All those tender moments of courtship, which all girls thrill about, had been lacking. But Tom took a different point of view. "I've always believed," he said, "in having more of that kind of thing after marriage instead of before. It's getting so that most folks lose all the enchantment by the time they arc hitched."
Maybe he had something!
I switched the subject and demanded to know why he thought I would go along with everything.
"I generally get what I want and keep it," he replied.
In future years I was to discover that he really did get what he wanted-but many times he found out that he wasn't sure he wanted to keep it.
In the pre-dawn hour after our wedding I was breathless with excitement over our planless future together, as we waited at the railroad station for the train that was to take us to Miles City, Montana, for the first leg of our honeymoon.
I looked over at Tom and laughed. "I still can't believe it's real! "
Tom pinched my arm. "That's so you'll know it's real," he laughed. "And it didn't happen so fast. I started laying my plans at the St. Louis Fair. I let you slip away from me then to give you time to grow up."
It seemed symbolic to me that we left Medora just as the fresh day was beginning to break. I can remember no other sunrise exactly like that one. It was as though someone were slowly pouring a bottle of wine over the sky. The warm glimmer floated down through the frosty haze and licked at the black, bare buttes with soft fire; and the steep, yellow clay cliffs on the edge of town, blackish hulks by night, became a soft melody of shifting colors in the reddening dawn. It was as though this day were born for us alone. What a wonderful omen for happiness, I thought as the train pulled out and Tom slipped his hand over mine.
Then, after the first magic of dawn had passed and a matchless blue sky had covered the frosty darkness, I got my tongue back. I turned to Tom and laughed. "Tom, just why Miles City?" I had heard of the place, but I doubted that it was the most ideal spot for a honeymoon.
"I've got friends there I want to show you off to," Tom said.
"Do you know everybody everywhere?" I asked jokingly, not knowing how close to the truth I'd come.
Tom winked. "A man makes a lot of friends in his roaming years."
I didn't know then the fantastic scope of Tom's roaming. The entire West was, and had been, his living room. But he hadn't stopped there. His adventures had taken him to Cuba, Africa, the Philippines, and China. I had only had a glimpse of his past life and it was going to be a long time before I learned all about his fantastic background. He was only twenty-nine when we were married, but he had already lived the lives of a dozen men.
I sensed then that I had married a man of heroic stature, but it was to take me years to know the full man. As for Tom's exploits, I usually had to learn of them from his friends, for he never in any circumstances made himself out to be the real Western hero he was. He was entirely devoid of the swagger and braggadocio that have characterized so many lesser heroes before and since.
He really disliked talking about himself. To speak of his accomplishments was downright embarrassing to him. Even after he became famous he tended to minimize his exploits in the accounts he gave the publicity-hungry movie men. He played down his personal accomplishments, but he never deviated a moment from the truth. The deepest seeds in Tom were truth and integrity. These were the qualities that gave him the sweeping bigness of a titan in everything he did.
But on the train that morning I was too busy with my sense of personal happiness to worry much about what made Tom click. I was aware only that it was the most beautiful day since the beginning of the world and now, having been plunged into marriage, I knew that I was in love and was sure Tom had put his "roaming days" behind him. At the moment I visualized Tom and I working together to build up my ranch in Oklahoma, and making it one of the garden spots in the country. I was proud to be able to give our marriage financial security and a bright future. Little did I know then that those "roaming days" were not over for Tom and were just beginning for me!
I sank back against the hard seat and dreamed, while Tom squeezed my hand. However, I was still young enough to be a tiny bit homesick, even on my honeymoon.
I snapped out of my reverie when I felt the pressure of Tom's hand tighten on mine. I looked over at him and followed his eyes to the front of the car where an interesting scene was beginning.
I had noticed a woman and her son, a boy of about ten, when Tom and I boarded the train at Medora. She was a fine-looking woman wearing widow's weeds. Her clothes and the boy's testified they were from some Eastern city.
I had also noticed the man, who until now had been sitting in the middle of the sparsely occupied car, an enormous man in both bulk and height, with a blood-filled face reddened by liquor.
The man had moved over and was standing next to the woman's seat, leaning down to speak to the woman as she huddled toward the window. Her back was rigid with fright.
