Kinnie was a natural showman. He often entertained his fellow circus workers by showing off his marksmanship. He tossed targets into the air and popped them with his .22 rifle. Later as he was being pursued by the law, the story was circulated that Kinnie was a circus trick shooter. He claimed he never performed as a trick shooter. He maintained that his marksmanship was merely for fun. Later as Kinnie became wanted by the law, his reputation as trick shooter caused lawmen to approach him with guns drawn and hammers cocked.
Kinnie learned fast in some ways, and not so fast in other ways. The circus moved across Tennessee, Alabama and into Mississippi. Kinnie learned the hard way that the people in the towns where they performed, loved the show, but they disliked and distrusted circus people. One day in a small Alabama town, Kinnie came upon a convict camp and stopped to admire the dogs. Without warning, a man struck him in the face with a pistol, knocking him to the ground, and then kicked him in the ribs. A policeman witnessed the assault, but never intervened. Kinnie did the smart thing, and let it go. Friends were hard to find in Kinnie’s new world, but he eventually became friends with the circus cowboy with the befitting name of Tex.
Tex taught Kinnie how to ride bucking broncos. The strong and athletic mountain boy learned fast and became good at riding wild horses. While the circus was in Leakesville, a friend suggested that he leave the circus, go west and become a rodeo cowboy. Kinnie saw that as a way out of the circus which had been one disappointment after another. He traveled with a buddy to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where they planned hop a freight train to Texas, but as he was catching some much needed sleep while waiting for the train, his buddy left him high and dry. He stole everything Kinnie had, including his spurs.
Kinnie returned to Leakesville, broke and hungry where he found a job in a logging camp. Logging was rough and dangerous work, and so were the men in the camps. Kinnie was tough too. He had learned how to use his fists while working as a circus roustabout. The long armed and rugged kid was often challenged, but seldom defeated. Kinnie could hold his own with the toughest of men. One day a friend suggested a way out of the backbreaking and dangerous logging camps. He told him how he could make a lot more money than the logging camps would ever offer.
His friend introduced him to a deputy sheriff who told him he would pay him a dollar for every gallon of whiskey he would haul in from Alabama. The naïve Kinnie figured if it was okay for the law to haul whiskey, it would be okay for him to do the same. He took the bait. Local officials gave Kinnie a pass on his illegal whiskey hauling for obvious reasons, but it was in the middle of the prohibition era, and the United States Treasury Department had other ideas. Treasury agents were making their case against the deputy who had hired Kinnie.
Kinnie believed that the deputy had to silence him and silence him quickly. According to Kinnie; out of the blue, another one of his “buddies” showed up and told him he had a job to do, and wanted him to hold his watch for a few days. He said he was afraid the watch would get broken if he carried it to the job. Kinnie took the bait again and obliged him. Before Kinnie’s buddy got out sight, the whiskey dealing deputy showed up, slapped the handcuffs on him and charged him with possession of stolen property. Their first move to permanently silence Kinnie Wagner was in the works. He was incarcerated in the Greene County jail on October 8, 1924, and charged with grand larceny.
On November 11, as the sheriff was serving breakfast to the inmates, Kinnie caught him off guard. He jumped the sheriff, locked him in his own jail and escaped. Once outside the jail, he had to fight off four men. After breaking free from them, he stole a horse and hightailed it out of town, and to a friend’s house in McLain, Mississippi. Kinnie Wagner’s life was never the same after that.
