Tom had stopped at the ranch briefly before following me to Medora, so briefly, in fact, that he had rather frightened Mother with his reluctance to tell her just why he wanted to see me. Mother had worried over what the dark, silent young man was going to do.
When we arrived home Mother, after a few still moments, succumbed to Tom's charm. He had the glad effect of a Chinook wind on her, and she was soon forgetting how shocked she'd been when Luke returned home with the news of our marriage. She fretted all the time Tom and I were in Miles City, convinced that I had reverted to my impulsive childhood temperament and had flung myself into a marriage with a man I scarcely knew.
This time Tom had spent no more than an hour under our roof before Mother was completely pacified. He treated her like a Queen Mother, and soon she was wondering why we had delayed our marriage so long!
Before he had been at the ranch twenty-four hours he knew the name of every hand we had. He threw himself right into the ranch routine, one with which he was thoroughly familiar after his rich practical experience as cowhand and ranch foreman on so many ranches of the Plains states. In fact, he was so busy working around the place that I became a little irritated.
"This is supposed to be our honeymoon," I reminded him one day.
Tom laughed. "I've got to start getting back into the swing, Olive," he said. "Can't get soft."
Later I was to reflect that the comparatively physically inactive month Tom had spent courting me was the only inactive month he ever spent. Love had slowed him down to a half run, and now love was to be the basis of the future he was planning for us.
Love was the basis of my plan for our future too, a plan that was centered around the ranch and the imaginary house I had already built in the woods. It made me happy that within a week Tom seemed to be in love with the ranch; and that the place was assuredly in love with him.
We rode down to the sawmill on a beautiful morning that I decided was the time to take the plunge. Tom dismounted from Old Blue, a glossy blue-black cowpony that had been his faithful companion through his years of sheriffing, marshaling, spring and fall roundups, and Wild West shows. He swung me down from my horse and we walked hand in hand through the woods. The ash and walnut trees rushed up toward a spotless sky, the lemon-spread sky of the mild Oklahoma winter- another perfect day created for Tom and me alone, I thought as I inhaled the pungent freshness of the countryside.
"This would make a nice spot for our house," I ventured cautiously when we reached a knoll in the woods hung deep with stately sycamores and carpeted in the spring with the bright pink clouds of redbud.
"Now wait a minute, Olive," said Tom.
"Well- we have to live somewhere," I raced on.
Tom spoke calmly. "Olive, this is your family's ranch-"
"Well, you're family now."
"It isn't the same," he explained. "We're going to have our own ranch some day, but I'm going to get it for us."
I should have known by then that no one handed anything to Tom Mix on a silver platter. He was far too big a man for that. But all I could think of was that here we had everything we could ever want. Our ranch was rich-further richened by the discovery of oil on it- and the hard years of building were over. I couldn't understand Tom's wanting to go through a struggle when everything was already set up for us. Dinner was on the table, but Tom wasn't eating.
He took my hand. "Olive, I know how you feel about your home, but you're my life now, and I'm your life. Ever since I was a kid I've wanted my own ranch. It's what I've worked for all along. Now I'll be working for us, for our ranch. Understand? "
I did understand.
"Of course," he went on, "if you think you couldn't be happy anywhere but here- well, I guess-"
I stopped him. Of course he was right. But he faltered in his purpose at that moment, because of love for me. I often thought afterward what a disaster it would have been for Tom if I had persuaded him, at that moment when his Achilles' heel was exposed, to settle down in the cloistered little dream world that looked so wonderful to me then. The world would never have seen its greatest cowboy star! But many of the twistings of life depend upon decisions made at vulnerable moments. The world gained because I decided to make what I thought was a personal sacrifice. If I had used Tom's love as a weapon then, my own world might not have fallen apart some years later.
What I did was look toward the lovely woods, swallow hard and say, "All right. Our own ranch. How are we going to get our start? "
"Wild West shows," he said. "I've got some letters out now, and an offer's sure to come along. We'll have to work for someone else for a while, but we'll have our own show eventually. That'll make us the money to get the ranch."
I nodded, trying hard to reconcile myself to the idea of living a life of train rides and one-night stands.
I remembered the beaded buckskin skirt and jacket Tom had bought me, and the elaborate chaps he had bought for himself. "We'll have to use them," he said. That meant he intended me to be a part of the show too.
When I pressed the point, he explained: "I thought you might want to. You sit on a horse better'n any woman I know. As for handling a gun-well, I'd sure hate to have you mad at me."
I snuggled up against him, enormously pleased with myself. The thought of the shows suddenly took on a sweet quality. I was envisioning myself as a sort of Annie Oakley riding at Tom's side and performing unheard-of shooting and riding feats before the fascinated eyes of thousands.
Besides, wasn't a woman supposed to do what her husband wanted? So the matter was settled.
"When do you think we'll be starting?
