DORA HAND: Dead or Alive!

The Alternate Story of the Mysterious Dora Hand. ********************************************************** ************************************************************************************************

The greatest enigma I can write of- and you can read about, in the annals of the wild and woolly West- is the curious life and death of Fannie Keenan. And I should use the plural, and say lives and deaths, of the most intriguing case of true-life “multiplicity” I have encountered. Legend has it that Fannie, aka Dora Hand, was a “variety actress,” a term used loosely to describe any woman who danced, sang - or both, in saloons in the mid- 1870's... and in this intriguing mystery, one who made a fateful decision to go West... and her first- and last stop was Dodge City. *************************************** ************************************************************************************************* She was 26... No 34. And from Boston... or St Louis... some place in the east, perhaps Memphis. She was primarily a singer, her gifts fitting best within places of worship... or a ballet dancer as some newspapers suggested. She was qhite famous... but there were no reviews of her talents in the West, and little evidence today that she performed to secular audiences anywhere but Dodge City. She was married, but she was getting divorced, but she was thought by some to be engaged to the mayor of Dodge... She was accidently murdered by a jealous assassin, but he was acquitted for lack of any evidence. She was greatly loved and respected by all... but there was no monument put on her grave... BUT WAIT, maybe there is, but we have no idea where that is either... Perhaps a marker does stand over her bones, silently in the shadows of some overgrown Victorian cemetery... with a name we would not recognize, and dates which defy our presumptions... ************************************************************************************************** Not surprisingly, other writers have struggled with the story of Dora Hand, always (predictably) pulling great tragedy out of the circumstances of her death, but I have trouble doing that... because I see something else. And I believe everybody has missed the truth about Dora Hand... and I will try to tell you why. But in order to do that- I may have to make some stuff up... ************************************************************************************************** Part of the misunderstanding surrounding Dora was created by the participants in her “last days on earth.” Part of it has been expanded by writers who have loved mourning her death, and loved hating her killer, who by all accounts was broadly recounted as a treacherous villain. Story-tellers of all stripes have milked Dora for all she was worth... and all of them have ignored the signs of a great deception, perhaps several of them, which have bound Dora like a mummy in a glass coffin, preserved for perpetual mourning, a sleeping beauty who will never wake up. ************************************** But I think the whole drama may have been a big snow job... and my research suggests that Fannie did, after all, wake up, so to speak.

Records available today in census and other government records, coupled with infinite newspaper coverage throughout the world, make almost any semi-public life in the Victorian era traceable. But there is so much information tangled up in the world-wide web that it is easy to find a half-dozen persons with the same name... even in the same region, during the same time period, who overlap enough to make identification between them very tough. This keeps writers from ever really researching them. But playing "history detective" we can sometimes find the threads which weave a certain person and their story into just enough of a fabric to discover some amazing possibilities. *********************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************** Unfortunately, that is all they are... since nobody can set the record straight after so many years. And that is what this article is about- the possibilities... This is the alternate story, based on heretofore unavailable records and resources, of the western phantom damsel, we know as “Dora Hand.” **************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************** All we know for sure, or think we know, is what the newspapers of the day told us... and especially the Dodge City press; that Dora Hand showed up in Dodge City, supposedly after making a name for herself in St. Louis and Cincinnati. She had supposedly been recruited to come and sing at a couple of venues there, and the legend is that she was known personally by at least one person before she arrived: Another singer/actress named Fannie Garretson. When Garretson had supposedly known her, she was then known by her stage name, Fannie Keenan. Fannie Keenan was considered a very attractive woman, with a wonderful voice and a magnetic stage presence. She supposedly came from the east, some thought Boston, and was quite refined, but there was a mystery surrounding her from the day she arrived. ************************************************************************ *********************************************************************************************** In order to fathom her life, I dug into every scrap I could unearth in genealogy and newspaper websites. The first Fannie Keenan to appear in the news during this era was a “Fanny” Keenan (with a y) from Canada who became a nun of the Order of St. Dominic in 1869, and thus was renamed “Sister Mary.” In 1873, another Fannie (or Annie?) Keenan was shot and killed at the Transit House in Chicago by a fellow named James Brady. So two contemporary Fannies were making news and yet out of commission before our story even begins... As we will see, it was dangerous to be Fannie Keenan! *********************************************** *********************************************************************************************** As the ringmaster of this circus, I have to point out the obvious, so that it will not be missed, that much investigation into any persons named Fannie Keenan in Victorian era newspapers did not produce stories about bake sales, or Women's Suffrage, or much that was pleasant or domestic, but a litany of either singing performances or repeated violence and tragedy. If these were different persons, they uncannily had similar talents and proclivities. And rarely did newspaper dates overlap- and then when they should have. ************************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************

Research in Newspapers.com also found two main places where a highly praised young singer named Fannie Keenan had performed repeatedly, and with rave reviews. Fannie Keenan had performed for adoring audiences in Memphis, Tennessee in 1872. Fannie Keenan also had a devoted following in Rutland, Vermont, from 1874 to 1877, where she was known as “the Queen of Song.” Interestingly, this same title appears behind the name of one of Dora's fellow performers in Dodge. And then Fannie Keenan, Vermont's "Queen of Song," apparently graduated from a girl's school in June of 1878, near the head of her class. During this same period it is conceivable that there were two singers east of the Mississippi performing and recorded under the same name, but it would not be preposterous to suggest that they were one and the same, and that one of them, (or both of them) might have been our Fannie of Dodge City fame. ******************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************ It should be noted that as the news of the Dodge Fannie emerged, the others subsided. ****************************** ************************************************************************************************* It may be a another coincidence, but about the same time Fannie supposedly began performing in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys (of which there is very scant record), a steamboat was christened the Fannie Keenan, and set afloat in the Illinois River in 1875. The name of this boat sparked my curiosity. Had the name come first, and then some frontier singer took the name as a stage name? Or had one of the eastern singing Fannies inspired the naming of the vessel? Or perhaps both were true. But if the boat inspired the alias of a budding professional singer, then her real name was yet another name which we do not know. And we will probably never know, and that was probably the case.

When Fannie was murdered in Dodge, the news of her horrible death spread across America, as bad news about entertainers always does. The Dodge City Times sent out a well-preserved and oft-repeated story, about the famous actress murdered in her sleep, probably by a gunman on a horse... and the story was picked up everywhere... as well as the pathos; “She was a prepossessing woman, and her artful and winning ways brought many admirers within her smiles and blandishments. If we mistake not, Dora Hand had an eventful history. She had applied for a divorce from Theodore Hand. After a varied life, the unexpected death messenger cuts her down in the full bloom of gayety (sic) and womanhood...” ***************************************************************** *********************************************************************************************

The story was run with great interest, coast to coast, and yet in the two towns where she was supposedly the most famous... very little was said. The Cincinnati Daily Star gave her murder one sentence. One Kansas newspaper headline even dismissed her death as just another murder of a “Cyprian.” You know, a person from Cypress where many women sell their sex. *** ********************************************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************** These treatments from non-Dodge news sources continued to undermine if not contradict Dodge-originated spin on the event. This was my first clue, and if I "mistake not," something was missing, even wrong with the accepted accounts of this exceptional woman and her demise. I have often found that the most objective news about any town was printed someplace outside of the grip of local political powers... ********************************************************************************************** And what did the adoring Dodge editors know about Dora's “eventful history” and her “varied life”? They did not say exactly, but they certainly alluded that there was much more to know... All good I'm sure. They obviously knew more than their disinterested peers in the cities where she allegedly came from. Strangely, even though Dora Hand was said to be famous in St. Louis and Cincinnati, probably as Fannie Keenan, they knew and said little, and cared even less. The truth about Dora ignored from that day forward was that she was only "famous" in Dodge City... and that after her death- and only because she was murdered. Dora Hand became the poster girl for the anti-gun violence faction in Kansas. ********************************************* ********************************************************************************************* The St. Louis Globe-Democrat offered a bit more of its own editorial response... but chose to run the full Dodge account which came over the wire. It added one and an important clue, that Fannie had played at the “Tivoli” (the "Tivoli" in St. Louis). **********************************************************************************************

The Tivoli, one of the few names we have of any professional venue which allegedly featured a performance by our Fannie Keenan, outside of Dodge, and west of the Mississippi, was a strictly German-speaking establishment, and even ran all of its advertisements in German. It would have been a sort of farm team for immigrant talent... in those days known as "Hurdy Gurdy girls." German-born Hurdy Gurdy girls were to dance halls what Puerto Rican-born youth are to professional baseball. But the Tivoli never ran any advertisements about Fannie during her performances there, and in fact there was not a single advertisement or review about the “famous” Fannie Keenan in St. Louis or Cincinnati. ***************************************** ********************************************************************************************** “Famous” artists of that time certainly had a traceable path through news sources; physical evidence of multiple performances, where they were headlined, and the subsequent glowing reviews which were usually published the next day... But Fannie had none. I believe that the mention of the Tivoli suggests that the real Fanny Keenan had some kind of connection to German-Americans. The above article about her death, all in German, was run in a Baltimore paper. Perhaps Fannie was a Hurdy Gurdy girl done good, and "famous" among German Americans in Maryland? Or perhaps she was so famous, that all the venues where she played just depended on word of mouth...??? Or was her alleged fame a total fabrication... and the first of many? ************************ ********************************************************************************************** One thing we know, if Fannie Keenan went West to be an entertainer, she probably had to shed that fashionable plaid dress and bustle we always see in the only known photograph of her. Below is my offering of what she might have looked like on stage, as a saloon entertainer in the mid-70's.

Even though Dora Hand is one of the most famous entertainers among the legends of the Old West, her celebrated entertainment career was sketchy at best. It was the Dodge newspapers who first suggested that Fanny Keenan was a famous, successful artist from St. Louis. And that "fact" was committed to print after she was dead. I believe that when the news first broke, the Dodge editors got carried away in their creativity, increasing the irony of her tragic death by exaggerating her status, and thus increasing the loss to mankind... and of course their newsstand sales. But their interest in the story soon inexplicably fizzled. ********************************************************************************************* The Topeka State Journal carried the story of the dead songstress, but with a certain cold objectivity... “Her proper name is supposed to be “Dora Hand” and she is well known in St. Louis. She was a brunette, very fine looking, and about 26 to 27 years of age...” Where they got these details is a good question. Keenan was supposed to be 8 years older... Where did they get that figure? The Topeka paper did say she was famous, because the Dodge paper had said so... but her good looks and youth had not been expressed so authoritatively before. Was the legend of Dora Hand already growing wings? Or was there better knowledge in Topeka about the new star than in Dodge City? Or was there just total confusion? *************************************** **********************************************************************************************

