Chapter 3

Our first show! We pulled into Hawkinsville about an hour ago, and Jake started driving his wagon up and down the only street in the town slowly to attract attention. Sally suggested that I drive and he play his harmonica while she stood on the seat between us waving at the people we passed to attract attention. Jake liked the idea, so that's what we did.

We went back and forth like that for a while, and then I drove to the outskirts of town and helped Jake set up the stage that folded out from the rear of the wagon, sort of like a folding tailgate. Steps attached to each side of the stage so that it was easy to move from the stage to the ground and back. We started off the show with Jake playing his harmonica and Sally waving to the crowd.

Sally was wearing a dress that she had picked up in the last town we passed through and had modified it a bit while we were on the road headed to Hawkinsville. I don't know exactly what she had done to that dress, but it was downright scandalous the way she looked in it, yet it fit perfectly with the kind of clothes that any respectable woman would wear. While Sally was wearing that dress, all a man had to do was look at her to start feeling the urge.

It didn't take long for a crowd to develop, since Jake had been through here on previous trips, so they knew that he put on a good show, even when he was the only one to perform. At the moment, there were only men in the crowd, so Sally started dancing her special sexy dance—I don't know what else to call it. But, when she danced, there wasn't a real man in the audience who did not start to sweat and think lewd thoughts. She could only dance for about 10 minutes before she got too tired to keep going, so she took a break, and Jake called me to the stage.

Jake had worked out this routine where he made me out to be the best shot with a pistol in Texas, and he challenged any man in the audience to out shoot me. The catch was that it cost a dime for each bullet I fired, payable in advance. That doesn't sound like much, but it can mount up fast. The deal was that a man from the audience could buy so many shots from me and he would earn a dollar for every shot I missed. So he could put up 10 cents and stood to win a dollar if I missed the target.

There was no cheating in this. An honest target was set up 40 feet away and I drew and fired as fast as I could. The target was a metal plate 6 inches in diameter. That was far enough away that you could hear the bullet hit the target, so there was no question about it. We had several people in the audience step off the distance, so everybody could see that there was no cheating on the distance. Every person there knew enough about guns to know that this was not an easy shot; most of the people in the audience would have a hard time hitting the target once with five shots, taking all the time they needed to aim.

It didn't take long before Jake had drummed up about 10 people who wanted to bet that I was going to miss. Most men put up a dime, but one man bet a whole 50 cents. We made sure that everybody was standing in a safe place, but could see the action, and Jake called out for my first shot. I drew and fired in what looked like one quick motion: CRACK! TING! A hit. That man stepped aside and I reloaded as he was moving out of the line. Jake called out. CRACK! TING! Another man walked away shaking his head.

The last man in line was the one who had put up the 50 cents. I was sure that he was expecting me to miss this time because my hand would be tired. Of course, he had no idea how much my hands and wrists had been strengthened by climbing in the rigging and setting the sail. Jake built up the suspense by asking the man if he wanted me to draw five times or fire all five shots as fast as I could after drawing just once.

He chose the five quick shots, so I played a little theater myself by flexing my fingers and taking a deep breath before I faced the target. I did not need to do either one, but I thought that it helped to build up the suspense. I turned to face the target, stared at it for a few seconds, and drew. I cocked, aimed, and fired as fast as I could. I was not the least bit surprised when all five bullets hit the target; I would have been surprised if one had not clanked off the bullseye.

The man was a good loser: he walked over to me and asked to shake my hand! I was pleased to do it. He then asked if he could try. Jake thought fast and said that he could, but the rules would change. There would be no charge for the bullets he fired, but he would pay us one dollar for every miss and we would pay him one dollar for every hit. He thought for a moment and nodded. I stepped back to give him plenty of room and he drew and fired five times just the way I had done it. He hit twice and missed three times, so he paid Jake $1 and walked back to the crowd, also shaking his head.

Jake tried to drum up more business for the shooting, but nobody would risk any more money on that. After about five minutes, he played his harmonica again and Sally danced. By now, there were some women in the crowd, so she left out the sexy movements, but the crowd was still entranced. She got a lot of applause, and she deserved it.

She danced for about 15 minutes and then stepped down. Jake launched into his selling routine for Dr. Mysto's Magic Elixer. He sold it for $1 per bottle, and I was amazed that he was able to sell 63 bottles of the stuff. Later, he admitted to Sally and me that he usually was lucky to sell 20 bottles, and he attributed the change to Sally's dancing and my shooting. We celebrated by spending the night in the local hotel; Sally spent the night in Jake's room, but I was the lucky one—I had a room all to myself.

We moved on and put on at least one show per day, sometimes two in the same town. We noticed that the word must have gotten around about my shooting, because we had bigger crowds for the shooting exhibition whenever we did a second show in a town. Jake decided that the opportunity was too good to miss, so we started doing two shows in every town.

We finally had to shut down the medicine show when Jake ran out of bottles! He had made almost $1,000 selling his elixir, and we had made over $200 with the shooting exhibitions. Of course, Sally's dancing made a tremendous difference, but we couldn't put a dollar value on that. Anyway, we headed back to Austin to pick up more bottles and labels; Jake could make his elixir anywhere he could get corn whiskey, red pepper, and brown dye.

This time, Jake tripled his order for bottles and labels. He stocked up on pepper and dye; he could get corn whiskey at any saloon. He made up 500 bottles and we started back out over a different route. The first time I was with him, we had headed east, but this time he wanted to travel toward Laredo, since he had never been there. Sally was willing, and I couldn't care less, so we left one morning bright and early.

The first town we came to, we got there in the morning and put on two shows. Sally's dancing was its usual barn burner, and my shooting did right well. Jake sold 89 bottles between the two shows; that wasn't a record, but it sure paid all of the expenses for the whole trip! We had to work out a new schedule. Since we put on two shows in every town, we had to travel the next day and had no time for any shows that day. So it worked out that we traveled on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and put on shows Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Sunday was a holiday. Man, this was the life!

We had run out of bottles by the time we reached Laredo! Jake asked around and found a supplier of bottles and labels—he'd even put the labels on for us. Jake ordered 3,000 more bottles, and we were back in business. We headed north out of Laredo and did very well at the towns we stopped at. We were averaging 80 bottles per town! At this rate, we'd last about three months before we ran out of bottles, again.