and scenery description, so it felt like a non-fiction biographical book with a little bit of fiction thrown in. The history was accurate and all encompassing. I’m not sure if the writing structure of the part introductions were intended or a mistake, but part II, for instance, showed “II 1885-86: the wiLD west show” and part III showed “III 1887-89: euroPe anD More.”Children who are learning about historical people like Annie Oakley could read this as a reference. There is no inappropriate language or settings within the novel. Oh, and for all you ladies who think you have to lose in competition with men in order to gain their attention, just look at Annie’s life. She met her husband, Frank Butler, in a shooting competition. She beat him by one. He began spending time with her and her family after that, and shortly thereafter, they tied the knot. That was in 1876; she was sixteen years old. For the most part, she stayed humble and true to herself. I rated Little Miss Sure Shot at 3.5 out of 5.