Bizarrely, Dora Hand's divorce proceedings went on after she had been murdered, just as if nothing had happened... A Leavenworth newspaper included a legal announcement of the divorce on the judge's docket in January of 1879, three months after her murder. Was the Leavenworth paper just guilty of lazy reporting, or was there truly a divorce proceeding involving a woman known to be dead? This made me think. What if this suggested a very different outcome for Fanny Keenan? *********************** ********************************************************************************************** Dead or alive, Dora Hand wanted her divorce! ********************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************** And so we should not be surprised if Fannie continued to sing as well ... in Vermont as late as 1881. ********** ********************************************************************************************** And the violence against Fannie continued too. In January of 1890, The Davenport Democrat reported: “Miss Fannie Keenan of Jacksonville, Ill, who was shot by her negro coachman, Porter, last week, will recover. The scandal connecting Miss Keenan's name with the negro is characterized as an outrage by her acquaintances.” ******************************************* ********************************************************************************************** In case you have not kept track, that is at least three Fannie Keenans shot, two dead, between 1873 and 1890. It seems that Fannies in the east were much safer, and for Fannies in the Mississippi Valley or in the West, it was OPEN SEASON! ********************************************************************************************** Undeterred by all of the violence hurled against her, Fannie is recorded as entertaining an appreciative audience at an ice cream social in New York in 1895. But finally, Fannie's flirtations with death were climaxed in 1897 with her supposed suicide in Fall River, Massachusetts, when she was found dead under her two-story window. The last word was they were searching for her son... to let him know. The death was ruled at first as a suicide... But I wonder... ************************************** ********************************************************************************************** From what can be reconstructed, Fannie never stayed anywhere for very long... and apparently not long enough for there to be more than a sliver of a trail of newspaper coverage of her supposed performances, where she earned that famous, yet unsubstantiated fame. But given all the killing, and these incidents are just what we know about, one cannot blame her for staying on the move. Fannie Keenan was never a headliner, and that was best, since she seems to have been hunted, but she may have been paid to sing here and there... and been asked to sing at local churches. Certainly her frequency of performances all over the country reduced considerably after her death in Dodge. But there were enough reports to imply that a Fannie Keenan was still alive and singing... and she was reported to be performing again in Vermont in the 1880's.******************************* *********************************************************************************** After a fairly short and lackluster career, Fannie Keenan had supposedly married a man named Theodore Hand, and according to the legend, Fannie stopped performing when she got married and tried to be a good wife. She humbly began the life of "Dora Hand." Perhaps that happened... although there seems to be no record of it. Research on her supposed choice of a husband suggests that she had poor judgment. There were at least two Theodore Hands... one a ner-do-well son from Minnasota whose own father had to sue him over a land loan default... and one a controversial bank embezzler in New York... So no wonder that the marriage did not work out, if it ever really happened. After leaving her husband, whom she claimed was having an affair, for some reason she decided to keep his name and be introduced in Dodge as “Dora Hand"... and start her own affair. If her marriage was just some kind of ruse, it may suggest that Fannie was using the brand and band of marriage for a certain kind of social buffer. There may have been good reasons, and one was simple propriety for Miss Keenan, but the wearing of the Hand name, in the face of renewing her entertainment career, seems... misguided.**************************************************************** **************************************************************************************** Perhaps she simply did not want to create the problem of two Fannies performing in Dodge at the same time. But it did not bother Dora, who was still supposedly legally married, to entertain two male relationaships at the same time... and she supposedly fraternized with the mayor of Dodge, and even sleep in his cottage... and was associated with him so much that many assumed the unlikely- that they were engaged. Desperate times called for desperate measures... Or was this too a ruse, to keep those Texas cowboy mitts off? Meanwhile the advertising in Dodge just called her by her old stage name... so her identity, perhaps intentionally, was as clear as mud. ********************************************************************************************************** ****************************************************************************************** According to the traditional narrative, Dora had only recently decided to start performing again, when she was brought to Dodge in July of 1878. The folks in Dodge were led to believe that she was famous... And she had the looks and the voice to pull off that first deception, and perhaps enough acting ability to pull off some more. Everything went well, so well in fact that Fannie, now “Dora” took the town by storm. She was performing for packed crowds at several venues, including the Comique Variety Show at the Lady Gay Hall, and at the Alhambra Saloon, where the town's mayor had an interest. Many of the eligible bachelors in Dodge began to wax their mustaches... including the mayor, who was really too old to even hope for such an angel as the lovely Dora Hand. But as they say, there is no fool like an old fool. ************************************************ ******************************************************************************************* Then again, the mayor may have been a gallant admirer... with purely paternal motives... Either way, plenty of young fools fell in line with Mayor "Dog Kelley", but that was not such a miracle in a hide town on the edge of civilization, with few women and scores of Texas cowboys looking for an object of affection. *********************************************** ******************************************************************************************* Things rocked along, and Dora just continued to sing her heart out, skipping from one venue to the next, saloons, opera houses, and even local churches. She was seen more than once loaning money to a bum, or bringing food or candy to little street urchins. (This sure sounds more like Sister Mary) It seems everything she did just made the men love her all the more. But there was the rub... as the few Dodge City women in town had to endure the town's men so unabashedly starstruck. And one of them may well have been Fannie Garretson. A new bride herself, her husband was quite the lady's man, and the manager of the Comique... which at the time was struggling to survive with all of the competition all over town, which prolific Dora was providing. The Comique had no exclusive agreement with Dora, and it was too late to negotiate. Her fans in the wide-open town would never forgive them if they tightened the screws on her. ************************************************************ *******************************************************************************************

A handsome young Texas cattleman named James "Spike" Kenedy, restoring himself after a trail drive, declared that he was going to marry her. The old fool and the young cowman had already had words about who was most fit to court the lovely Dora, and when he pressed to meet her, the mayor ended the argument by throwing the over-confident cowpoke out of his saloon. And in front of a large crowd. This set a couple of tragic travesties into motion, which surrounded Dora's demise. Maybe... ****** ********************************************************************************************

Fannie Garretson was a veteran entertainer who had married Dick Brown in Deadwood, the year before, where they were performing together. He was a dashing banjo player, and she a veritable nightingale. Both had started their entertainment careers in San Francisco, and then migrated from boom-town to boom-town. Dick was now manager of the Lady Gay Hall, where the Comique variety show performed, and his own talents a star attraction. They pridefully brought the best entertainment in the West to Dodge. This was the Brown's second attempt at a frontier opera house which also offered gambling and “other” popular entertainment. The first had been in Deadwood, but had ended in disaster, when Garretson's live-in boy friend from Cheyenne followed them to Deadwood and, claiming they were still married, accosted them one night during a performance. Banjo Dick shot him dead from the stage. And you can read all about that and him in the following blogs... but it is Brown's deadly temper and his wife's duplicity which I want to extrapolate into an alternative explanation of what actually happened to Dora Hand. ************************** ********************************************************************************************* It is my contention that “Banjo Dick” Brown was running from town to town, avoiding Wells Fargo detectives, U. S. Marshals, and perhaps Pinkerton agents, who wanted to question him about his knowledge, and possible role in a series of robberies in the Black Hills, which happened while he and Fannie were there. Since there were possible connections between Brown and some of the Collins-Bass gang, and they all fled the hills around the same time, the Brown's movements seemed suspicious... and especially since they ended up in New Orleans at about the same time as one of the key members of the gang, after the big heist. Even if Brown had no direct complicity, he might easily lead them to Jack Davis, the only gang member left alive. After Davis disappeared, Brown was their last hope to find him- or the remaining stolen Wells Fargo gold. And if I am right, Dick Brown may have considered that gold his. *********************************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************** We know that after the dust settled, Dick Brown wrote friends in Reno that he was living large in Galveston, and he was leaving for New Orleans and then across the pond to South Africa. But later he and Fannie were performing in Arkansas, before they showed up in Dodge. I believe that Fannie had grown uneasy about Dick Brown after her nightmare in Deadwood, (either he tried to cut her throat, or she tried to commit suicide) but (I think) she knew more than enough to get him arrested and put away; I propose that they separated and she went to St Louis to sing, and while there she contacted authorities about what and whom she knew about the Black Hills crimes. And after this a plan was struck; part of it was that she meet up again with Brown in Dodge with every intention of betraying him. The Pinkertons would take care of the rest. This is what "I see" behind the many inconsistencies and coincidences. ***************************************** ****************************************************************************************** ****************************************************************************************** Here is where I start making things up... filling in players or possible motives to explain what might have actually happened. Call it a scenario. So bear with me, and consider this alternate explanation: A detective agency was called into play, perhaps for Wells Fargo, but maybe Pinkertons, with the idea that an agent would be planted among the entertainers in Dodge to snoop out solid clues. The Pinkertons were known to sometimes use women in their trade, and they located a talented, unknown singer to assume the role of a “famous singer from back east,” someone who could disarm the crustiest pioneer, and she came to Dodge in July of 1878. ( It should be noted that this would dovetail nicely with the Fannie Keenan who just graduated earlier that month from a music school in Vermont) The detectives gave her a false identity, but a name that sounded familiar... Writers have assumed, and implied that Dora Hand and Fannie came together to Dodge, that they were old acquaintances, and that they were good friends. But this was only the beginning of the intended deception. ********************************************* ******************************************************************************************** It is possible that "Fannie" was a Pinkerton agent, even going back to her roles as nun and student... and that she was sent after "graduating" from her schoolgirl assignment in June- right into a much more dangerous situation in Dodge. The detective agency might well have pulled a name out of thin air, one of a steamboat (which had since been sunk!) and then added a tragic marriage to cleverly gain credibility and sympathy, and more importantly a married name to keep men at bay. Her story was just complicated enough to explain her presence in Dodge, which was not exactly an ideal place for such a sweet and attractive young thing... Lastly they lined her up to sing right on stage with Dick Brown and others at the Comique Varieties, featured at the Lady Gay Hall. No doubt, there were experienced, male detectives in plain clothes, planted around for "Dora's" protection. The idea was to lure Dick Brown into confidence. He was a rake who could not resist a beautiful woman, and with the right woman, he might take the bait and give away important information about his travels, his associates, or his past and hopefully even his future. To assuage any concerns of propriety, “Dora” had a lawyer file for her divorce right there in Ford County, to make sure that everyone knew that she was not available, but going to be. And the trap was in place. What could go wrong? ** **************************************************************************************************** It was quite possible, in fact probable that some local authorities were vaguely informed of the sting, to prevent local lawmen from interfering... but there was also the possibility that some of them were somehow involved with Dick Brown as well. There was an uncanny trail led by Dick Brown through the West, and like crows following a leaky wagon of corn, quickly followed by Wyatt Earp and his brothers, and others. Wyatt Earp and his brother Morgan had been in Deadwood about the same time period that the Browns were performing there. Now Brown and the Earps were in Dodge. The Earps had a long rap sheet, always tied up in pimping and gambling, and Wyatt had been accused of graft and even arrested for horse stealing when he was younger, and once even broke out of jail. Deputy Bill Tilghman had been accused of stagecoach robbery. The Pinkertons knew all of these things and did not trust them. Dodge was a treacherous place, and partly because one could not discern the good guys from the bad guys. ***************************************************************************************************** This construction of mine explains some of the mysterious dynamics of this famous unsloved murder. But it depends on another assumption, the superior cunning of "Banjo Dick" Brown. Dick Brown was no fool. He was a real life "Moriarity," probably one of the great criminal masterminds of his century. So much so that he was never caught after any of his schemes, and that is why you have never heard of him. The next three blogs describe in some detail his exploits, which read like the Indiana Jones of western mischief, if not crime. He was brilliant, and, raised in the hazardous streams of the California Gold Rush, he had made a quasi-scientific study of human nature. He had pioneered the use and manipulation of public Media, and being a captian of con-men, he did not trust anyone; Any attractive person who like himself, appeared good and honest- and who might cause the unsuspecting to drop their defenses. That was his game. They say you can't kid a kidder... ***************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************** So as Dodge fell in love with Dora Hand, Brown began to squint and see beyond, and to try to figure out just who she could be. And none of the possibilities were appealing. Numerous performances alongside her revealed that she was classically trained, in other words from a "better" family, and her voice was worthy of real opera. And she was polite to a fault, and unbearably moral. She was too pretty. Too smart, and too talented to be scavenging in a hide town like Dodge. And if she and his wife were such great friends, how come he had never heard about such a stellar woman? He began to ask little questions, and got unsatisfactory replies. Dora was the kind of woman who had nothing to hide, but she kept her cards close to her chest. Brown knew a poker face when he saw one, and his greatest gift was walking right through social barriers, and establishing easy rapport with the highest people in society. But beautiful Dora was a wall. ********************************************************************************************************** *************************************************************************************************** Finally, Dick decided to go find out about Dora another way- on his own, away from the two Fannies who seemed to be up to something... He took a stage east... and found what I have found. In August, Brown stormed the venues in eastern Kansas, and “the wide-a wade proprietor” was seen and reported in Kansas City supposedly “procuring material” for his show. But he was really gathering evidence, and qualifying his canny suspicions. Nobody had heard of “Dora Hand.” There was very little knowledge in the business about “Fannie Keenan.” Wasn't that a steamboat? Dick Brown began to suspect that he was being set up... On the way home, the fox began to form his own trap, and the would-be detectives would be caught instead. The two women knew too much, for if they were actually friends, and were setting him up, then Garretson had probably spilled everything to Dora, and perhaps others. They had to be silenced. ********************************************************************************************** *************************************************************************************************