"You know, Olive," Tom replied, "I used to think there wasn't any greater happiness in the world than just riding the range where a man could feel bigger than anywhere else." He reached for my hand. "But I guess a man can't really feel big until he has something like this."
Any doubts about the impetuosity of my marriage were entirely dispelled at that moment.
During those first weeks of our marriage an event occurred that gives insight into the deep feeling Tom had for animals. An animal was never "dumb" to Tom. He always treated them with kindness and deep respect.
We had ridden to Bartlesville that day to talk with Clay McDonigal, an old friend of Tom's and the champion roper of the world at that time. Clay was making only a brief stopover at Bartlesville; so Tom and I were ready to start back to the ranch by midafternoon.
When we had ridden in at noon we noticed the horse sale in progress at a corral, at the edge of town. On our way home past the corral we saw a man abusing a horse.
The man wasn't sparing the whip as he tried to pull the skittish, frightened horse out of the corral. A couple of bystanders laughed as the horse reared upward in snorting fright and came crashing down, barely missing his abuser. The man angrily cracked the horse's flanks with his whip again.
"I'll show you right now who your master is!" he shouted in fury.
Tom was already off Old Blue. His mouth was set hard as he leaped over the corral fence and dashed toward the man. He reached him just in time to stop him from making a new attack with the whip. The horse stopped skittering and dancing immediately as though he knew someone had come to help him.
I saw Tom's hand tighten around the horse-abuser's wrist until the whip fell to the ground.
"That's better," said Tom. "You don't seem to understand much about horses, Mister."
In those days nothing could gather an audience faster than the prospect of a brawl. I dismounted quickly. By the time I reached the corral fence people were coming from all directions.
Tom had been on the horse-abuser so quickly that it took the man a moment to respond. Then, as his rage mounted, he reached down for the whip.
But Tom's boot was pressed securely on it.
"I said you don't seem to understand much about horses, Mister," Tom repeated.
The man's face reddened with anger as he looked at the snickering crowd gathered to watch his humiliation. He balled his fists and glared at Tom.
Tom ignored the hot glare. "Horses have feelings," Tom said. "They don't act contrary unless something scares them, Mister." He reached down, picked up the whip, and flung it across the corral. "You don't need a whip to get that horse out of the corral if you treat it right-"
"Look, I bought this horse," the man said. "I've got a right to do what I-"
"You're wrong, Mister. You haven't got any right-"
The man's fist shot out at Tom.
"I guess there's no other way to settle this," Tom said as he took one lightning swing that landed the man in the dust. The fellow sat there, clutching his jaw in pain and amazement, as Tom threw a roll of bills down at him. "Guess that'll more than cover what you paid for the horse."
Tom walked up to the animal, talked quietly into its ear,
patted it gently on its neck, and led it out of the corral. He grinned at me. "Guess the ranch can stand another horse, can't it, Olive? "
I nodded. I couldn't say anything at that moment. I was near tears with admiration for my husband. From the comments the crowd of onlookers was impressed too. They followed us with their eyes as we headed out of town, our new horse walking behind us with the docility of a lamb.
"A horse will respect a man who respects him," Tom said as he glanced back at our new acquisition.
That statement summed up his attitude toward his own animals. He was to own over a hundred horses before his career was finished, many of them recalcitrant under any hands but his own.
I always wrote to Tom's mother regularly. She and Tom's father lived at a tiny hamlet known as "Mix Run," near the city of Dubois, Pennsylvania.
This correspondence started right after we left Medora, when Tom asked me to write his mother and tell her of our marriage. I think one thing he disliked more than anything else was to write letters.
It was through this exchange of letters with his mother that I learned more about his early youth than I had been able to do up to that time. Whenever I brought up the subject of his childhood he would mention a few details and then switch to some topic that had to do with the present or future.
Tom was born in Mix Run in 1880. From what his mother wrote, his schooling had been very sketchy because he was more interested in being with his father who owned a stable in Dubois. It was here that his love of horses began. He almost lived in the saddle, though there were intervals when he would go hunting in the woods or fishing.
In a letter that I have always treasured, his mother told me of an episode that started Tom out in life with a determination to do whatever he set out to do better than anyone else. He entered a bicycle race against several score contestants. But unlike most of them, he trained for the race for months- riding up hill and down dale for miles and miles each day.
After he won the race his mother discovered a piece of paper on the table in his room. On it he had written the words: "Whatever you do, do it better than anyone else!"
Tom's mother related how, even at the tender age of ten, he was dreaming of having his own ranch out West and had conceived a brand for his cattle- an M with a T slanted diagonally across it.
From a picture sent to me it was apparent Tom's mother was a very beautiful woman- very tiny and with big black eyes and black hair.
I learned from her about his association with the notorious Madero.