The boy, sensing danger in this great hulk of a man and heroically deciding to protect his mother, jumped up to push the intruder away-like an ant attacking an elephant.
The man pushed the boy aside. "Get out of my way, runt!" he bellowed. Then he took hold of the woman's arm. "I don't like women who turn their back on me," he exclaimed.
He hardly finished the sentence, for there was suddenly a mountain lion grasping his arm, pulling him deep into the aisle. I liken Tom to a mountain lion because that animal defeats an opponent often many times larger than itself, through wiry precision of movement and tensile strength. So it was with Tom. He was a big man himself- nearly six feet tall and weighing 175- but many of the men of bad character in the West whom he met in tests of decision over the years were literally Vikings.
And so it was with this burly giant that Tom spun like a top in the aisle.
"We don't treat women like that out here," Tom said in his even, controlled voice scarcely modulated by the heat of emergency.
My heart was playing drums, but I managed to pull the train cord. The train whistle shrieked its eerie acknowledgment of the signal as the man began to recover his equilibrium.
"We'll talk this over at the rear of the car," Tom told him.
But the man wasn't having any talking. He snorted with fury and lifted his massive arm with a slashing movement. Tom acted so swiftly I barely saw his fist come down on the man's wrist.
With a yelp of pain the man jerked out a gun with his uninjured hand. Tom gave a lightning-like kick at the weapon and it flew off down the aisle. "We won't settle this with guns," Tom said calmly.
Never in his long career in the West as sheriff, marshal, and cowboy did Tom settle a personal dispute with a gun when it could be settled with hard fists. Though he was quick to act against a wrong- his temper could explode with an instancy of a firecracker when his sense of moral justice was violated- every action of his existence was a reasoned action. His brain forever commanded his temper. It was this quality that made him a leader of men, a giant in his own way in the final building of the West.
The fight did not last long. The big bully flayed wildly with his arms, but his knotted, hamlike fists seldom found their target. Tom ducked and bounced like a jaguar, throwing his own fists at the huge man's body with the regularity of a machine gun. The "mountain lion" soon wore down the "elephant." By the time the train ground to a complete stop and the conductor came running in, the burly man was panting groggily on the aisle floor, beside a deck of cards and a pair of dice that had spilled from his pocket.
"We've got a deposit to make," Tom told the startled conductor. He dragged the man by the coat collar and shoved him toward the door. Then he took him out on the platform and dumped him off the train while I picked up the dice and cards and tossed them after him. They scattered like fluff in the prairie wind.
We watched the man reeling dizzily toward a nearby ranch house as the train pulled out.
It was now time for amenities. The woman, still shaking, came back to meet us. Her son was pop-eyed with admiration for Tom. I was to see that expression of consummate adoration for Tom on the faces of thousands and thousands of youngsters in later years.
"I don't even know how to start to thank you," the woman said. She was almost weeping. "I was terrified-"
"Don't you worry any more, Ma'am," said Tom with his reverent respect for women, a respect he shared with countless other men of the West.
Contrary to common conception, the rough-and-ready men of the Old West did extend every courtesy to womanhood, except, of course, the rare type of man such as the one Tom had just dusted off the train. There was plenty of rough talk in the Western saloons and bunkhouses, but you never heard an expletive when there was a woman present. If you did, the offender was soon being ground into the dirt by the other men.
The widow was from Philadelphia and she and her son were on their way to Helena, where they were going to live with her brother. Her tenseness told us silently that she might already be considering turning around at the next stop and heading back to Philadelphia.
Tom was quick to modify the fright she had just had. "You're going to be living in the greatest part of the country," he told her. "Won't be long before you'll feel that. As for what just happened, it'll never happen again. You'll see."
Tom was right. The chances that the woman would ever again be subjected to violence were slim. Most of the really rough days of the West were history by then and the good people had driven out a lot of the bad ones simply by weight of number and persistence. But even in the earliest pioneer days the good people could live in peace if they had the sense to keep out of the way of the bad ones.
"No matter where you live, there are good ones and bad ones," Tom said. "Out here we get rid of the bad ones fast. Either we get them, or they trip themselves."
In that observation Tom summed up the credo that formed the unchanging moral underlying his later films: the good man reaped his reward and the villain paid for his evil. It was that way in real life, too.