What few people knew at the time, was that Banjo Dick was a dangerous man. He had been in at least three shooting incidents, two of them deadly, and in one he killed his wife's former lover in front of a crowd of witnesses. He had created or helped create two, maybe three gold rushes around the West, where he sold worthless lots or claims to unwitting wanna-be miners. And he may well have helped to mastermind one of the most successful and outrageous train robberies in history... where over a 350 mile stretch, two bands of robbers stopped and robbed the same train twice in one day! Brown was quite savvy to using the Media to dissiminate disinformation, and so doing confuse law enforcement. He had eluded vengeance or justice before from false reports of his death- from falsely reported Indian attacks, and from shootinsg and even a hanging... His life was a bigger bundle of deceptions than Dora Hand's. ************************* *************************************************************************************************

Brown returned to Dodge, sold out or gave away what he could of his operation, and abandoned his second popular entertainment venue in two years. Right when it was taking off, after just four months in business, and his efforts were earning great reviews from the local papers. It made no sense, but the Comique was no more. The Lady Gay would take up under new management. He would have to act fast, before anyone suspected that he was on to the ladies's confidence scheme. And he did, because the newspaper reported he had flown from Dodge by the first week in September. But this was just to fake an exit. Once again he was using the news to shape perceptions. Thanks to the ever-watchful news professionals, Brown was believed by almost everyone to have “gone to Texas.” ********************************************************************************************************* **************************************************************************************************