"I have always prayed and prayed for Tom," she wrote. "Perhaps I was praying for him at the moment he faced that firing squad in Mexico, and maybe that helped. Tom needed money in those days. He was known throughout the West for his great courage. His reputation reached Mexico too, and Francisco Madero heard of him. I guess you remember Madero. He was that famous Mexican bandit chief who was instrumental in fomenting the Mexican Revolution and who later, starting in 1911, served as Mexico's president until he was assassinated in 1913.
"Madero sent an offer to Tom. He would give him five hundred dollars if Tom would come to Mexico and capture certain of Madero's enemies who were hiding in the Sierra Madres. Tom accepted the offer. But he weighed the matter carefully before deciding. He knew that Madero was fighting to win the land for the Mexican peons. It was a good moral cause.
"So Tom went to Mexico, tracked down Madero's enemies, and delivered them to him. He expected to collect his money and be on his way, but he found a firing squad waiting for him instead. Apparently he had been framed on some trumped-up charge of violating the Mexican military law. Tempers were volatile in those early revolutionary days and trials were short or nonexistent. Tom was saved only by a last-minute confession of treachery by the man who had testified against him."
At last Tom received the letter he had been waiting for. It was an invitation to join the Widerman Wild West Show in Amarillo, Texas. I knew right away that this was it. Our peaceful days at the ranch were over.
"A small show," said Tom, "but it'll give us some experience so we can start our own show later on."
With considerable misgivings I consented to go along with Tom's desire to sign up for the show. We caught the next train to Amarillo.
On the train I asked Tom how he happened to get into show business. It was another instance of dragging information out of my "man of mystery."
"I worked for a fellow in Mexico," Tom replied. I didn't tell him that I knew that the "fellow" was Madero, through the letter I had received from his mother.
"With the money I earned," Tom went on, "I bought three new horses and teamed them with Old Blue. After a little training I had them dancing in the streets of El Paso." He laughed. "I also did a few rope tricks in the act, but the reception wasn't exactly overwhelming. Just about the time we were ready to starve, I got an offer to join a regular show.
"But what made you even want to go into the business?" I persisted.
"I guess I got the seed planted in me when I was about ten and went to El Paso to watch Bill Cody's show pass through town on the train. I thought there wasn't anyone bigger on earth than Buffalo Bill."
The very next year, in 1910, Colonel Cody was to take full recognition of the boy who had so eagerly watched his entourage pass through El Paso twenty years before. Tom was approached by the owners of Colonel Cody's show with a publicity scheme designed to enhance Tom's future and further line the wallets of the show's owners. It was proposed that Tom take the name of Cody and pose as Buffalo Bill's son, to be his understudy and successor.
Tom turned the offer down flat, despite the fact that he wasn't really secure in his fledgling movie career at that point. It wasn't only that Tom was too proud of his own name and heritage to consider changing it, it was also that his honesty prevented him from entering into anything that smacked of deception, despite the rich monetary rewards it might bring. "These ranch shows are just as important as cleaning up a band of rustlers," Tom said to me that day on the train. "The old ways are going fast. We've got to keep on showing people what they were."
I understood what he meant. The West was becoming civilized and the possibility of death or violence lurking at every corner had diminished. The skills employed in averting death- the expert markmanship, the hard riding- were passing into decay from non-use.
Foremost in Tom's mind, far above the desire to make money, was his anxiety to show the public what the winning of the West really meant. It was his wish to preserve the old ways, to display them and to communicate their meaning. He offered himself to the public as a genuine example of a way of life.
"Anyway," Tom said as he held my hand on that train ride to Amarillo, "if things go right this season maybe we'll make enough to start out with a little patch of land next year." He looked dreamily out the window at the flat, burnished prairie.
The next year was to mean much more than a small "patch of land" to us, but at that moment 1910 looked awfully far away to me.
When we arrived at Amarillo I found it to be a dry, dusty town swarming with cowboys, ranchers, and gamblers. The town had had its beginning in a collection of hide huts huddled forlornly on the bare prairie in the late eighties. Eventually it grew to become the commercial center of the Texas Panhandle.
Tom took me straight to the hotel where he intended to talk to Mr. Widerman about including me in the show. I waited in the lobby while Tom talked business with Mr. Widerman in the bar.
Amarillo was still short on women in those days. My presence in the lobby of the hotel was sufficient to arouse some unsolicited stares from a tall man sitting across from me. The more I turned my eyes away from him, the more I felt his steady gaze on me. I'd been told plenty of times that I was a "mighty pretty little thing," but somehow it had never affected me in the least. I was never the overly romantic type and neither did I spend hours staring at myself in a mirror, with curlers or tweezers. But one thing I hated was to have any man look at me as though mentally undressing me.
This man's stare was not a nice stare despite the fact that he was dressed like a gentleman. His clothes told me he was an Easterner and the fact that his gun belt did not rest easily on him told me he hadn't been here long. I judged that he was probably a gambler or land speculator who had stopped here to make a quick killing.
No matter what else he was, he was obviously lonely. The stares continued.