Tom illustrated his point with a story:
"I once was acquainted with a sheriff down at Two Buttes, Colorado," he began. "It was a good clean community, but there'd been trouble with rustlers-outlaws who made it a business of stealing cattle. Finally the sheriff traced the root of the trouble to a man named Russell who had a ranch about fifteen miles out of town. Russell and two Mexicans in his employ had been rustling steers from the other ranchers and taking them across the border."
I looked at the boy, who was sitting forward eagerly in the seat opposite ours, his eyes widening by the second.
"Well, the sheriff rode out to Russell's place alone one day. He didn't have any definite proof on Russell and he wasn't sure how he was going to handle the situation. But the sheriff reckoned a little on human nature. He figured that when you get a rat cornered on his home ground, he'll reveal himself one way or another."
The boy was almost falling off his seat with suspense by now, as Tom continued his story at his usual calm pace.
"Anyway," said Tom, "when Russell and the Mexicans saw the sheriff they must have figured he did have proof against them. A man doesn't run and hide when he's guiltless. Well, these men drew their guns and scattered fast when the sheriff rode in. Russell disappeared behind a bunch of loaded hayracks, and the Mexicans ran to barricade themselves in the toolshed."
"How'd the sheriff get them?" squealed the boy eagerly.
"The sheriff didn't want any killing if he could avoid it," Tom continued, smiling at the boy. "He wasn't any different from any other law man in that respect. So first he tried to reason with the men, telling them they'd get a fair trial and a chance if they'd give themselves up peaceably."
"But they didn't, did they?" said the boy. It was obvious that the story couldn't end that way.
"No, they didn't," said Tom. "So the sheriff gave them fair warning. He shouted to them that he was coming after them. He headed toward the toolshed, knowing that Russell would take a shot at him from the hayracks. He knew Russell was somewhere behind the long line of racks, but didn't know the exact spot. The only thing the sheriff could hope was that Russell wasn't a good shot. Anyway, the sheriff didn't walk two yards before the shot came."
"Was he killed?" the boy gasped, his eyes popping by now.
"The shot got him in the leg," said Tom. "It also brought Russell out of hiding, which was what the sheriff wanted. Two quick shots from the sheriff and Russell was lying moaning on the ground, a leg and his gun arm out of action."
By now I was as excited as the boy. "What happened to the Mexicans?" I asked.
"Well," said Tom, "the sheriff gave the Mexicans another chance to come out with their hands up. But there was nothing but silence from the toolshed-so he had to kick down the door to go in after them. I guess the Mexicans were surprised at his exposing himself like that. They were just surprised enough-as the sheriff hoped they'd be-to put them off balance for a moment. Their shots got the sheriff, but their fluster made their aim bad, and the sheriff was still standing on his feet when he put the Mexicans out of commission."
"How bad was the sheriff shot up?" asked the boy.
"Oh, he was nicked up a little," chuckled Tom, "but I hear he's still alive."
Nicked up a little! I heard the whole story from Tom's close friend, Sid Jordan, a couple of years later. It was Tom himself, of course, who was really the sheriff of Two Buttes who cleaned up on the rustlers. It was his natural humility and modesty that caused him, in relating the story to the widow and her son, to refer to the hero sheriff as an "acquaintance."
As for being "nicked up a little," Tom's receipts from that affray were a bullet in his thigh, one in his forearm, one in his neck, and one in his head. They were hardly nicks. But Tom probably did look upon those wounds with a truly casual eye. He was wounded countless times and suffered innumerable broken bones before he ever faced his first motion picture camera.
During his early career and while working in pictures, he suffered a fractured shoulder and a broken jaw. Every rib in his body had been broken one or more times, both knee caps fractured, his feet crushed. To the day of his death he carried in his body unremoved buckshot. To add to this collection were several knife wounds. Many doctors marveled how he had lived and carried on such an active life.
Tom's story had done more than point up a moral of obvious truth. The widow was calm and at ease now. There wasn't much danger of her starting back to Philadelphia at the next stop.
As for the boy, a barrel of boiling water couldn't have unglued him from Tom. He clung on, asking Tom seemingly a million questions about range life. I smoldered a little, remembering that this was my wedding journey and that Tom should be talking to me.