Dick Brown's "leaving" was on the same week that one of the biggest thugs in the West came into town- Clay Allison. Allison was a notorious gunfighter, and looking for trouble. Many say it was because Dodge had gone bad, and Texas cowboys were badly treated by the authorities. We have to wonder if Dick brown had not antagonized him some. But whatever his inspiration, Clay Allison was a self-appointed avenger for his fellow Texans. It did not take much to provoke this notorious killer, who always distrusted and bucked authority. He was the kind to call out anybody he did not like and publicly challenge them- or even threaten or kill them. It could be a coincidence, but there could have been no better distraction to attract the attention of the whole town, and especially local lawmen, while something deeper was taking root. Meanwhile local stores reported a rash of break ins. Trouble was in the air and in the back alleys. The Texas cattle drivers were preparing to return home, and there was mischief all over as they bought (or stole!) clothes, hats, boots, guns, and took their last shot of whiskey, and paid their last visits to their Cyprian sweethearts. Allison seemed to be there to make sure they went unaccosted.******************************** **************************************************************************************************** The devil is not only in the details. He supplies them. ********************************************************* **************************************************************************************************** Dodge town-watchers were to be disappointed, because local lawmen stayed out of Allison's way. And local issues were of no concern for the detectives, so Clay Allison had a big time and left satisfied. And Dick Brown stayed out of sight and prepared for a long, hard trip... after some necessary "rat-killing." ************************************************* ************************************************************************************************** If Dick Brown was going to Texas, it was without Fannie Garretson, which was a sudden and major development. Had they not just held court during weeks of successful shows, featuring some of the country's most promising talents? Had he not just been east to “procure materials”? For what? With no hint of what might have happened between them, he was gone, and Garretson was on the street with no venue to earn a living. “Dora” got her a singing gig at Mayor Kelley's place, the Alhambra, and later on a free, clean bed for a few nights in the mayor's cottage, while he was out of town. But it seemed that more than the Brown's marriage was falling apart. Their elaborate detective scheme had just lost its prey. ************************************ ************************************************************************************************** James Kenedy, the smitten young cattleman, left town to go buy horses, a perfectly legal and normal thing for a wealthy trail driver to do. And if Dick Brown was really going south, Kenedy and his cowboys were his best bet to get there safely. It would have made perfect sense to get out of town immediately, before detectives realized that he was savvy to them, and to befriend James Kenedy and even go with him and find a decent mount which could make the trip. *************************** *************************************************************************************************** This in itself would have been a real accomplishment, since it was probably Brown's faro table which had provoked the ire- and gunfire of many of the cowboys... evidenced by several "shoot'em ups" in the short history of the Comique. Dick Brown had to have turned on his greatest charm to convince them to give him a chance to ride along and provide his music on the trail... and maybe an opportunity to win their money back. But all Brown had to do was win over Kenedy, the son of their boss, and the rest would probably follow. The cowboys would actually have loved to get that guy out of town and off somewhere where they could teach him some manners. ************************************************************************************************** *********************************************************************************************** So I propose that Brown proposed that they would go east together and purchase some good horses and pick up the rest of the men on the way back through when they departed for the Texas Panhandle. It was possible that word got back to the detectives that Dick Brown was with Kenedy, graduating the cattleman from public pest to a person of interest. Little could Kenedy know, that by taking up with Brown, he was making himself an enemy of several forces in Dodge, which would unite to almost destroy him. ************************************************************************************************ I believe that Mayor Kelley knew about the detectives, and their scheme, and his legendary protection of Dora, even the providing of sleeping quarters away from the noisy hotel... was more than a foolish old man's infatuation. But all hell broke loose when Kelley sought medical treatment at Fort Dodge, and right before Spike Kenedy, (and I think Dick Brown) passed through Dodge for the last time. And coincidentally Fannie Garretson had moved into the mayor's hut upon Dora's invitation. ******* ************************************************************************************************ For Dick Brown, the wise fox, everything was set up in his favor. He had a good horse to get him out of reach of the investigators. He would return to Dodge one last time, surreptitiously, and with his connections, locate Dora. He would assassinate her, and Garretson too, and if possible, any Pinkertons who might be guarding them. And with him thought to be “out of town,” Dora Hand the Pinkerton spy would probably be alone and vulnerable. There was no telling where Garretson might be. But he and the devil danced a jig when Dick found out they were sleeping in the very same place. He learned that Dora was staying in Mayor Kelley's cottage, and probably told James Kenedy to wait for him at the saloon while he ran some errands. So Kenedy drank and waited... and drank some more. This actually proved to be a valuable alibi. ************************************ ************************************************************************************************* By Four O'clock that morning, all the pieces were in place for a successful, surgical operation, the kind Dick Brown had orchestrated before, but none with such dire consequences. It was a gamble, but that was his stock and trade, so Brown planned to knock on the door and ask for Garretson, and plead to be let in because of some issue... and then quickly do the deed. He rode up, and rapped on the solid wood door. We can easily imagine the conversation at that point... Garretson was the one sleeping closest to the door, and probably yelled from her bed... ****************************************************** *************************************************************************************************** “Who is it?” ************************************************************************************************** *************************************************************************************************** “Fannie, its Dick, let me in!” ******************************************************************************** *************************************************************************************************** “Dick? What are you doing here? We thought you were long gone with those cowboys!” **************************** *************************************************************************************************** “Fannie, let me in, I have to talk to you. NOW.” **************************************************************** *************************************************************************************************** “OK... Dick... but let me put something on...” Fannie reached for her gun. She was well aware that Brown may have figured out her betrayal, and understood that an angry Dick Brown may have come to kill her... and maybe Dora too. She stood trying to think... meanwhile Dora was rustling in the next room. “What on earth do you want?” Acting especially irritated, she screamed, “Do you have any idea... it's four in the morning!” ***************************************************** *************************************************************************************************** Brown lunged at the door, but the hinges held fast. ************************************************************ *************************************************************************************************** “Go away Dick! You are drunk! Get some sleep! I am still upset with you... you... just left me- you son of bitch! Let's talk about it tomorrow.” Fannie hoped that Brown would give up, but he just got meaner... *************************** *************************************************************************************************** “Open up! Or I will turn this shack to splinters with my Winchester! You might as well open up and face me, you double-crosser. You owe me that much... Especially since I killed Shaughnessy for you!” ****************************************** *************************************************************************************************** This argument worked temporarily. But Fannie cocked her .41 derringer and then reached for the door. She was afraid to open it... and afraid not to... But just as she did, a loose board in the floor squeaked and Brown panicked, and he began to fire his gun at the door, over and over... one, two, three, four, five times. Fannie, an old hand in barroom shoot outs, hit the floor instinctively... The bullets went over her... into the walls, into her bed, and even through the walls... for a few seconds she was sure that she was going to be dead. She laid there for a few moments, until she heard Brown's horse clop away. **************************************************************************************************** “DORA!” Fannie sat up, and felt herself all over, as if from a bad dream, “Dora! Are you alright?” **************** **************************************************************************************************** “I think so... what on earth!” Dora felt something warm and slimy on her side... ***************************** **************************************************************************************************** Dick Brown did not go back to pick up James Kenedy. A drunk cowboy would only slow him down. Scratch the friendly trip south, and playing banjo for the Texas cowboys, and singing and gambling around the chuck wagon... and most importantly, safely passing through Comanche country. He now planned to fly through the Texan camp outside of town, use Spike's friendship, grab some food, and find a badger hole somewhere to hide for a few days. ************************************************************ **************************************************************************************************** Now the “jig was up.” The detectives would know, Ira "Dick" Brown was guilty of something, something pretty big, if he tried to kill the woman in his closest confidence. And he would be running for the rest of his life. ***************************** **************************************************************************************************** Dora tentatively stood up in the stinking smoke-fog which was rolling into her bedroom, and found a candle and lit it. “Oh my God!” she gasped. “I've been hit!” Fannie shook off her shock and came to her and made her sit down. **************** ***************************************************************************************************** “Yeessssss,” Fannie reassured, as she put her hand on the wound. “but it's only a flesh wound... that bullet lost its sting coming through the wall.” She plucked the lead ball out of her side, and held it up in the air so Dora could see it in the moonlit room... “It's your lucky day.” The hole began to drip and then to flow... and Fannie ran into the front room, dragging Dora, and stripped the hand towel off of the rung on the wash stand, and pressed it up into Dora's ribs, right under her arm. It filled with blood. “You put your arm down, and DO NOT REMOVE IT. Hold that rag into your ribs until I can get a doctor. Do you understand?” ********************************************************************************************************* ****************************************************************************************************** “I feel kind of dizzy...” ****************************************************************************************** ****************************************************************************************************** “Go back and sit on your bed... Hold the rag Dora, your life might depend on it!” Dora nodded and Fannie ran blindly into the early morning black, half-dressed, barefooted... and suddenly confronted a Pinkerton man, who had been napping across the street. After she quickly explained the situation, he stopped her, grabbed her arm, and not so gently. ********************** ****************************************************************************************************** “Go back in, and tend to her... I will get the doc.” The detective ran like a greyhound down the street and Fannie stumbled back into the cabin. Dora had lost a lot of blood and had passed out. The rag was on the floor. It was saturated with blood and floor dirt was stuck to it, but she put it back in Dora's armpit anyway. Maybe it would help the blood to clot. She rested her face in the palm of her free hand. It seemed that right at that moment, her hand was her only friend in the world. Then she thought about the last thing that hand had held... her derringer!... Where had she left it? Then she remembered, she had accidentally let it go and thrown it when she dropped to the floor. Best she go find it. ************************************************** ******************************************************************************************************** Fannie got on her hands and knees in the dark of the morning and tried to see the gleam of her pistol anywhere on the floor... When she found it, her heart leaped as she smelled fresh spent gunpowder. It had fired when it hit the wall. The bullet in Dora could well have been hers. Who would believe her, that DICK BROWN had been there and shot up the place? And she dared not tell that to just anybody. She thought at high speed, but one thing at a time... she must get rid of that gun immediately, before the lawmen came... she stepped out into the stillness of a Kansas backstreet murder scene, looked both ways, and got on one knee, and slung the derringer under the house. ******************************************************************************** *************************************************************************************************** There... now everything was alright. Horses were stirring one block over on the main street... they were coming... she sprung up like a teen-aged dancer and pranced back into the cottage... where Dora now looked very dead. Fannie was strong, and there was only one alternative, to make the whole event as harmless and uncomplicated as possible. She put poor Dora, limp as a plucked chicken, back in her bed, and lovingly covered her up, There was no reason for her to suffer indignity, even in death. She fought back tears. It had been a long time since Fannie Garretson had cried. ******************************************* **************************************************************************************************** Two big Pinkerton men busted in the doorway... “Where is she?” They could not see a thing, as the candle Dora had lit had gone out. ************************************************************************************************************ **************************************************************************************************** “In here” Fannie said listlessly. She stood and walked into the front room, as one of the men came in and bent down to try to see Fannie in the dark. “Where was she hit? Never mind... I see the rag....” *************************************** **************************************************************************************************** “Good god!” ****************************************************************************************************** **************************************************************************************************** “Somebody find a light!” He said. About that time the town barber rode up, grumbling. He stepped into the tiny house and immediately stuck his hands in the pretty bowl and pitcher centered under the window, on top of the wash stand. His hands came out dripping wet, and as clean as they were ever going to be, then he wiped them on his yellowed shirt. He opened up his Barlow knife and stepped into the little bedroom. “So THIS is where Dog Kelley stays!” He had no idea who laid injured inside. ***************************************************************************************************** The Pinkerton man sitting on Dora's bed looked up with grave sadness. “She is barely breathing.” ****************** ***************************************************************************************************** “That's Dora! Good Lord!" Cried the barber. "Well... we can't wait for the doc... she will die if I don't remove that bullet. Maybe we can still save her...” *********************************************************************************** ****************************************************************************************************** The barber dug around, and Fannie leaned in too late to stop him, and she tried to watch, but his technique was crude, more like he was cleaning a fish, and she had to turn her head. She thought about the slug she had just put in her nightshirt pocket. But she dared not tell him, in case it matched her own gun... Dora was unconscious... it was best to leave it alone. Finally the barber gave up. *************************************************************************************************** ******************************************************************************************************* “It's not in there.. or it went all the way through... I don't know... but the bleeding has stopped. We need to find doc. I think she is still alive.” ************************************************************************************************ ******************************************************************************************************* And Dora was alive. Weak and unconscious, but alive. With proper care she could recover. The Pinkertons began to do what Pinkertons did... every scheme was naturally blended into the next. The older of the two took charge, a large man with a huge head, a broad mustache covering the center of his deadpan face. ****************************************************** ***************************************************************************************************** “Here is what we are going to do... Fannie, your role in this is critical. And it may save your life... I assume that Brown was here tonight?” Fannie nodded as she stared at the floor, looking for a hole to open up so she could crawl in. “So listen carefully, we may not be able to discuss this again...” But Fannie was not accustomed to being bossed by strangers. ** ****************************************************************************************************** “I don't see..” ****************************************************************************************************** ****************************************************************************************************** “Listen to me woman!” He demanded, “You have no idea... this town is run by devils... we can trust no one.” He waited for Fannie to acknowledge her cooperation. “The locals will be here soon, some of them we can trust, others not, but they run together. We are going to tell them that she is dead. Or I should say, you are going to tell them. We will be watching from across the street. They will come and gawk... they won't know whether she is alive or dead. But right now it does not matter. We will explain to the mayor and the D. A. later. As soon as the doc has done whatever he can, which is not much... we will put her on the next train back to headquarters... and some decent medical care. And God help us, we might get her there in time.” *************** ******************************************************************************************************* Fannie stared into space... “But Whyyyy...” *************************************************************************** ******************************************************************************************************** “I know that it seems cruel and too risky, but Miss “Dora” has risked her life to catch this man, and giving away her identity would erase whatever progress she has purchased, at a great price. If she stays, it will all have to come out. It's best that Dodge never even knows that we were here. And if she stays, your boy will get to read all about it... and know what we were doing, and what suspicions of his were true, and, I might add, your role in this.” ********************************* ****************************************************************************************************** “I see. Save you... save myself.” Fannie was just beginning to understand the risks that she and Dora had taken. She thought about that hot razor that Dick had dragged across her neck in Deadwood. She stared at Dora's blood on the floor... and it reminded her of her own. The big detective continued... ************************************************************ ******************************************************************************************************** “And you must leave as soon as you can... whenever the court is through with you... for questioning of course. I suggest you go somewhere far away, and forget you ever knew Dick Brown.. change your name... because I think he will try again.” *** ******************************************************************************************************** “I understand... thank you. I'm so, so sorry we failed..” ********************************************************** ******************************************************************************************************** “No, you did not fail... Brown is one in a million. He has eyes in the back of his evil head. He may be the slickest criminal we have encountered, and we have chased quite a few. But we must go... If you need us, do not speak to us directly, go through the mayor... he knows everything. He will convey any messages.” ************************************************* ********************************************************************************************** The two Pinkertons escorted the bloody barber outside, and then hurried him across the street to their lair. It was obvious they were concerned about what he had seen, and heard, and what he might say. He had some promising to do as well. Fannie sat disbelievingly, she had certainly made a mess of her life. Again. She went in to look at Dora, dead, unconscious, she could not tell, but if she was alive... she whispered into her ear... “Dora my darlin', if you can hear me... if you didn't hear those men... they want you to play dead. You finally got a starring role! I guess right now acting dead won't be too hard.” ** ******************************************************************************************** Fannie took a breath, and stepped outside to take in some fresh clean air. But it all came down like a warm blanket and she began to sob... Then horses coming upon her helped her choke it back... Within minutes, Officers Earp and Tilghman rode up and she began the Second Act: Dora was dead. She was killed in her sleep. They stormed into the house like prize fighters... and then sauntered back out after a few minutes. Dora had shown them no signs of life. Officer Earp walked back to Fannie, who was bloody and slumped over, and looked upon her as if he was greatly irritated. **************************************** ******************************************************************************************* “Mrs. Brown... I'm sorry to bother you... but who... what bastard could have done this?" Earp knew all of the players in town. He did not know anyone who would kill a woman. "Pardon my language...” ********************************************* ******************************************************************************************* Fannie thought fast, and she seemed to find an answer easily. Lying came naturally to an accomplished actress. But the best lie has to have a shell of truth. “It was some of those damned cowboys... Always shooting their guns...” Fannie realized that anything she said would be repeated and taken seriously... but she had to protect Dora... and get these men out of here... even on to a false lead if necessary. ******************************************************************************* ******************************************************************************************** Blaming the Texans was all she could compose on such short order... But Fannie thought she sounded quite convincing. It did not hurt that her face was shining with fresh tears. So many years on stage had her simultaneously analyzing her performance, as she played the victim. She looked up at Deputy Earp with her signature moon face, one she had used for many years to disarm audiences. ***************************************************************************************************** *********************************************************************************************** “You know, those Texas cowboys, I think... Spike Kenedy and his bunch... but I did not see them.” Only a few persons would have connected what she and a few detectives knew, that Dick Brown had been riding with Kenedy. If they tracked down James Kenedy... they might find Dick Brown and hopefully, finally suspect him. But she would not have fingered him directly... splitting hairs at the present moment seemed like clever, life-saving semantics. But Fannie had no way to know how serious the two men would take her accusations. ************************************************************************************ ********************************************************************************************** Earp looked at Tilghman, and with the fierce eye of an eagle sighting his prey, nodded to him. They mounted up to go after the perpetrators. They had just seen them hanging around an all-night saloon. “We'll get 'em Mrs. Brown, have no doubt about that!” Inspired by Fannie's vague guesses, which were actually just blatant lies, they two rode off into the dawn glow, with blood in their eye. Fannie got up to meet the doc, who was finally riding up in his little, black, one-horse buggy. ****** ********************************************************************************************** “Is she...?” He said under his breath, as if he did not want to wake someone. ******************************** *********************************************************************************************** “Come on in, she was breathing a few minutes ago... but you could not tell.” As soon as he began to check her pulse, the big detective rushed back in. ************************************************************************************* ************************************************************************************************** “Doc, we need to visit while you work...” ************************************************************************ *************************************************************************************************** “Get out of here, damn it, I haven't got time...” But the detective was unphased. ******************************** *************************************************************************************************** He got out his Pinkerton Badge and showed it to the Doc... who barely glanced his direction. “You'll have to find the time sir... Listen, this patient is a Pinkerton agent too, and it is imperative that we take her to Chicago, where she can get treatment, and get her away from here." The doctor seemed lost in thought, and did not respond. The detective waited, trying to assess the doctor's attitude. "People are trying to kill her, for what she knows about criminal activity here... and elsewhere. I need two things from you... to sterilize her wounds...” About that time the doctor pulled a long, bloody rag from under the covers, and slopped it on the floor. “...As best you can...” *************************************************************** *************************************************************************************************** “And...?” The doctor inquired, having painfully processed every word. ******************************************* *************************************************************************************************** “And I need you to cheat a little with the facts. Let's say that right now she looks dead to you... Declare Dora Hand dead. ************************************************************************************************ “Are you serious?” **************************************************************************************************** **************************************************************************************************** “Sir, I've never been more serious. I understand what I am asking for... but it is the only way to save her .. and our investigation... which is very important. And it would not be as bad as it sounds, Doc... Declare Dora Hand dead... but it's not such a lie, because there is no Dora Hand. "Dora" was just an alias for this agent. We... and she have been tracking this man for thousands of miles... for over a year... It is much bigger than Dodge... but it can all fail or succeed with your cooperation.” ***************************************************************************************************** “I'm not sure how much time she has... I'm not sure that lying would help her or anything...” ********************* **************************************************************************************************** “Mister, I am not asking, I will not let your obstinacy sabotage everything we have accomplished... if you do not agree... I will...” *********************************************************************************************************** **************************************************************************************************** “All right man, have it your way. But I don't like it.” Doctors are pragmatic after all. He was focused on saving Dora, not forming tomorrow's headlines. ************************************************************************************** **************************************************************************************************** “And I don't give a damn...” Blurted the Pinkerton. He spotted a group of men marching briskly towards the mayor's humble cottage. “This is probably your coroner and his jury... let 'em look, but keep 'em at bay... and let them believe that Dora is dead. Lie if you have to. Do you understand?” ********************************************************************* **************************************************************************************************** “Yes...” ********************************************************************************************************* **************************************************************************************************** “Good... some day we will make a toast to this affair... But I have to go get a coffin built... we have to make this look good.” ****************************************************************************************************** The Pinkerton man tucked his badge back into his vest and walked out, not even acknowledging the county officials approaching the crime scene. Fannie took a deep breath, before beginning Act III. In ten hours, Dora Hand would be in a pine box on its way to Chicago. Dead or alive. After that it would not matter what happened to the story of the mysterious, wonderful, resilient Dora Hand. After all, she did not even exist. ********************************************************************* *********************************************************************************************** Fannie put on her best front, taking charge as some women can do, warning the coroner and his jury of the awfulness of the scene; the death, the blood... Dora was in her night clothes... "Please, show Dora some respect, don't invade her privacy in death... she was SUCH A LADY..." The men stood stupidly with their hats off, as the doctor continued to clean her wound... then they all went to the Judge's office to fill out and sign the official inquest. The Pinkertons ordered a large coffin, which could hold Dora and some of her personal belongings...They helped the undertaker gently remove her body to his lab, understanding that she was only temporarily dead. The undertaker took the coffin and its contents to the train station... and that's when someone at the depot heard the Pinkerton man say that the body was being transported to Chicago. This led to the newspaper story which was leaked in St. Louis which reported that Dora's body was being sent to her parents in Chicago. It was half right, just like most of the news printed about this story. Of course, this was denied then and denied now. Dora belonged to Dodge! ************************************************************************************************

A posse formed and the next morning Sheriff Bat Masterson led four other capable lawmen after the possible culprit whom Fannie Garretson had fingered to have pulled the trigger...