Finally I couldn't stand it any longer. "There's the window,
Mister," I said, -why'don't you look out?" I flashed my wedding ring at him, but that didn't seem to make any difference.
The man got up and walked toward me, grinning apishly. "Why don't we take a walk-"
He didn't finish because Tom came in at that moment, Mr. Widerman following at his heels.
Tom didn't waste time with words on this occasion. He walked up to the intruder and wrenched the gun out of the man's holster and flung it across the lobby. Then he turned the man around, seized him by the seat of his pants, and pranced him to the door where he bounced him resoundingly into the street.
Tom came back laughing. "Can't say I blame the guy for trying," he said to me, his eyes twinkling.
He had talked Mr. Widerman into including me in the show's program; so I had my chance to start wearing the buckskin skirt and jacket Tom had bought for me in Miles City.
The show was small, but we played to capacity crowds everywhere we went. I did some riding tricks and some target shooting at fast gallop, but mostly played as background to Tom, as did everyone else in the show.
Tom wasn't officially designated as the star of the show, but it was obvious from the very first that the entire exhibition revolved around him. The moment he came tearing into the arena on Old Blue, his energy and fire seemed to reach out and seize the spectators. They sat in an indrawn hush as he performed his elaborate riding tricks, leaping on and off Old Blue with the ease and agility and speed of a jaguar as the horse encircled the arena. He somersaulted backward to a following horse, too; and tight-legged around Old Blue's belly he hung precariously at side angle, his face so close to the ground that it seemed certain that it was being scraped raw as Old Blue raced around the ring. Tom performed his complex display of agile body movements with a precision and grace that would have put a professional acrobat to shame. Sometimes, in the blur of maddening speed, it was as though he and the horse were one.
The audience was dazzled. Years later audiences a hundred times the size of these were to be enchanted by Tom's fine horsemanship in the really big circuses, including his own.
He also did a solo lariat act in the Widerman show. Twirling the lariat, making it respond like a great long arm, looks remarkably easy, but is in fact extremely difficult. Somersaulting off a horse looks easy too, but it is not.
His dexterity with the lariat came from years of practice just as his superlative horsemanship and unerring aim with the gun were the rewards of years of experience. Tom eschewed the use of the forty-foot lariat, which had a roping reach of only twenty-five feet. He gave the spectators a much better display of skill by using a sixty-foot rope with a reach of forty feet. Tom spun the rope to his exact wishes, just as though it were a breathing animal responding to its master's commands.
Notwithstanding Tom's glowing performance, it was still a small show and a far cry from the extravaganzas Tom was to star in under the big top in later years. However, he was radiant from being back in the harness again, and although I disliked spending half my time on trains and the other half in hotel rooms, I was happy because my husband was happy.
The show hit Kansas City when Will Rogers was playing the Orpheum there. Will had been on the vaudeville circuits since 1905, when he got his big chance with his lassoing act at Hammerstein's Roof Garden in New York City.
Will, Tom and I had dinner together to celebrate our reunion.
"You know," said Will in that inimitable drawl of his, "I had a big feeling back at the St. Louis Fair that something was going to happen to you two one day."
"Well, it sure did, didn't it? " Tom said.
Later that evening Will said to me: "Tom's a real big man, Olive. But he's going to be a whole lot bigger before he's finished." He smiled at me. "Especially with you helping him along."
As things turned out, both Tom and Will were destined to become the biggest of men in their fields. By 1914 Will was appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies, which gave him his final boost to stardom, a high perch he was to hold until his death in 1935 in an airplane crash. As for Tom, his zooming rise to stardom paralleled Will's closely in point of time. It seemed symbolic that the two old friends reached their zenith of fame and accomplishment almost simultaneously.
We hated saying good bye to Will that night, but our itinerary called for a move to Napa, Idaho, for the next playing date.
We never got there.
Tom had told me that he was going to ask Mr. Widerman's nephew, who had taken over management of the show in the owner's absence, to raise our pay. We weren't making much money, considering the important part Tom played in the show, and we hadn't been able to save much for that "patch of land" Tom was always dreaming about.
During a stopover in Denver, Tom stepped outside on the platform with young Widerman to talk over the matter. I watched and listened through the open window.
Young Widerman was an impetuous man with a gun. He knew that without Tom he would have no show, but he was still reluctant to pay Tom his due for the fine job he was doing,
They entered into a heated argument and finally I saw Widerman make a move toward his gun holster. Tom was unarmed.
"Drop that hand, Mister," I called out through the train window. I was holding a .45 and was glad that this was one time I could help Tom.
Widerman looked over at me, whitened, and dropped his hand.
"Come on, get off the train, Olive," called out Tom.
When I got off Widerman, who had come to his senses, was trying to make Tom reconsider. Tom kept saying no. He wouldn't work for or with a man he didn't respect; and Widerman had completely lost his respect. Still protesting, Widerman finally got back on the train and continued on with the troupe.
