She wound up in Abilene, Kansas, but a young woman alone had few options. So she became a dance hall girl and prostitute.
In Abilene, she hooked up with a gambler and part-time cowboy named  William "Texas Billy” Thompson, brother of the notorious Ben Thompson. In 1870, the couple left Kansas for Texas and for the next couple of years Billy punched cows along the Chisholm Trail while Haley continued working as a dance hall girl in various towns across the southern prairie.