They have made a movie about the whole affair, which included Wyatt Earp, Bill Tilghman, and Charlie Bassett, all of whom would qualify in any future "Who's Who" of the West. The manhunters took a short-cut and dismounted and waited for Spike Kenedy, who had left town quickly after he heard his name mentioned as a suspect. After several previous run-ins with the Dodge Law he figured, and figured correctly, that his chances for justice were slim. Hidden in the prairie grass, the posse waited for Kenedy like duck hunters in a blind. When he trotted by, they hailed him to stop. And when he spurred his horse instead, (and this was not such a bad idea, since they could have been highwaymen) Masterson shot him out of his saddle. Simultaneously, Earp murdered Kenedy's handsome new horse. Later a story was told that the young cattleman gave away his guilt by asking if the mayor was dead. And supposedly even scolding Masterson for not being a better marksman, once he heard that Dora had been killed. Unfortunately, the focus on Kenedy precluded anyone ever getting near the truth about any of the event. ***************************************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************* The mayor was soon back in town, and was convincingly grief-stricken as he escorted a box of rocks and buried it in the city's new cemetery, to complete the mission, and protect the women. Over the years that original city cemetery was relocated, and if Dora Hand ever had a resting place, with a gravestone, it was misplaced. That would be another clue. A figment of the Pinkertons, Dora Hand had no identifiable birth place, or family, or hometown, or past or career, or even a grave site!******* ************************************************************************************************* Naturally a legend soon blossomed about the long, elaborate funeral procession consisting of all walks of life, which solemnly followed poor Dora to her grave on "Boot Hill," the famous final resting place for many a Kansas criminal. It did not matter that old timers in Dodge admitted that there was a better city cemetery in use by then and only nameless, unclaimed vagabonds were buried there- and even those graves were later relocated for city expansion. Even the graves at the city cemetery were relocated later on, and no marker for the beloved, famous actress survived the move. It may have never existed. ************** ************************************************************************************************

And soon the most famous people who knew the beautiful legendary actress in Dodge, Wyatt Earp and comedian Eddie Foy, when writing their memoirs, either confused her with others or forgot her completely. If we depend on their accounts, her fame was not just fleeting, it was stillborn. It is possible, since Earp had a shady past, that he was reluctant to remember someone who reminded the world of his unconventional and prejudicial law enforcement techniques. It was he and Bat Masterson who had crippled an innocent man and killed his horse, over a murder case which they never solved. ********************************** *************************************************************************************************

Bat Masterson had a better memory, and there were a couple of newspaper interviews with him which proudly proclaimed his efficiency in that case, where he tracked and KILLED Dora's killer. In fact, one paper claimed Kenedy was the last man Bat Masterson had to kill in the line of duty. Two articles gave details about Sheriff Masterson hiring a farmer to bring Kenedy's corpse back to Dodge, since it required a wagon. All the lies and self-serving versions of the Dora Hand legend only point to one reality... The truth was never told, and certainly not by the most powerful lawmen in Dodge. But they had not forgotten the truth of what happened- they were ashamed of what happened. And they did their best, till their dying day, to obfuscate the whole story. *************************************************************************************************** Fannie Keenan, alias Dora Hand however, seems to have raised hell for two more decades, and who knows how many more near-death experiences. From the newspaper accounts, somebody named Fannie Keenan turned getting killed into an art form. We can only hope it was for the cause of Justice... or at least to protect the lady from reprisals from the most dangerous criminals in the country. I fancy that she was a Pinkerton agent, given a false identity and sent into the Kansas hidetown to uncover a gambling or robbery ring, or both. We can never know. The problem is, spies never tell.*********************************** ************************************************************************************************* And Dick Brown headed to the wild country which always gave him refuge, while it repelled everyone else... a little valley in Nevada called Eureka. But then where would he go? Where can a famous man go to hide? Everybody was going to Leadville, Colorado in those days... best he stay clear of that place. So it was Lucky for Fannie Garretson, that was exactly where she went. As did Bat Masterson and Billy Nuttall, and many of the same characters who pioneered Deadwood and Dodge. ************** *************************************************************************************************** Brown needed a remote, out-of-the-way pocket... one where even the getting there was unpleasant. A place which had nothing going for it, except being on the way to someplace else. Maybe a place near the Mexican border, in case he learned that the authorities had finally put a price on his handsome head. Yes, he would hide for a few weeks in Eureka, and then strike out for dry, blistering, god-forsaken Tucson. Then he would fish for a music gig- on another continent. *********************** **************************************************************************************************** Dick Brown had been advertising his removal to Australia and South Africa for two years... long enough for detectives to have gone there looking for him and to have given up... so it was a perfect time to actually go, and he was soon gone on that journey the next year... as the Earps, crows following the trail of corn kernels, prostitutes in tow, rolled in to Arizona for their last hurrah. *********************************************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************************************** If this scenario intrigues you, there is a lot more... and more possible suspects in the unsolved murder of Dora Hand. Just keep reading below! **************************************************************************************************** ****************************************************************************************************** WARNING: The rest is (mostly) just plain fact-based history... salted with some observations and of course, my opinions! But this scenario helps to understand the underlying current which carried “Banjo Dick” Brown around the world, twice!

DEADWOOD'S WANDERING SOUL- Part I

As a miner, he seemed to own a homing device which always found the greatest advantage, whether digging for gold, or just shaking down the miners who did. Or just meeting and befriending the most important people in his sphere. As a troubadour and businessman, he covered more of the planet than any of his peers, and with glowing reviews- but living a lifestyle best compared to a wanted fugitive. He cannot be found on a single census after his eighth year. Still, history reveals that he can be easily traced by the news headlines, some false, some scandalous, some almost worshipful, which he left in at least nine states and on three continents. Curiously, he left no record of his marriages, or any divorces. In fact he lived unencumbered by family, or a steady home, or intimate friends, and left no designated heirs... But in spite of his careful isolation, he enjoyed fraternity with many of the most famous people of his time, and not surprisingly, he died a rich man. Yet we have no idea, really, how he did it. Tongue in cheek, he always liked to say it was playing his banjo... And that is about 90% of what we really know about him. This is the story of a true mystery man... we don't even know what he looked like... but through a 1907 newspaper interview he gave us a peak into just how amazing his life was. And after you take it all in, you too will wonder: Who in the world was this guy? **************** **************************************************************************************

Deadwood's Wandering Soul ************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************************** The Mysterious, Sometimes Dangerous, Unending Saga of “Banjo Dick” Brown, once known as Deadwood Dick. ***************************************************************************************** by Russell Cushman **************************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************************** Due to Hollywood's impact on our culture, perhaps no region on earth hosts as many places with such powerful branding and mystique as the American West: Names which immediately paint visions in one's mind, like Dodge City, or Tombstone or San Francisco- or genuinely hallowed places like the Alamo or Rancho de Taos or Custer's Battlefield. And none invoke more dramatic images than Deadwood. “Dead wood” had long been a term for used or retired cards in a poker game- those cards which have been “discarded.” As dead wood, they could not be used again, but a sharp, dishonest dealer might cleverly retrieve one if it was useful in winning his hand. A fellow called “deadwood” might be the one who was thought to surreptitiously dip his hand in that forbidden till whenever he could. And there was one “Deadwood Dick” in the Old West who appears to have built a fortune under such suspicions. ******************************************************************************************

Up until recent times, “Deadwood Dick” was a household name, like Johnny Appleseed, or Jane Doe, but few of us today know why- or care. The intrepid character by that name in pulp fiction was the amalgamation of a few facts and tons of imagination in the mind of Ed Wheeler, his creator, and Wheeler had never even been to Deadwood. It was Wheeler's somewhat irresponsible knack for writing with anarchic appeal, aimed at ten-year-olds, which guarranteed his success. He gave the dashing fictional figure his courage and insolent genius, and that mysterious, ubiquitous black mask of the anonymous protagonist from the dark side, which must have inspired most of the masked anti-heroes of the 1930's, including the Green Hornet and Zorro and the Lone Ranger. **************************************************************************************** The nickname had been solidly associated with Deadwood, the Sodom of the Dakotas, in the very beginning of the town in the 1870's, and was quickly fortified by Ed Wheeler's pulp hero. And over decades it has been bantered around nostalgically to describe any notorious fellow who ever passed through Deadwood, South Dakota. Or any ten year-old who was good with his sling-shot. His name did not have to be Dick or Richard... he did not have to be a detective, or a jerk, or any of the other connotations of the name. Most of the men who semi-officially wore the name were not present during the wild old days of the West's most wide-open town. But they were once there, and were proud to play along. The town was always trying to increase tourism after the gold played out... and it always needed somebody handy to be... the “real” Deadwood Dick. ** **************************************************************************************** When lists were made by historians, of “real” Deadwood Dicks, there were always a few obvious possibilities of who made every list; men whose reputations for dark, early-day wildness and derring-do were legendary; Men who might have inspired the name, and even the super hero in all of the pulp fictions, which were printed for the next fifty years. One hundred years after those deadly days, most writers about Deadwood agreed there was one early controversial character who had to be at the top of every list- and this is an effort to track him down and see behind the mask of time...****************************** **************************************************************************************** The first mention of him, ominous and prophetic, may have been some brief articles out of Reno, Nevada, in 1868. In August Dick Brown and a fellow named Frank Henderson got into scrape over a girl in a saloon and ended up shooting at one another. After five shots were exchanged, one bullet was in Dick's ribs, and Henderson's coat was full of holes- and he was in jail. This seems to suggest that Dick was only defending himself, and Henderson was the attacker. But the Grand Jury turned the attacker loose after hearing all the details... and Dick Brown probably swore to himself that he might need a larger caliber revolver... Then a tiny article in the December 29, 1868 issue of the Virginia Enterprise (of Virginia City, Nevada) and repeated by the San Francisco Examiner, explained that a man named Brown had shot a man named Johnson on Christmas Day, and in spite of valiant efforts by a surgeon brought to the scene from Dutch Flat, the man had died. Brown, the shooter was reportedly in custody in Reno. Dick Brown was just twenty-four years old, and already he had two gunfights. The papers failed to mention that he was wounded badly in the second affair as well, but no vital organs had been damaged, and they also never reported later that this man named Brown was eventually released... with claims of self-defense, and with many lessons learned. Well, some lessons... ****** **************************************************************************************** At some point in 1870 Dick Brown meandered into Mormon country. Being a young man, raised by the wolves in the mining camps, he had no idea what ground he was trodding on... Around December a small December 29 news article announced: SHOT DEAD... and told of a fellow named Brown who had been killed in Provo. The another article cleared up the story... Brown was not dead, but he might wish that he was.