As we stood on the platform watching the train disappear into the night with the usual puffing and belching of clouds of steam that went with railroad engines at that time, Tom smiled. "Well, Olive, I guess we're on our own."
I nodded and returned his smile. I knew we'd get there.
We went into the Union Depot to get a hack to take us to a hotel. We were both too tired to think about the future, but I'll admit I was happy for there seemed to be no other move than to return to the ranch in Oklahoma.
This dream of mine was to last only a few moments, for hardly had we stepped into the depot and started looking around when a tall, wiry young man came up to us. He grinned and extended his hand to Tom.
"Well, I'll be! Tom Mix!"
Tom's face lighted up. "Charlie Tipton!" he exclaimed. "What in heck are you doing here?"
"I might ask you the same question," said Charlie. He turned to me questioningly.
"My wife Olive," introduced Tom.
Charlie shook hands with me. There was a twinkle in his eyes. "Never thought any woman could hog-tie Tom," he said, "but I can see, ma'am, that it wouldn't be hard for you to do it."
I laughed. "Can't you teach Tom to pay compliments like that? "
"Don't you go spoiling her," warned Tom. "But anyway, Charlie, what are you doing here? "
"Waiting for the next train to Seattle," Charlie told him. "There's some doings up at the West Washington Fair Grounds in about three weeks. Thought I might line up something for myself up there." Charlie Tipton was one of the top riders of the West. In 1908 he had won several events in the Cheyenne Frontier Days Celebration.
Tom turned to me. "Remember my ambition about havin' our own show, Olive? I reckon this might be it. The Fair Grounds up there would be a fine spot to open up."
The result was that before the train arrived to take us to Seattle, Tom and Charlie Tipton were partners in some nebulous Wild West show to be formed in Seattle.
I told Tom that I was dead tired and would take a nap on one of the benches. He had suggested going to a nearby bar to get a glass of beer.
Tom gave me some money to buy the tickets and he and Charlie left the depot.
It was going to be an hour before the Seattle train would be made up, so I relaxed on the bench until the caller announced that the train was ready. I boarded the train to continue my sleep, naturally thinking Tom and Charlie would get on too and look for me.
Suddenly I awoke and looked around. The train was moving, but there was no sign of Tom and Charlie. I made a tour of the coaches and questioned the conductor. They were not on the train.
At the next station stop the conductor contacted the Denver station and told me that Tom and Charlie would be coming on the next train and that I was to wait at the Seattle depot.
When later Tom and Charlie joined me, Tom had a hangdog look. "Guess we just got to talking," he said, "and forgot about train time."
"And I guess you had more than one glass of beer," I retorted. I couldn't help laughing.
Charlie, Tom and I scoured the city of Seattle in an effort to find talent for our forthcoming Wild West show to open at the fair grounds. The weather had been terrible, full of torrential rains, and no one was at all certain that the Fair would draw crowds.
I took a number of looks at the gloomy skies and was ready again to say, "Let's go home." But Tom ran into an old friend by the name of Ezra Black, a former rancher Tom had worked for in Montana. He was now a Washington lumber dealer, and a rich man. When he heard about the show he said he'd like to invest some money in it. This made me feel a little bit better, as I didn't have much faith in the venture anyway.
We had nine days to organize and rehearse a show that, when it was finished, included a troupe of sixty-five persons. It was a do-or-die venture, and if I had had time to stop to look at it with an objective eye I'm sure I would have gone down with a gasp of defeat.
Tom kept us going through those almost sleepless days and nights of grind. His nerves must have been frayed, too, but his smile never left his face. People, of course, just keep right on going when they have a rock of confidence to look at for inspiration, so we all just kept plugging away during the endless rehearsals.
Tom's gentle but firm managing hand had everything in order by the time the opening performance came up.
The Tom Mix Wild West Show opened in the midst of a heartless downpour. The Western Washington Fair Grounds was a tarry ooze from previous rains, and new downpours kept large numbers of persons away from the place. We opened to a half-empty house the first day.
The spectators cheered the show. It was an excellent exhibition despite the fact that it had been put together with such frantic haste.
Tom did all the riding, shooting and roping tricks he'd brought down the house with in the Widerman show. Charlie performed the riding stunts that had made him a champion rider of the West. And Tom and Charlie together put on the only act of the show that had a non-Western flavor to it. Tom had conceived the idea that a joust might add variety; so he and Charlie, at the high point of the show, mounted horses at opposite ends of the tent and hurtled toward each other with long blunt-ended poles, just as knights had done in the jousting contests of the Age of Chivalry in England.
Of course one of them was always knocked off his horse by the other's pole. My heart always drummed during this act, even though I knew that both Tom and Charlie wore heavy armor. It was an act ripe with danger, and any miscalculation with the pole could have sent either of them to the hospital. But Tom was right about the freshness of the act. It stole the show.
