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The Great Scout Alliance


Advertisement for The Great Western Scout Alliance on December 5th, 1878

While Texas Jack traveled with Doc Carver, demonstrating his skills with the lasso and six-shooter at exhibition and parade grounds up and down the East Coast, the Great Scout Alliance was playing shows in theaters.

Advertisement for Doc Carver and Texas Jack in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 3, 1878.

The Great Scout Alliance was essentially Texas Jack's show, without Texas Jack. Donald McKay was there. Arizona John Burke was there. Dashing Charlie was Charles Emmett. It is unknown if this is the same "Dashing Charlie" that Ned Buntline and Prentiss Ingraham wrote dime novels about, or if those two authors were even writing about the same man.




The play that the Great Scout Alliance was performing, The Trapper's Daughter, was the same one Texas Jack and this cast had performed on tour throughout 1878 and would continue to perform when Texas Jack finished his series of exhibitions with Doc Carver and his trek across Wyoming with Amandus Ferber and Otto Franc.


The Great Scout Alliance played only a few cities over the course of the summer, fall, and winter of 1878, and when Texas Jack finished trekking through the Bighorn Basin and matching Doc Carver shot for shot at exhibitions throughout the Deep South, his friends Donald McKay and John Burke were ready to join him for another theatrical tour, this one lasting from December of 1878 through the middle of June 1879.

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