************************************************************************************** Unfortunately, we can never know if this was the same Dick Brown who was to storm the Salt Lake Concert Halls the next year... But there was apparently a shotgun wedding and a few years of misery for some Dick Brown, who eventually had to free himself from an unfaithful, adventuresome wife, who made his marriage affairs fodder for ye tabloids. Dick later admitted that he stayed at length with a Mormon family, long enough to prove himself, and learn the ropes into Mormon society. This frontier finishing school may have been where he gained some of his gentlemanly polish, and where he made a study of human nature, which served him well... ***************************************************************************************************** *************************************************************************************** Ira Brown learned early in his winning career that Westerners were quite patient and forgiving, and it took a lot to ruffle their feathers, if they liked you. Westerners were big on second chances and rehabilitation. Young in Brown's life he discovered something better than gold, something which represented an ocean of grace, which we call “the benefit of the doubt.” For most people gold had to be mined or earned, but using music as his entree, this fellow ingratiated himself with the most prominent citizens, and perfected the fleecing of gentlemen gamblers with impunity, in backroom games all across the continent. ******************************************************** *************************************************************************************** This Deadwood Dick was a devilishly handsome man who was raised in the gold fields of California, and was a very popular entertainer who spent his earliest years in mining towns all over the West. And he was directly associated with the first parties who scooped gold out of Deadwood's gulches (legally!). If that was not enough, he probably performed the most bizarre if not dramatic crime in Deadwood history, even eclipsing the murder of Wild Bill Hickok. But amazingly, there is no legend, no novel, not even an inaccurate TV mini-series devoted to his truly mind-boggling story. So many a mind will be boggled with this examination of Ira Harvey “Banjo Dick” Brown.**************************************************************** *************************************************************************************** As a man, his life was just a vapor. If his life story had been a toy balloon, it would have exploded and left little bits of rubber, most of them irretrievable, in every corner of the world. *************************************** *************************************************************************************** **************************************************************************************

BLAM... Blam, Blam, BLAM!! Like a cannon went the revolver from the shining frontier stage into the darkness of the audience. Big-eyed and drop-jawed, the modest but animated Deadwood crowd recoiled, unsure whether to hit the floor or to laugh uproariously as they had been. But a large man was down in the front by the piano, and someone called for the law. Somewhat blinded by the stage lights, Banjo Dick stood defiantly in a cloud of gun smoke, which now hovered motionless like an angel of death over the stage. His banjo uncharacteristically silent, he sat it on his foot, as he gradually lowered his revolver and gazed into the worst moment in his life. Having performed the ultimate, never here-to-fore seen “reality” drama in front of dozens of witnesses, Dick Brown gathered his wits and threw out a line, “He has followed me long enough!” ************************************************************************************************************** *************************************************************************************** The injured heckler moaned and begged for a doctor, with his lifeblood flowing from him until he was too weak to mumble. Nobody dared to retort to the crazed banjo man, that he need not worry about being followed anymore. ***************** ***************************************************************************************

Fannie Garretson, (above) his lady on stage, covered her face in disbelief. The dying man was Ed Shaughnessy, her former paramour, who considered them married after three years together in Cheyenne. The killer standing at her side was her brand new husband and musical partner on stage. They had just said their vows a few days before. Their duet terminally interrupted, Fannie was pretty sure her stage career was over as well. She could not wear all of the emotions swimming in her head. How does one emote shock, guilt, foreboding and deep regret all at once? Not even a good actress could interpret all of that. ** **************************************************************************************** That was the awful scene in Deadwood on November 16, just after Nine O'clock at the Bella Union variety show in 1876, when the legend of Deadwood Dick probably began. And it was there that a young banjo man learned that it was imprudent to shoot down anyone in the audience while performing. It was terrible for ticket sales. *************************************************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************************** Even the ruffians in Deadwood were skittish about lining up in rows to watch an armed actor who would not hesitate to shut you up forever. And Black Hills newspapers registered their contempt, the following article the most clever. *************************************************************************************** *************************************************************************************** The Drama At Deadwood ********************************************************************************* ************************************************************************************** "There is a small theater in the Black Hills, known as the Bella Union Varieties. The members of the company can find nothing in the range of dramatic literature that has sufficient realism to be set before an audience made up of pioneers, blackguards, gamblers and miners, to whom life is real and earnest, and not at all artificial. The actors cannot project themsleves into the tragedies of playwrights, so they set out their own tragedies in the presence of an appreciative audience. About the middle of November an ax was thrown upon the stage by the husband of one of the actresses. The stage was cleared, and the assailant assumed an attitude before the audience. Suddenly the avenger appeared at the wings- it was Dick Brown- and fired four shots at the intruder, shrieking as he threw down the revolver, 'He has followed me long enough.' The audience was wild with delight." *********************************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************** But ever resilient, Dick Brown was up to the challenge. It did not take long, and their Deadwood fans responded almost sympathetically, and Banjo Dick and Fannie Garretson were back on stage, with Brown's banjo lifting spirits and effectively neutralizing any fears, as if nothing had happened. Historians, especially those of Deadwood, later found dark humor in the incident, if not a useful branding. Early on, the boom-town was dubbed “Deadwood the Dreadful.” One Twentieth Century article claimed that early Deadwood inhabitants took shootings and killings humorously... that killings were regarded as jokes. A 1927 article in the Deadwood Pioneer-Times admitted that “Deadwood cherished and protected its killers with singular affection.” If Deadwood indulged its killers, it adored its entertainers, offering one of the largest gatherings of variety shows and opera houses in the West... ************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************** An earlier journalist went on to accuse Deadwood “Fathers” of giving killers “...royal privileges at the jail, speedy trials, and almost invariable acquittals.” At one point, during a particularly deadly spell, only one murder conviction had been achieved out of eighteen indictments. The press and the townspeople had totally succumbed to the surreal, macabre atmosphere... and after Banjo Dick, any reasonable excuse would do for acquittal, very similar to when James "Wild Bill" Hickok met his famous demise, and his killer was tolerated until vigilantes did what Deadwood justice would not do. ************************************************************************************** *********************************************************************************************************** “Deadwood... viewed bloodshed tolerantly, humorously, sometimes partisanly, but on the whole with a steady admiration...” *** *********************************************************************************************************** Dick and Fannie gave statements to the authorities, who in the newly-opened Dakota Territory were barely operational and ill-prepared to handle such an event. Never at a loss for words, Dick came ready to explain. It was as he carefully described, done “on the spur of the moment.” And that was good enough. It was considered by all involved to be reasonable to just let it go... after all the Black Hills needed a good banjo man... and his wife sang so pretty. *************************************************************************************************** ***********************************************************************************************************

So the Territorial authorities agreed to put all the unfortunate ugliness behind them, as long as Banjo Dick agreed to stick around until an official hearing could be assembled. His word was his bond. So it was back to the Bella Union, good times, and a string of still-unexplained but widely believed Black Hills rumors: Fannie supposedly got jealous for some reason, and committed suicide. Or, according to a different report, she at least tried to slit her own throat, with a straight razor, and almost succeeded in bleeding to death. Newspapers lamented her death for years... In those wild days, bloody hearsay was far more useful to editors than facts. Everybody wanted to be Mark Twain. ** ***********************************************************************************************************

Showing a particular knack for public relations, Fannie began to act as a frontier press agent, writing public statements to be published in Black Hills newspapers. She admitted that her lifestyle was a bit edgy, actually "notorious," and might draw criticism, but defended her husband, who had been trying to do things properly, and insisted that she was never married to Ed Shaughnessy, but had been awfully abused by him, and there was nothing improper about her and Brown going to Deadwood and getting married. And after Shaughnessy's recent drunken threats, they felt unsafe wherever they went, and were living in fear. In other words, Shaughnessy was a human powder keg, and something bad was destined to happen. And she and her man were innocent... more or less, at least by frontier standards. *********************************** *********************************************************************************************************** The news of scandal and the barroom gossip continued, even suggesting that Deadwood authorities had covered up the scandals of bigamy and murder. And whatever guilt Fannie felt, or had done or had tried to do, she had to have been suffering depression after witnessing the killing of love-crazed Shaughnessy, a man in love with her enough to trail her the fifty miles to Laramie, and then nearly three hundred miles through Sioux territory to Deadwood. The newspaper story of the suicide attempt may have had some basis in fact... but may have been something much more ominous, another cover-up of a bitter marital rift. Wife-beating was too common, and especially on the frontier, but the supposed bloodshed reported may have been evidence of an angry tantrum by a proud man who had been very careful about his cleverly crafted public image... the kind essential to any “confidence man.” Fannie had drawn too much critical attention to them, and may have caused the showdown with Shaughnessy, by not ditching him more effectively in Cheyenne, and there may have been much more at stake than the murder charges. ********************************** ************************************************************************************************************ Always ready to party, Deadwoodians threw together a benefit concert for poor fannie, to cheer the popular couple up, and help the newlyweds defray her medical expenses. And Banjo Dick soon entered a partnership with one of the West's favorite showmen, Billy Nuttall, who planned to leave soon to recruit a team of star performers. Deadwood would soon enjoy the grandest show in the territory. It was clear that no one blamed the couple for what happened, and the future was bright. ************************************************************************************* ************************************************************************************************************ Months later in July of 1877 a Territorial hearing finally exonerated Brown. It was a no-brainer: A drunk, boorish man who had made previous public death threats threw a scary object onto the stage, and Brown reacted like any self-respecting Deadwoodian. It was self-defense. A split citizenry retired to their corners, and celebrations and sinister schemes ensued. Midst all the chaos, the jaded couple made a quiet exit, and Banjo Dick committed himself to a gradual disappearance into the plains and history... and “Deadwood Dick” soon became, among other things, a prepossessing phantom who would shoot you dead, with no apologies. ************************************************************ ************************************************************************************************************ While Dick and Fannie headed south, all the way to Galveston, Their bizarre reputation grew. From Montana to Vermont, Americans read the exciting story of the valiant Deadwood actor protecting his wife from an attacker, as the legend grew wings and covered the country like a Canadian cold front. Even a Pennsylvania paper back home ran the proud tale of Dick Brown, a hometown boy, kin to many prominent local residents, making a name for himself. Most stories carried the initial fallacies, that the wild, drunken attacker had thrown a hatchet at his unfaithful, if not bigamous wife. The unwitting new husband had reacted like any man in his situation. He could not have known that the projectile was merely a bundle of love letters, sent from Fannie, declaring her devotion. *************************************************************************** *********************************************************************************************************** It is not hard to imagine Banjo Dick Brown, a respected showman suddenly accused of murder, and with a multitude of witnesses, later privately (and understandably) threatening his wife- but something deeper might well have prompted his use of a straight razor, dangerously close to her jugular, warning her to never embarrass or implicate him again in such a mess as this. Dick was as tough as they come, but prison was not on his bucket list. ***************************************************************************************************************** *********************************************************************************************************** Simultaneously, inexplicably, someone from Deadwood sent out a curious press statement, which threw cold water on the grass fire. It reported that Dick Brown had been hung by a vigilance committee for killing Shaughnessy. Within months, newspapers all over the west, in places where Brown and his lady had performed, from San Francisco to Virginia City, had picked up and printed this story as well. And for many of their fans, these were the last words they ever read or heard about Banjo Dick. It is possible that cunning Dick somehow spread the rumor himself, but all we can assume from the news coverage is that when he became cognizant about the common belief of his reported vigilante trial and execution, “Deadwood Dick,” apparently decided to... let it be. At the time, it seemed like the wisest course, for Shaughnessy's many friends would no longer be out to kill him. And, it would also cease any investigations of him for other possible crimes. ******************************************* ********************************************************************************************************** Unaware that he was conversing with a dead man, the Los Angeles reporter must have been quite pleased with himself in 1907 after he interviewed the old gentleman who claimed to be, among other things, the “Deadwood Dick” of Dakota gold rush fame. Every writer knows that all that separates him from a lasting legacy is just one really well-told (and published) story. And here it was... or here it could be. But then he still could not refrain from warning his readers- this inflated story read more like fiction than the truth. But since this challenge has never intimidated journalists before, he eagerly continued. Some stories drive themselves. ***************************************** **********************************************************************************************************

The reporter had the advantage of being there, seeing something we can't, looking into the eyes of history, and they were hypnotic. This old man was a real find, because he not only had a great story, he was a good story-teller. Feeling every Media reporter's daily pressure to get a story, the writer at some point had to suspend his disbelief and go with it. My initial reaction when reading it was, walk away, it was pure hot air, told by a nobody. From what I could tell about the subject early on, his most charitable biography would be most aptly named ”Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire,” or “Without a Trace.” But I was wrong. ****************************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************************** There was something seductive about Ira Brown, who eventually drew me in, and seems to have seduced glamorous women, spendthrift gamblers, and large audiences all of his life. The L. A. newspaperman was easy prey with his saga full of mystery, and so many miles covered by one life, so many hats worn, so many enterprises, so many relocations... and the intriguing but missing reasons behind them. Mystery is the writer's crack, and this reporter was tripping. ******************************************************************************************** **********************************************************************************************************