We didn't stop there. In an effort to add real spectacle to the show, we employed forty Blackfoot Indians to engage in mock but terribly real-looking battle with the other twenty-five members of our troupe. The Indian wars had been over for twenty years, but audiences still thrilled to see them re-created.
The show really contained a great part of the breath of early Western life. There was a stagecoach act in which the Indians attacked and were repulsed by Tom and Charlie. And there was emphasis on the cowboy's role in Tom's bulldogging act.
Bulldogging is another feat that looks easy but is not. You bulldog a running steer by jumping off your horse, gripping the steer's neck and horns, and twisting its neck until the steer loses balance and falls. It takes precision timing and a great deal of strength to accomplish this trick, and the results are unpredictable. But Tom brought down the steer with each attempt. A Seattle newspaper sent out a photographer to take his picture doing his bulldogging. The picture appeared with the caption: TOM MIX-WORLD'S CHAMPION BULLDOGGER.
I thought this publicity would be a stimulant to business. But it wasn't. It just kept on raining.
"Don't worry, Olive," Tom said. He still had that smile of confidence fastened on. "We'll come out of this all right."
I wasn't so sure. And my spirits plunged a little farther down with each passing hour of rain. So I wasn't in a very good humor when a very lovesick girl showed up to shower her affection on Tom.
The girl was a prototype of the feminine fans that were, in addition to his juvenile fans, to adore Tom in the idol age of the screen a few years later. The girl had seen Tom in the show the night before and had immediately fallen in love with him.
She sneaked into the tent the next morning when Tom was holding a special rehearsal of the quadrille performers. Tom was a perfectionist, and he hadn't been satisfied with the quadrille routine that was performed on horseback.
He said, "If you give the people something that's less perfect than you can make it, you're not giving them their money's worth."
So Tom was busy getting the quadrille routine perfected that morning. This type of dancing on horseback was related to the elaborate ballet on horseback which became so popular in the big circuses of later years.
I danced into the tent after the rehearsal broke up, just at the moment the girl came out of her watching place and advanced toward Tom. She couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen, but her stride held the firmness of a woman intent upon her purpose.
"You're wonderful! " she gasped to Tom.
Tom saw me then, standing rigid with anger at the rear of the tent. Every nerve exploded in me when Tom grinned and to vex me- said to the titian-haired girl, "Well, it's nice of you to say that."
The girl beamed. "Oh, you like me already, don't you?" she squealed. "I knew you would. I wanted to stay and meet you right after the show last night-but Mother wouldn't let me. And I had to sneak out this morning to come here-"
She raced on breathlessly while I advanced toward them. I think I got there just about the moment she was planning to fling herself at Tom and hug him.
Tom said, "This is my wife."
The face that was rosy with excitement suddenly blanched. "You mean you're married?" the girl gasped.
"He's real married," I said.
I took the girl's arm and led her right out of the tent. I was much more gentle with her than Tom had been with the man who'd been overattentive to me in Amarillo, but I wasn't feeling exactly friendly toward her, and I wasn't disappointed to see her disappear forlornly around the corner. When I returned, Tom was convulsed. I finally laughed too. With all the tension of the show growing in us like fungus, we needed something to laugh at.
If my nerves had not been upended, I wouldn't have dealt with the girl so peremptorily. Already, in our few months of marriage, I had seen many girls look at Tom with loving eyes. Many more of them were to take long looks at him in the future. I soon learned there was nothing to worry about. Tom reserved his long looks for me alone.
With only two days left to show a profit or loss, we made a tally of our books. The picture was very bleak, though we had made enough to pay our performers and to return most of Mr. Black's investment. Tom insisted on this, although Black was a rich man and had taken a gamble along with us. Tom said, "When I take in a partner who puts up money, I like to see him get it back."
That evening we had a good turnout for the show. Though the skies glowered all day, the rain held off. Right as the show ended, however, the ominous thumping started in the heavens. The audience and performers hurried out to avoid the cloudburst that was sure to come.
The fair grounds emptied rapidly that evening, but Tom and I stayed on at the tent to tabulate the box-office receipts, counting the money by lantern light. Maybe it was our fatigue and our breathless eagerness to see how much we'd taken in that evening that caused us to be careless. Anyhow, we didn't have a gun anywhere near us when three men holding guns burst in on us.
The tallest one seemed to be the leader. "Won't be no trouble if you hand over that money quietlike," he declared.
It was three against two and, besides, Tom and I were weaponless.
"Give them the money," I told him. "It's no use."
"Sure, I'll give it to them," Tom said through clenched teeth. Simultaneously his boot went up like a released arrow. The leader cried out in pain as Tom's boot caught his gun wrist- and sent the gun hurtling into the air. I reached immediately for the lantern and doused it 'Just as two shots rang out. I was crying and praying at the same time, hoping against hope that neither of the robbers' bullets had found Tom. It seemed a futile hope, though, for they were almost on top of Tom when they fired.
