ArizonaRealCountry.com 39 October 2018 As a teenager in Round Rock, Texas he actually witnessed the shooting down of outlaw Sam Bass. Others would have learned from this violent lesson that crime does not pay, but not Soapy Smith. Within a couple of years and barely in his twenties he was a notorious racketeer and crime boss roaming throughout the dying Old West, eventually settling down in Colorado with a crew of notorious gunmen, including Texas Jack Vermillion who had been an associate of the Earp’s and Doc Holliday, riding alongside them on their post-O.K. Corral murderous "Vendetta Ride". Jefferson Smith became known as "Soapy" for his infamous bunko game of wrapping a few bars of soap with $1 and $100 bills and selling them for $5 and $10 dollars to an unsuspecting public in the streets of Denver. When the public unwrapped the bars, thinking they had made a handsome profit, they found to their dismay that they had bought nothing but a 5 cent bar of soap for their 5 dollars. (Smith having "sold" the $100 dollar wrapped bars to members of his own gang)! While running a crime spree in Creede, Colorado, Soapy at first befriended another notorious character who had opened up a gambling parlor and saloon there, a man by the name of Bob Ford who a decade earlier had shot down Jesse James. But Soapy - even with all his ill-made fortune soon became insanely jealous of the success of Mr. Ford, and soon had his saloon burned down. Ford, unsuspecting that his good buddy Soapy Smith had done the deed, opened a tent saloon the very next day. Soapy who had hired a drunken, ex-lawman by the name of Ed Kelley, sent Kelley with a 12 gauge shotgun down to Ford's makeshift saloon. As Kelley entered the saloon he bellowed "Hello Bob!" and as Ford turned around proceeded to blast him in the throat with both barrels. Ford died almost instantly (Kelley, who was caught and sent to prison, was released a few years later only to be shot down by a Sheriff he had gotten on the wrong side of). Soapy Smith's crime spree in Colorado ended with his ouster from the state in 1894 after a very tense standoff between him and his gunmen on one side, and the Governor of the state and his state militia on the other. Bat Masterson, in one of the very few instances he himself skirted the fine line between law and order initially supported Smith because Smith's "businesses" were good for his own gambling endeavors. He, however, quickly dumped Smith like a hot potato when he realized the high stakes he was playing, going up against the Governor of the State and against his (mostly) law-abiding instinct. Masterson would drift away from Denver himself a few years later, relocate to New York City, find newspaper work, and a new found influential friend by the name of Teddy Roosevelt. After being driven out of Denver, Soapy, his family and a few other members of his gang (sans Texas Jack Vermillion, who had moved to Virginia to settle down permanently as a Methodist preacher) drifted throughout the West for a couple of years, until in 1896 gold was discovered in the Klondike, whereupon Soapy and his crew seeing that there were new opportunities at hand, sailed up to Skagway where they once more engaged in criminal activities there, robbing and cheating unsuspecting miners of their Gold and shooting down any good citizen who got in their way. They ran a reign of criminal terror that spread from Skagway on the Pacific Coast almost all the way up to Dawson in the interior of the Canadian Yukon for the next two years, and if you did see that aforementioned Jimmy Stewart movie, you had an idea of what they did. They were even brazen enough to try and stop the tough Canadian Royal Northwest Mounted Police grandson of a former U.S. President (Zachary Taylor), nephew of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and son of a Confederate officer who had fled to Canada after Appomattox, from delivering a $150,000 Gold shipment practically single-handed to Skagway. That Mountie officer, Inspector Zachary Taylor Wood, avoided at least one ambush, stood down Smith's gunmen and delivered the shipment to its destination brushing right past a bemused and seemingly hospitable Soapy Smith who offered Inspector Wood a meal and a place to stay (Wood wisely declined). Smith allegedly admired Wood's pluck and kept his killers from shooting him down (while Smith had no scruples about killing a U.S. Deputy Marshal (as we will note in the next paragraph)he may have also been fearful of Canadian armed intervention into Skagway had he created an International incident by killing a Mountie). The end for Smith and his reign of terror though, did start with the killing of a lawman, a U.S. Deputy By Alan Rockman continued on page 41 If you ever watched the great Jimmy Stewart western, “The Far Country”, you could almost immediately figure out that the crooked, corrupted Judge Gannon role played by the usually benign John McIntyre was not so loosely based on Soapy Smith. And Soapy was quite a character, a clever, but rotten and evil character. The Saga of Jefferson “Soapy” Smith Klondike Gold Miners, circa 1897. The elements and lack of supplies was bad enough, but men like these were also often fleeced, fooled, beaten or murdered by Soapy Smith and his gang even before they could enjoy their new wealth. The usually fatherly and benign John McIntire wasn't so fatherly nor benign when he played the corrupted and murderous Judge Gannon in "The Far Country". McIntire's Judge Gannon character was NOT so loosely based on Soapy Smith (top).