The elderly gentleman's given name was Ira Harvey Brown. The reporter was spellbound, as Brown's claims and observations rolled out like decorated cakes on an assembly line. So many specific details, ranging all around the globe, so many legendary personalities along the way. They were some of the most famous and influencial people in the nation... all supposedly intimate friends of "Banjo Dick," himself a celebrated musician; Mark Twain. Brigham Young. Captain Jack Crawford. And there were nationally famous entertianers, and even European Royalty. It was unlikely. Or was it?********************************************************************************************************** **********************************************************************************************************

Brown bragged that he had known and even performed with several of the most celebrated female performers of his day. Western history, backed by newspaper headlines, testifies that Ira Brown was a devoted gold hunter, with a nasty temper, as he strummed his banjo throughout the Rockies and Great Plains to the delight of many; that he was the companion of beautiful, famous singers and actresses, and by his own account, he walked among generals and kings and the noted wordsmiths of his day. Banjo Dick was either one of the most interesting and well-traveled showmen in the world (besides Buffalo Bill), or the biggest shameless liar west of the Mississippi. ************************************************ ********************************************************************************************************** As the history buff reads the following account today, it has the mild but sick-sweet aroma of fantasy... fun to read, but easy to forget as total humbug. I had already been following this slippery character in my research, and so I had to study the yarn in detail. In fact, I had to disprove it. I was already convinced that Ira H. Brown was no good, a typical womanizer and fast-talking sharpie, who could not be trusted. It did not help that Internet searches brought up over a half-dozen Ira Browns and Dick Browns of his era, including a Chicago Real Estate shyster, an adulterous Utah senator, a cantankerous Kansas farmer, a robber, a killer, and a rapist. And nothing I had found so far on this Dick Brown had indicated much better. He was however, not known as one of these things, and by most accounts, was remembered as excellent camp-company- and a damn good banjo player. That gave him a slim thread of credibility, but this story of his life- it was over the top.********** ********************************************************************************************************** So we will revisit the impressions made on the trusting Los Angeles reporter, that were thus relayed somewhat discombobulated to his readers, who were at least a generation younger and a little bit too trusting. Line by line. Then we will apply some long needed fact-checking. ********************************************************************************************************** So “Banjo Dick,” prepare to be finally revealed! ******************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************************** The Los Angeles Herald, Jan. 16, 1907 ******************************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************************** ORIGINAL DEADWOOD DICK TELLS WONDROUS TALES OF ADVENTURE ************************************************************* "No Nook or Corner of Most Out-of-the-Way Parts Of the Globe Are But as Open Books to the Miner/ Actor/ Musician, Who Typifies the Fast Disappearing Frontiersman. ************************************************************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************************** DEADWOOD, S. D., that one time mysterious city of mines, gambling dens, saloons and gunfighters, has boasted in its time of having been the meeting place of many interesting and peculiar men, but probably it can claim the reputation better through its founder, Ira H. Brown, miner, actor, banjoist, singer, world traveler, and speculator, than through any other agency. ************************************ ********************************************************************************************************** [There's nothing like a big lie right up front to get your antennae to stand up... so I was compelled to do much more investigation about the most horrible place in the American West, Deadwood, than I ever desired... The television series by that name ended my curiosity years ago. There were more than a dozen men who were recognized at the time and celebrated since as “founders” of Deadwood, South Dakota. Ira Brown was not one of them, according to most painfully empirical, modern sources. But when this article was originally printed in 1907, one Deadwood paper proudly reprinted it and had no problem with that claim. ******************************************************************* ********************************************************************************************************** Given our democratic American paradigm, “founder” in rhetorical use could be anyone who helped the beginnings of something. They need not be the scribe who penned the charter, or the elected officials who passed the ordinances, or the surveyor who measured the bounds... a town founder might be the town drunk who watched it all and nodded approvingly. And Banjo Dick was something far more important, and would qualify easily as the village musician or jester. *********************************************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************************** There were half a dozen men who somewhat legitimately claimed that they were the original “Deadwood Dick.” And yes, Ira Brown was certainly one of them. One of the Deadwood papers did take issue with this claim, probably trying to head off a local controversy. But another paper actually defended the claim, and if you consider anybody who was there, digging around among the rocks and gravel in the many gulches around Deadwood in 1876, then at a minimum, Ira Brown might be called a real-life participant. And he was one of the men who first hacked his way through all of the dead wood in those gulches, which supposedly obscured the untold wealth underneath- and inspired the name of the nearby town, where Brown claimed and then sold lots. Not only that, he helped to build and resided in one of its first log cabins. So the L. A. reporter was stretching it very little. And, surprisingly, Ira Brown wore all the hats the article claimed, maybe more, at one time.*********************** ********************************************************************************************************* ********************************************************************************************************* " Mr. Brown is at present in Los Angeles, the guest of Alexander B. Downe, 525 West Thirty-third street, and the story of his life reads more like fiction than truth. ********************************************************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************************** This white-haired man was in Custer City, S.D. in 1876 “waiting for something to turn up.” One day a miner, Thomas Mallory approached him and asked him for a private interview. That night the two talked together in a far off corner of a gambling saloon and a contract was made." ********************************************************************************************************** [Alexander Downe was a very successful British mining engineer, who developed mines in Africa, Australia, and the U.S. before retiring in California. He quite likely was who set up the interview with Brown. Yes it sounds like fiction, but Thomas Mallory was a real person, in fact one of the first “finders” of the rich gold fields in and around Deadwood. Ira Brown, if nothing else, is a well-informed name-dropper!] ********************************************************************************************************** " The next night Mr. Brown with three companions, Charley Brown, Ike Lee, and Williams, set out at midnight. They traveled until the next day, carrying their baggage on the backs of mules. They picked their way carefully. The Indians were near and were not to be trusted." ********************************************************************************************************** [Here, our hero seems to have gotten his names twisted up some, but these names indicate he at least knew the names of some of the early players in Deadwood, and we have to remember, he was almost sixty, and it had been almost thirty years, and two trips around the planet since then. My knee-jerk skepticism was beginning to melt...] ******************************************************************************* ********************************************************************************************************** How Deadwood Won Its Name. ******************************************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************************** "When they arrived at a gulch which emptied into the Whitewood River they unpacked their animals and camped. Great quantities of dead timber was laying about and from that they named the place Deadwood." ******************************************************************* ********************************************************************************************************** [ “Deadwood” was not only a slang word used in gambling, it also became an old-time mining expression that meant “a sure thing,” referring to the name of a mining boom-town in the gold fields of California in the 1850's, where Brown spent his youth. Deadwood came to connote a hidden, unsuspected gold field, one passed over by others; fast money hiding in plain sight. Brown would have known both possible meanings. A former saloon owner and faro dealer, Banjo Dick seems to have been feigning ignorance about the probable slang interpretations of "deadwood," perhaps unwilling to reveal this seedy part of his resume.] ************************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************************** " The four sat down on a log and wrote numbers upon slips of paper. These represented the town lots. They placed them in Mr. Browns hat and each drew out a certain number of slips." ***************************************************************************************** *********************************************************************************************************** [We do not know which Mr. Brown offered his hat... but according to The Pioneer, the town of Deadwood was “laid out” on April 26th, 1876 by Craven Lee, Isaac Brown, J.J. Williams and “others.” So men with the last names of Brown, Williams and Lee actually laid out the footprint of Deadwood, South Dakota, just as Brown remembered. Banjo Dick may well have been one of the “others.” This is important, because his being there made him elligible for ownership of prime Deadwood Real Estate.] ************************************************************* *********************************************************************************************************** "At the time the lots were not worth a great deal, for when one of the party drew lot No. 23 he declared it was too far out of town and he would not have it. Mr. Brown offered him $5 and a padlock for the lot and the man closed the deal. Mr. Brown built a cabin on one of his lots and that started the town. Shacks sprung up in a night and the lots went like magic. Mr. Brown sold his last piece of ground to Mann & Manning for a gambling saloon and left with a clean surplus of $650,000 in his pocket." *************************************************** *********************************************************************************************************** [Today Deadwood visitors can still enter Mann's saloon (BELOW), later known as Nuttall & Mann's, where "Wild Bill" Hickok was assassinated. Brown may have left Deadwood in the summer to go back to his old haunts to piece together a burlesque show, and bring it to the miners in the Black Hills. He passed through Cheyenne, sold eight pounds of gold that he found in Palmer's Gulch, advertising the wealth available in Deadwood, and told Fanny Garretson about his plan. Then he went all the way to San Francisco, probably to purchase basic entertainment supplies, music instruments etc.. This may be when Fannie left Shaughnessy the first time, because she too went to San Francisco about that time, but then made up with the trusting oaf when she returned... only to leave him for good a few weeks later. They were in Deadwood by the autumn.]* ************************************************************************************************************

[The 650K which Brown left with is a stunning amount, for those times... A Deadwood paper ran this article, but corrected the number- to 50K... STILL STUNNING! These immense profits suggest to me that Ira Brown used the land transactions to launder other, less admirable revenues... but Mann and John J. Manning, (another real person, in fact was elected repeatedly as sheriff in Deadwood) surely did not pay THAT for just one lot. The story no doubt has some important pieces missing, but between the gold recovered, mining interests sold, and land sales, Brown was claiming that he basically made a fortune. We will learn later on that he was a very "lucky" gambler... and may have dabbled in other heretofore unknown sources of income. There is no known cabin surviving today, supposedly built by “Mr Brown”... but the Deadwood papers accepted the article's claim about his log cabin being the first house in the town...It was basically a tent city then, anything made of wood would have qualified as a house. But given the other facts established, we have to give Banjo Dick (cough/cringe, here we go...) the benefit of the doubt. And there is literary evidence that somebody built a cabin... from a song written and preserved by Captain Jack Crawford, the famous army scout and Wild West show personality, and one of Ira Brown's loyal friends and mining associates. He published it and claimed that he wrote it for “Dick Brown, the banjo player while in Custer City, South Dakota,” to be performed by the two of them for their mining cohorts...in the spring of 1876... From the lyrics, we can deduce that there was indeed a cabin, and these men, as much as could be in those Victorian times, were IN LOVE WITH EACH OTHER!] ****************************************************************************************************************

********************************************************************************************************* My Little New Log Cabin In The Hills ************************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************************* A Parody ********************************************************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************************* In my little new log cabin home my heart is light and free, ******************************************** While the boys around me gather every day, ************************************************************************ And the sweetest hours I ever knew are those I'm passing now, ***************************************************** While the banjo makes sweet music to my lay. ********************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************************* Chorus:*********************************************************************************************************************** The scenes are changing every day, the snow is nearly gone,****************************************************************** And there's music in the laughter of the rills;****************************************************************************** But the dearest spot of all the rest is where I love to dwell,*************************************************************** In my new little log cabin in the hills.************************************************************************************* ********************************************************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************************** While the birds are sweetly singing to the coming of the spring, ************************************************************* And the flow'rets peep their heads from out the sod, ************************************************************************* We feel as gay and happy as the songsters on the wing ************************************************************************ Who are sending up sweet anthems to their God... ***************************************************************************** (Chorus) ********************************************************************************************************************* *********************************************************************************************************** [The reporter never got to hear or read the words to that little classic, but he continues... but begins to get things out of order. The following incident probably happened when Dick was in Nevada... around 1873-74] ******************************************************* *********************************************************************************************************** " He has many hair raising experiences to tell of his life in these mining camps. ******************************************** He earned $20 to $50 per night playing his banjo in the gambling saloons and like the rest of the men, he rented his gambling table by the month and then used it for a bed at night... ******************************************************************************