But when I heard chairs fold up like accordions as bodies fell on them, I knew Tom was still in the fight. I controlled my hysteria and tried to get in close enough to help. I could see almost nothing. There is nothing more terrifying than a fight in darkness. Every sound was magnified a thousand times. I kept thinking that every groan, every cry of pain, was Tom's. I flinched with every crack of a fist, for I was certain that Tom was being beaten to death by the robbers. I screamed and kept on screaming but no one came, for our part of the fair grounds had been deserted for at least a half-hour.
When a body crashed near me, I saw it was one of the robbers. As he rose to renew his attack on Tom, who was made all the more vulnerable by the white show outfit he was wearing, I brought a folding chair down on his head with every ounce of strength I could muster. That put him out of the fight for good.
There were still two more. They kept lashing at Tom like octopus' tentacles and Tom kept lashing back. One robber attacked him from the front while the other simultaneously came at him from the rear. I couldn't get close to either of them, though I had another chair ready to bring crashing down if the opportunity arose.
I wondered if it would ever end; it seemed as though we had been swirling in a black morass for hours.
It did end, and quite abruptly. Tom flung himself on the leader and smashed him to the ground. Though the other robber was thumping on Tom from behind, the leader was rendered unconscious.
That was enough for the back-clinger. He ran. He got through the tent exit and was quite a way down the road by the time Tom found one of the guns on the ground and went after him. Tom yelled at the robber to stop; but the man declined to return willingly to the scene of his torture. Tom fired and hit him in the leg. In a fitting climax to our tempestuous evening, the cloudburst broke in all its fury as Tom dragged his limping victim back to the tent.
With the lantern on again I was able to see, and I was shocked to discover how badly Tom was injured. His face was caked with drying blood. Amazingly he had fought the entire battle of flailing fists with a deep bullet wound scorching his hand. Even this bad injury didn't keep him out of the final performance of the show the next day. Fortunately, his gun and roping hand had escaped.
Tom and I tied the robbers, intending to hand them over to the police. But before we left I picked up every last dollar of the box-office receipts. With the impact of a cyclone the fight had picked up the money in its vortex and had scattered it all over the tent.
After the robbers were delivered and Tom's wounds had been dressed we returned to our hotel room and I finally had time to take stock of everything that had happened.
"Tom, you could have been killed," I said palely. I was shaking. I could feel my heart turning over in me.
Tom took my hand and pressed it. "I wasn't killed. And you weren't hurt. That's what's important."
"But taking that chance-"
"I had to take it, Olive," Tom said. Then he dropped off to sleep from sheer exhaustion.
I lay awake for a long time. If Tom and I were settled down on the ranch, I thought, things like this wouldn't happen. I cried myself to sleep.
The Fair ended the next day in an explosion of rain. The final performance brought in enough money to square our accounts. The weather had been against us all along, but there was one sweet side to the picture: we had put on a good show and Tom had proved his competence as an impresario and showman. We had accomplished something.
Nevertheless I was discouraged. The excitement of the battle in the tent and my all but sleepless night, not to mention the fatiguing business of packing up the show, had left me exhausted and short-tempered. Somehow I felt I just couldn't face going through it all again. I blew up.
Tom sighed. "I don't blame you for feeling that way, Olive. I've put you through a lot the last couple of months. I know it hasn't been much fun for you-all this work and insecurity-"
I felt bitterly ashamed of myself. Here I was whining and ready to give up again, and had not even given him a fair chance to show what he could really do.
"I don't really want to go home." My shame drove me to say that.
But we were never destined to go home at that time, for a few days later a letter came to me from an old friend of our family's, Will Dickey. He had been putting on a show and touring the country. Apparently from what he wrote he was now deeply interested in motion pictures, and was under contract to the Selig Polyscope Company in Chicago. It was the biggest picture company in the business at that time.
Will Dickey knew about Tom and wanted me to see if I couldn't persuade him to come to Flemington, Missouri, and act in some new Western pictures they were going to make.
I didn't know how Tom would take the idea of getting out of show business to go into moving pictures, about which he knew absolutely nothing. To my surprise he agreed enthusiastically.
"And we'll stop over in Cheyenne for the Frontier Days celebration," he announced. "Maybe I can pick up some prize money there."
Cheyenne, Wyoming, in those days was a wild and woolly city. Aside from being a terminal point for three railroads, it also boasted a United States Army fort- Fort Russell, where Negro recruits were trained. Cheyenne boasted probably one of the biggest red-light districts in the entire West, with many colored prostitutes to take care of "Army requirements." On the other hand it had some flourishing manufacturing plants and was the first city in the United States to be lighted by electricity.
Tom and I registered at the Plains Hotel, which was the outstanding one in the city. The rooms were immense and it seemed as if we had moved into a ballroom. We were lucky to get a room at all, however, as the city was filled with visitors who had arrived for the big celebration and rodeo. In those days the celebration of Frontier Days was still being held on a prairie north of town and the events consumed only a day or two of time. It has since expanded to an elaborate one-week fiesta and attracts thirty or forty thousand outside spectators.
