Her skills with weapons and gambling proficiency became legendary as well as her mode of dress which ranged from dressing like a man to extravagant gypsy-like attire. While in Texas, she acquired a second husband and the two soon headed to California.

A third marriage apparently took place somewhere along the line, a man that she was said to have married as a result of a guilty conscience. In this incident, the story tells us that when the man became too ardent in his affections for her, she challenged him to a fight. When he refused to fight a woman, she donned men’s clothing and challenged him again. She then allegedly shot him and as he lay wounded, called for a preacher and married him before he died.  

When the Black Hills gold rush began in South Dakota, Kitty made her way to the thriving boomtown of Deadwood, arriving on the same wagon train that brought Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane to the camp in 1876.

She soon opened the Mint Gambling Saloon, where she met her fourth husband, a German prospector who made a rich gold strike. However, when the German’s gold ran out, so did Kitty’s interest. She was then said to have hit him over the head with a bottle, before kicking him out of their home and her life.

On June 11, 1877, Kitty married her fifth husband, a man named Samuel R. Curley in Deadwood. But, for Kitty, this would be a fatal mistake. Curley was a jealous man and after numerous arguments over alleged affairs with a former husband, and others such as Wild Bill Hickok and Sam Bass, he killed her on December 7, 1877 in the Lone Star Saloon before turning the gun on himself. The following day, the townspeople allegedly laid out the pair for viewing inside the saloon before they were buried together.

A journalist would later say of the 28 year-old, that she "had five husbands, seven revolvers, a dozen Bowie knives, and [was] always went armed to the teeth."

There is no evidence that Kitty was actually a prostitute, but as many of the Deadwood saloons offered those "services," she may very well have been a “madam.”