One evening large stakes had been won and lost and the loser vowed vengeance on the winner. The men slowly dropped away from the tables and every one in the place had fallen asleep... ******************************************************************************************* ************************************************************************************************************ ************************************************************************************************************ Murder where he slept! ********************************************************************************************* ************************************************************************************************************ [As wholesome and fun as the preceeding song may have been, the following incident demarks a suspicious series of unexpained deaths in Brown's wake...] ***************************************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************ "An hour later a loud noise of shooting woke Mr. Brown. He slid quickly from his table and struck a light. On the next table to him lay one of the players, his blood forming a pool under him and his head almost shot off. The loser had taken his vengeance. He was never caught. ******************* [REMEMBER THIS LATER....] ***************************************************************************** [This incident is actually very similar to one described in Roughing It, by Mark Twain, another of Brown's claimed associates. In fact there are a couple vignettes in the blockbuster book about a young impoverished rascal, last name of Brown, whom Sam Clemens took under his wing... and kept alive. But this proves nothing... We need to establish who exactly this rascal was. We return to the article for some answers...] ************************************************************************************************************* " Mr. Brown was born in Lock Haven, Pa., in 1847, and had one brother. His parents were filled with the spirit of unrest which drew men to the frontier in those times and when Ira was still a child they left for St. Joseph, Mo. From there with along train of covered wagons they started for California. Oxen drew the wagons and it took six months to get to their destination.**************************** ************************************************************************************************************** [Years later, in 1887 Brown's friends gave him a widely advertised birthday party in Decatur, Illinois, celebrating his 43rd birthday, which would have established his birth four years earlier than was later inscribed in granite, and three years earlier than he told the Los Angeles reporter. Perhaps he had lied to his present wife, who may have been much younger, but being a musician and faro dealer, numbers were Banjo Dick's stock and trade. He was not likely to get them wrong. There was six years difference between the birth date on the 1850 census report and the one chiseled on the tombstone resting over him today. This tiny fact is small but compelling evidence that "Banjo Dick" did not care, or at least forgot what he had been telling people... or he was getting caught up in some kind of deception... and this inconsistency could be important... creating a curious gap in his childhood. And it probes us further to wonder, why all the confusion? Might "Brown" have been assuming the name of a person by that name, as an alias... even assuming his birthday, hometown & family legacy? It may explain why, long before Deadwood, this man went by the nickname "Banjo Dick," when his name was Ira... Perhaps early in his life Richard Somebody changed his "given" name after committing a few crimes, and took on the name of a family he heard about who had not survived their relocation to California... As time went on, and his Brown ineritance was no longer at stake, he relaxed his duplicity. But the story was always useful to hide his true origins. And there are interesting clues about that! ] ******************************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************ Fight Indians. ****************************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************ "Along the way the Indians were on the alert and there were many skirmishes between the redskins and the travelers. Twice Mr. Brown was nearly captured when he wandered too far behind the wagons. The Indians would come up slyly and make a sudden swoop. Each time, however, someone rescued him in the nick of time. ******************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************ At night these brave travelers formed a stockade with their wagons and with sentries every twenty feet sleep soundly around the campfire in the center. During the trip there were several buffalo killed as they passed by in great herds. ********************************* ************************************************************************************************************ They pitched their camp at Weaver Creek, Cal., and Mr. Brown, who was at that time 10 or 11 years old, was hired out with the Mexicans to help herd horses. The lad was cuffed and kicked around by these rough and terrible men of the desert, but he earned his living and he learned the Spanish language. *********************************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************ California was at that time in the hands of the forty-niners and the only way to reach the little mining camps was by wagon. In 1854 the family moved again and the town that sprang up around them was named Elizabethtown, in honor of his mother, Elizabeth Brown, who was the first white woman to go through that wilderness. ************************************************************************ ************************************************************************************************************ [Here is a lie... well at least an honest one. Elizabethtown, California was begun during the California Gold Rush around 1850, four years before the Browns are said to have arrived. Its name was purportedly derived from a miner's wife, Elizabeth Stark Blakesley. Of course, the origin of the name of the town may have been a family joke... but nobody was laughing... and just a boy, Ira Brown took the story seriously.] ************************************************************************************************************** " The surrounding country was thickly populated with “Digger Indians,” who had the greatest curiosity about Mr. Brown's mother, as they had never before seen a white woman. These Indians lived in huts, sixty feet in diameter, made on the stockade order, and in those days the Indian's fandangoes or war dances were of constant occurrence. Mr. Brown can speak the Digger language fluently."********************** ************************************************************************************************************** [“Digger” was a local pejorative- several tribes were called “diggers” including the Maidu. The natives were abused and enslaved, and treated terribly. When the rapacious miners ran out of Native “diggers” the term was used to describe any unskilled labor hired in the mining operation. But we can't blame Brown for any of that...] ********************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************** Settle[s] In California.*************************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************** "The gold fever kept the Browns moving and it was not many months before they were established at Iowa Hill, Placer County, Cal., where Mrs. Brown became a part owner of the famous Jinasons mines, deep diggings worked by hydraulic processes." ******************************** **************************************************************************************************************

[There is nothing "famous" today in California's mining history about the name Jinason, and there is no easily retrieved mine on record by the name of “Jinason,” but there was a mining operation near Iowa Hill at Johnson's Ranch. Continuing the suspension of our disbelief by benefit of the doubt, and assuming (for the moment) that little Ira was actually the grown up one, perhaps Ira Brown grew up hearing a distortion of the mine's name, or the reporter misunderstood it. But I am almost convinced that like Elizabethtown, this name was another family euphemism, created by his father (Daniel Brown), and what he was actually saying, and misunderstood by the boy, was “gin and sin” mines, which would explain what happened to his mother, and the couple's marriage troubles. In those days brewing and drinking gin was becoming a fad, and saloons were sometimes called “gin mills.” Gin was soon known country-wide as the “Mother's Ruin” by many people who observed its attraction as a gateway to addiction, and for some women, prostitution. Perhaps the couple split up when Elizabeth took her inheritance and invested it in a "gin mill," to serve the large mining community in Iowa Hill.]

[We will never know, but whatever happened, the Browns are not found in the 1860 California census, or any others later on. All but Ira were reported dead by 1875.*********************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************** Right about here is where Brown's story gets very murky. The problem with this family pit stop in Iowa Hill is the crunch in timing, as the gold rush was in 1853-4, about the time that the Browns were supposedly founding Elizabethtown. The Browns moved around a great deal, and it is surprising that all of this instability was more than a blur for the youngster. These distinct memories support an earlier birth, making Ira around 11 or 12 when they came to Iowa Hill. More strange, about this time, around 1857, the town was totally burned to its foundations, but Brown makes no mention of it. And what happened to the Browns? Did they perish in the fire?]************************************ *************************************************************************************************************** "Mr. Brown learned his banjo playing from a Charley Rhodes, whom he met there in a saloon.********************************* *************************************************************************************************************** [A bit unusual, but not absurd, in this case an 11 or 12 yr-old boy taking banjo lessons in a western saloon. And it might have happened if his mother was the owner of the saloon. Charley Rhodes was in fact, a popular early banjoist in the West....] ***************** ***************************************************************************************************************

" Children in those days had a singular way of getting money- to go to any wandering circus or show that came to town. Instead of helping to water the horses or feed the elephants... they would take a gold pan and pan out a couple of pans and have the dust cashed. Nearly everything in those days was paid for with the raw material, gold dust. ************************************************************************* **************************************************************************************************************** His mother and father separated here and Mr. Brown went with his father to Petaluma, Cal., where he spent a year or so in school. He helped his father with the fruit shipping business in San Francisco. About this time gold was found in Canyon City, Ore., and Mr. Brown [Ira] wanted to go. He did not have the money and his father forbade him going." *************************************************** **************************************************************************************************************** [ There were too many Daniel Browns in Petaluma at that time to isolate which might be Ira's father. It could be the one who had a thriving liquor distributorship there for years, or more likely, the one stabbed in the back in a Petaluma saloon in February of 1860, and not expected to survive...] ****************************************************************************************************************** **************************************************************************************************************** "He stowed himself away under the tarpaulin on the forward deck of a ship going north. The sailors walked all over him until he could bear it no longer, and he cried out in pain. They dragged him forth then and made him work for his passage. ****************************** ***************************************************************************************************************** When the boat reached the wharf at Portland he had not a cent. A young man, noticing his predicament, took him to the Union hotel and found him a job as a waiter."************************************************************************************************************* ***************************************************************************************************************** Earns Money With Banjo.************************************************************************************************ ***************************************************************************************************************** "His banjo playing attracted William Nickson, proprietor of the Essex saloon of Dallas, Ore. he offered him $25 a night to play in the saloon. Harry Knox, afterward hanged in Florence, Idaho, for the murder of Magruder, engaged him after this at $50 a night to play in Canyon City.”************************************************************************************************************************ *************************************************************************************************************** [ I could find no Harry Knox, anywhere in any paper of that time, and the men accused and hung for killing Magruder in 1864 were named Romain, Renton & Lower. But it is possible that one of them was using Knox as an alias. Still, the bigger crime seems to have been the overpaying of a 19 year-old vagabond with such crazy wages! ] ************************************************************************************ *************************************************************************************************************** " He had no way to get to Canyon City but to walk. He put his provisions inside the drum hoop of his banjo and started without blanket or matches. Fortunately for him a cavalcade met him a short way from town and let him ride the bell horse to Canyon City. Julia Deane Hayne (BELOW), the greatest actress California knew in those days, picked him up after he had been in Canyon City awhile and took him to Idaho City." ****************************************************************************************************************

[Ira is a young troubadour about 20, she a national star in her mid-thirties, enduring an unhappy marriage. Here begins Ira Brown's incredible luck with female celebrities... and a lackluster, decade-long acting career. And here is where he probably dropped his given name “Ira” for something more flashy. Perhaps it was his new lady friend who helped to dub him “Banjo Dick.” And apparently Banjo Dick Brown must have been quite charming, winning influential friends across the west, and eventually being romantically involved with two, perhaps three starlets, Victorian “Madonnas” of his day. His knack for placing himself in their life-paths was uncanny, although his luck with most of them will never be known. In this situation, he climbed into a traveling show wagon and rode triumphantly into Idaho City with a banjo on his knee...] ****** ************************************************************************************************************** He was playing the grave digger in Hamlet there one night when the alarm of fire was given...************************************ ************************************************************************************************************** FIRE DESTROYS TOWN ****************************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************** [In the second devastating town fire in this young man's life...]**************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************** "The cabins were all built of rough pitch pine lumber. In half an hour the town was reduced to ashes and all Mr. Brown had saved was the clothes he wore and his banjo. ********************************************************************************************************** **************************************************************************************************************

"His next theatrical venture was at San Francisco, where he played on Gilbert Street. This was then the business portion of the city. Among his associates were Jeff DeAngello's father, Lottie Crabtree (ABOVE) and Joe Murphy, who have all since become famous in the theatrical world."*************************************************************************************************************************** *************************************************************************************************************** [All possible, and Lotta Crabtree would have been another big catch, if she ever gave him a second look. But here is why I first became suspicious of Banjo Dick, because he left out Fannie Garretson, whom he had to have met in San Francisco, as they both supposedly performed there for more than a year (1868), and more importantly, he later scooped her up in Cheyenne and then married her in Deadwood. Even more peculiar, he never mentions her anywhere in the article... which in itself demonstrates that after 25 years, Ira Brown was still carefully separating himself from Fannie Garretson. Both of them had avoided scrutiny concerning their marriage and separation, and the trail of scandal and unsolved crimes they left behind. ]************************************************************************************************************ **************************************************************************************************************** NEXT BLOG- Part II: Ira Brown's bizarre Wild West Adventures, after Dodge City.