Nowadays the tide of fiesta spirit sweeps into Cheyenne weeks before the actual celebration begins, when the citizens start dressing in the colorful costumes of their pioneer forebears. A large contingent of Sioux Indians comes in from a Dakota reservation to demonstrate tribal rites. There are color-splashed parades and a huge pageant featuring the development of transportation in America. These elaborate hors d'oeuvres precede the daily events, which include calf roping, bulldogging, bronco- and steer-riding, the cowgirls' relay race, the Indian squaw race, the cowboys' pony race, wild horse races, and military maneuvers.
In 1909 there were no hors d'oeuvres, but the basic structure of the contests of skill was much the same as it is now.
Tom had put his name down for the calf-roping contest and the bronco-busting contest. The prize money for the former was small, but the prize for the bronco contest was one hundred dollars.
Tom got Number 1 in the drawing for riders who would participate in the first day's events. His horse was to be a bronco named Sabile.
Clayton Banks, who was staying at the Plains Hotel, had won first money the year before so I approached him, introduced myself and asked:
"What kind of horse is this Sabile?
"Mrs. Mix, he's the crookedest horse in the whole world!"
I didn't tell him that Tom made a specialty of overcoming crooked horses. They are the ones that turn and twist with savage intent to throw their rider.
Being lucky to get a box seat in the grandstand, I found myself in an excellent viewing position. There was only one other occupant of the box, the manager of the Plains Hotel. I didn't know him, but I recognized him from having seen him at the hotel.
In the next box was seated Charlie Irwin who put on the show, a massive man weighing close to three hundred pounds.
It was nearing time for the bronco-busting contest. Charlie Irwin had been studying the program. He turned around and exclaimed, "I'll bet five hundred dollars that this boy from Oklahoma doesn't ride Sabile three jumps! "
I dug into my "grouch bag," which (like most women in those days) I carried in the bosom of my dress. Taking out five one-hundred-dollar bills, I looked over at Charlie Irwin and said, "I'll take that bet, Mr. Irwin! "
The big man looked at me in surprise. He did not know that the rider of Sabile was my husband.
"Who are you?" he demanded gruffly.
"Don't matter who I am. I've got five hundred dollars to cover that bet. Put up or shut up."
He kept looking at me without speaking.
Turning to the manager of the hotel, I said, "Would you mind holding the stakes, Mr. Baker?"
"If Mr. Irwin is serious, I'll be delighted," said Mr. Baker with a smile.
Charlie Irwin passed over a five-hundred-dollar bill and Mr. Baker took it and my five hundreds. He winked at me as he did so. Evidently he knew that I was Tom's wife.
Although I had confidence Tom would win, I was a little shaky as I watched them blindfold Sabile in front of the grandstand and saw Tom standing there with his usual calm expression. In those days there were no chutes to put the horses in prior to riding them.
From the first moment Tom dropped on that horse it looked as though the contest would go strictly against him. Tom tightlegged the horse at once and attached his hand to the buckstrap like iron to a magnet. But the horse went into an immediate frenzy in its twisting attempts to unfasten from its back what it considered to be a loathsome burden. It reared and plunged and shook and bounced and danced; and the centrifugal force alone would have hurled any but the most extraordinary rider from the saddle.
But Tom clung on under the terrific impact of the jolts and by the time he finished the mile stretch the horse was running and not bucking.
When it was over I smiled over at Charlie Irwin as Mr. Baker passed over the thousand dollars- my five hundred and the winnings.
"It was worth it," remarked Charlie Irwin. "I never thought the guy could do it!"
The next day I had a perverse desire to show Charlie Irwin that I was "somebody" and that Tom Mix was my husband; also that I would still eat if Tom didn't win the prize money. For on that very morning I had received my royalty check from the government. While Tom and I had been wandering around the country oil had been discovered on our ranch land, and the government was required to pay royalties on land deeded to the Indians, in the event of oil discoveries. I had already signed a voucher for the money due to me in
Seattle and sent it on to Washington with instructions to mail my check to the Plains Hotel in Cheyenne.
Armed with the check, I called on Charlie Irwin at the rodeo headquarters. "Mr. Irwin, I wonder if you would mind endorsing a check for me? "
He glowered down at me. "I wouldn't endorse a check for nobody."
This was what I expected. I held the check under his nose.
He looked at it. "You don't need no endorsement on this it's a Treasury check!"
We got to talking and I told him I was Tom's wife. This was the start of a friendship that lasted throughout the years. He was a bluff man, but when you got to know him he was big at heart. More than one impoverished family owed their existence to his generosity.
The celebration was over and it was time for us to fulfill our engagement with Will Dickey and the Selig Polyscope Company.
Olive Stokes Mix, with Eric Heath, The Fabulous Tom Mix, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc.), 1957, pages 40-67.
© 1999, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)
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