But I soon stopped smoldering when I reasoned that nothing- even the early hours of a honeymoon- could stop Tom from helping a person in a moment of need. After their frightening experience the widow and her boy needed reassurance, and Tom gave it to them in his own wise way.
I was to see the same sort of thing repeated many times later. Tom always took time for other people. And he never forgot a friend. Years later, when he was at the peak of his movie career, he was still remembering the old range-riding pals of former years. A Tom Mix film never appeared that didn't have some of Tom's old cronies in it.
Tom gave the boy one final big thrill when the train stopped for emergency repairs on the plains about an hour outside Miles City. The boy had been begging Tom to "shoot something." Tom pulled his gun from a valise and found a small can. The four of us got off the train.
The wintry plain stretched before us, flat, gaunt and quivering under the temperamental wind-not ideal conditions for the demonstration of shooting prowess.
Tom casually tossed the can a few yards out on the plain and took his first shot at it. The can clanked hollowly in the great empty plain and spun dizzily through the air like a whirling pinwheel, coming to rest at a considerable distance from us. Tom's second shot sent the can bouncing again. His third shot found home too, despite the hairline calculations he had to make to aim true in that wind. By that time the can was barely visible; only the tiniest gleam of metal distinguished its presence on a patch of dun-colored earth near a scraggly piece of sagebrush bent dead in the wind. I thought Tom's individual shooting meet was over, because nobody could move that can again in a brisk wind at that distance. But Tom did. He moved it twice more, until not a single trace of the shining metal could be seen.
I was scarcely less impressed than the boy and his mother. Though I had seen plenty of fast, accurate Western shooting in my time, none had ever matched this.
I looked at my husband proudly, and saw the shine of admiration in the widow's eyes. I was sure she was thinking along with me that we were safe as long as men like Tom were on the right side of a gun; that if it hadn't been for men like Tom, the West would never have been won and passed on to posterity.
There is no doubt that Tom's facility with a gun saved his life many times. But there is also ample evidence to prove that he never used a gun injudiciously. He never shot to kill when he could shoot to wound. He never shot at all if he could settle a dispute with his fists. And he didn't use his fists if he could settle a difference with words. During his career Tom stopped many a killing, and many a fight from blossoming, simply by talking common sense.
During his picture career he had his own code. He refused to portray himself as a drunk or be shown partaking of hard liquor, and he would never smoke on the screen. His appearances in saloons had to be for the purpose of dealing out justice to a bad man. Respect must be shown for womanhood, even the toughest dance-hall girl. As a hero in pictures he never accepted reward money, but always turned it over to some worthy cause. If the story demanded that he fall in love with a girl, she generally had to be "the ranch owner's daughter" or a schoolteacher.
No matter how quickly Tom had to make decisions- and some of the scrapes he got into called for instantaneous, explosive action- his were always reasoned decisions. When he had time for a real think-through, he could usually come up with a plan that would avoid violence and save lives.
Such an occasion arose when Tom was sheriff of a cattle town in Colorado a few years before our marriage. The town had attracted a small gang of cattle thieves who had pulled some successful rustling jobs. There was no proof against them. But honey always attracts flies. Tom knew the community would be swarming with rustlers when the word spread that cattle could be lifted from the ranges with ease.
Tom had a "thinking session." One day he secretly shot three precise holes through the tops of three surveyors' pegs. Then he waited for the right moment to carry through his plan. It came one day when he spied the rustlers gathered on the plain near the edge of town. He calmly rode his horse out to a spot where he was certain the rustlers could plainly see what he was doing. He dismounted and planted the pegs in the earth. Then he remounted, drew his gun, and made it obvious that he was going to have a bit of target practice. He drew back a few hundred yards and thundered toward the three-peg target at full gallop. He shot at the first peg from his right hand, flipped the gun to his left hand to shoot at the second peg, and took care of the final peg with a flourishing shot behind his back.
Annie Oakley couldn't have placed three precise holes in three small pegs at that distance and that speed of gallop! But the thieves were convinced that Tom had done it. Tom rode calmly back to town and turned to see the thieves examining the pegs with awe. The next morning they were gone.
It was a psychological ruse that worked. Outlaws invariably respected a sharpshooter, especially a sharpshooting sheriff. Tom avoided a great deal of bloodshed for the entire town that would have inevitably occurred if the rustling had continued.
I didn't know that story, either, on the windy day of our wedding journey, but I already had an inkling that getting to know my husband was going to be a long and involved process.
I couldn't suppress a little shrug of disappointment when we got off the train in Miles City, Montana. What a dreary place to start a honeymoon! For Miles City in 1909 was just beginning to grow out of its swaddling clothes.
Most frontier towns, in their infancy, were unimaginative collections of unpainted frame buildings, the one main street a frozen mass of pock holes in the winter, a sleazy ooze of mud in the spring, and a powdery bed of red dust in the summer. The beauty was not in the towns but in the surrounding country. And there is no other beauty like Western beauty. There are no other colors like Western colors. There are no other skies with the bright, living intensity of Western skies. No other sweeping vistas anywhere else could match the magnitude of the broad avenues Nature has sculptured in the West. When God was handing out the grandeur, he planted much of it in that portion of the country.
Some of the towns, however, were bits of gray bitterness in their grand settings of the richest of Nature's accomplishments. Many were flimsily constructed because the possibility of permanency was only a matter of conjecture. Some of the towns withered and died in their infancy, abandoned to the elements when a mining shaft was depleted or a cattle trail shifted.
Miles City was destined to mature. But it wasn't fashionably grown when Tom and I were there. It looked pretty bleak to me and I remembered that spring would be coming soon in Oklahoma. Spring might not reach Montana for another two or three months.
"Tom," I said, "let's go home. It's so beautiful there now." I laughed. "And I want to show you off ."
"Home's our next stop," he chuckled. "But we've got a little business here to attend to first."
Miles City was significant to Tom because it was one of the many places he had called home during his Western wanderings. Of course, the whole West was home to Tom. He had put down his stakes and had ridden the range anywhere the bunchgrass grew. In his capacity as a law officer he had helped a dozen communities to struggle out from under the duress of bad elements. When a place was cleaned up, it was time for him to move on, for there were always other communities that needed help. The entire West that emerged after the shambles and conflict was the final product of men like Tom. In a very real sense Tom, and men like him, saved the West for us as surely as the men of our struggling Continental Army saved our country for us.
During his roaming years Tom was a sheriff many times over, a deputy U. S. Marshal, a Texas Ranger, a cowboy, a ranch foreman, and a soldier. For a time he was City Marshal at Dewey, Oklahoma, not more than a hundred miles from our ranch, in the days when I was being teased by my brother and my, uncle, and utterly oblivious to the fact that I would one day grow up to marry Tom. He was also special enforcement officer of Indian Territory for a time.
I learned of Tom's military accomplishments when we were guests at Bill Tambler's ranch outside Miles City.
"Seen Teddy lately?" asked Bill.
"Not since he invited us to the White House in 1906," said Tom casually.
I thought that Tom and Bill were having a joke at my expense. So I laughed. Then I realized suddenly that it wasn't a joke.
"Do you mean that you know Theodore Roosevelt?" I gasped.
"Sure," said Tom, and prepared to stop right there.
Bill chuckled. "Tom doesn't talk much about those days. Guess he's ashamed of getting his head in the way of that bullet-considering how short the Spanish-American War was."
Tom grinned and said nothing, and I exploded. "Tom Mix, you tell me!"
"Well, they needed men," he said laconically. "So I joined the Rough Riders."
Between Tom and Bill I managed to wheedle out the whole story. Tom was eighteen when hostilities broke out. He left school immediately and was in the thick of the affray when Theodore Roosevelt led his Rough Riders in the Battle of San Juan Hill in Cuba, the most severe battle of the ten-week war.
But Tom didn't take his bullet in that battle. It was in a cleanup operation, when they were shaking the Spaniards out of palm trees, that Tom met his first hot sting of lead. A Spanish sharpshooter secreted in some fronds shot Tom. The bullet went through his mouth and out the back of his head. He spent a month in the hospital. But that was only the first of the many close bullet wounds he was to sustain and survive during his career.
Tom next joined the provisional army for service in the Philippines. He ended up in the Boxer Rebellion in China where he sustained a severe chest wound-the second soldier to be wounded in that insurrection-and was so badly hurt that he was sent home and mustered out of service. He was barely twenty years old, but he had already been close to death from war injuries.
When Tom returned to the United States, he took a job breaking wild horses for use by the English in the Boer War. When these horses were loaded on freighters, bound for South Africa, Tom went along too. In South Africa he showed the English what a cowboy could do with a horse, a Western saddle, and a rope; and they were duly impressed. He did very little fighting, however, though he did participate in the siege of Ladysmith, and emerged from the war with a wound in his shoulder and also in one arm to add to his rapidly growing collection.
In the Boer War, too, Tom made his initial appearance in motion pictures, though at a great distance from the lens. An American movie company had sent a unit to Africa to film some of the war's highlights. Tom was a speck in a couple of the scenes.
I remember Tom laughing about that incident during the evening we spent with Bill, and how it led us into a discussion of the films. In 1909 a lot of people thought the motion picture industry had progressed as far as it would ever go; in some quarters it was still being considered a passing fad.
At that time the Western film was beginning to blossom on the screen. Tom said something typically laconic to express his opinion of the pictures he had seen.
"They're not real enough," he said. "Just a lot of counterfeit cowboys making fun of the West. They're an insult to the true West! "
He wasn't referring merely to the unauthentic background scenery used in the early two-reelers. He was speaking also of the wild gesticulation and false, exaggerated acting that the "Western" players brought to the screen in those days.
Tom was later to bring the broad, real actions of the Western hero to the screen, probably to a greater degree than any other actor. He banished from the Western film the wild flaying of arms and ridiculous facial distortions that simulated action and emotion in the early Westerns. As a true son of the West he brought to the screen a reflection of the authentic actions and emotions that had been part of him all of his life.
On that night the possibility of Tom's becoming a screen star was the most remote thing from our minds. I was in the process of wondering where we would settle. Like any other new bride I was already forming in my mind a picture of the home Tom and I would share. Before we said good night to Bill I had built the house, mentally, in the wooded section of our Oklahoma ranch. On the way back to Miles City I was thinking: Just wait until Tom gets a real taste of our ranch. His itchy feet will stop itching.
Overlooking the truth in my flush of newlywed happiness, I suppose I was trying to convince myself that we were going to settle down. Something that should have been obvious to me even then was that the chances were nil- for us to lead an ordinary, settled life. For Tom was in no sense an ordinary man and in no way fitted for a placid, routine life; and the life we were to lead together was destined to be extraordinary- one where the joys and the heartbreaks press much harder in intensity than they do in the smooth way of the settled life. We were destined to feel the full impact of the joys and the heartbreaks, together and apart.
On that night the overwhelming future was still ahead of us. I was dreaming of our home and Tom was busy wondering whether a certain surprise he had for me would be ready the next day.
It was. He had ordered twin saddles for us from Al Furstnow, the foremost saddlemaker in the West at that time. The saddles were exquisite examples of fine craftsmanship, tastefully ornamented with just the proper amount of silver work. Both Tom and I were to use them in the ranch shows we later appeared in. These were the first ornamented saddles either of us had owned. They were the forerunners of the huge collection of ornate saddles that Tom was to have at the crest of his movie and circus careers- some of them costing thousands of dollars.
Tom bought me a buckskin skirt and jacket. "Well, this is quite an unusual kind of trousseau!" I laughed.
Tom laughed too and proceeded to buy for himself a pair of batwinged chaparajos stamped with silver. The chaps were obviously for display and not for hard range use. They weren't a bit more practical than my beaded buckskin skirt and jacket were.
Tom must have read my mind. "Don't worry, Olive," he said, "we'll get a lot of use out of these."
To top it all, I discovered Tom's love of diamonds, a passion that was to cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars during later years. But he was considerate enough on this day to make his purchase at a pawn broker's. He bought me a huge diamond and insisted upon waiting until the ring was cut down so that he could put it on my finger.
Finally, when I was utterly exhausted, Tom turned to me with a smile. "Well, how about going home now, Olive?"
Olive Stokes Mix, with Eric Heath, The Fabulous Tom Mix, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc.), 1957, pages 22-39.
© 1999, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)
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