Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush, 1896-1899 (57 page)

Smith’s staff of correspondents formed an endless chain, a sort of continental spy-network, and he carefully pasted every letter into a huge scrapbook, which he kept up to date and concealed in a drawer of his old-fashioned roll-top desk along with the badges and emblems of the Masons, Oddfellows, and other fraternal organizations which, from time to time, were of value to him.

On the local scene Smith operated an equally efficient spy system. “You never knew who was who in Skagway, in Smith’s day,” J. E. C. Beatty, a worker on the White Pass Railway, once recalled. “Your next-door neighbor, or the man at the next table in a restaurant, might be in his pay.” Smith’s methods of recruitment were straightforward enough. Harry L. Suydam, who served as city assessor, wrote that “while ‘Soapy’ Smith was not implicated in all the black deeds of the trail, he never failed to take the side of the guilty party, and often fought hard to have him go unpunished, no doubt anticipating that the rescued villain would not fail to do anything for him when called upon.” Both the Land Commissioner and the Deputy Marshal, whose office was in the same building as Suydam’s, “willingly stood in with ‘Soapy’ in his atrocious deals, for a consideration.” Suydam personally helped arrest several men on the White Pass trail who were caught stealing from caches; in every case, after they were turned over to the marshal, they were allowed to escape.

If Smith understood the principles of espionage, he was also well aware of the value of good public relations. Stray dogs and helpless widows have long been recognized as proper subjects for front-page stories, and Smith fully understood the necessity of cultivating human-interest items about himself. By the spring of ’98, Skagway was ridden with abandoned dogs of every size, shape, and pedigree. They had all been purchased at astronomical prices in Seattle by greenhorns, who brought them north under the mistaken impression that they could be trained to pull a sled. When the stark truth was discovered and the cheechakos realized that the dogs were eating them into early bankruptcy, the canines were abandoned to roam the streets in packs. Smith launched an “Adopt-A-Dog” campaign and set a good example by taking on six strays himself.

At the same time he publicly began to provide for women whose husbands had met death on the trail and for luckless stampeders who had lost their money before reaching the gold-fields. As many of the unfortunate ladies had been brought to widowhood by Smith’s own men, and most of the penniless Klondikers had been deprived of their funds in Smith’s own establishments, they were thus being supported with their own coin. An astonished Denver merchant, on arriving in Skagway, wrote to a friend that their former townsman had accounts at merchants’ stores for provisions and fuel for needy people that amounted to “several hundred dollars a week” and that “he pays for the funerals of friendless persons, and I can assure you that is no small item.”

Now an odd thing happened: Soapy Smith’s character began to undergo a subtle change. He had been playing Santa Claus in Skagway for coldly practical reasons, but as time went on he began to relish the applause that his small philanthropies brought him. There had always been a streak of vanity and of prodigality in his nature; years before when William De Vere, the “tramp poet,” wrote a ballad in his honour, Smith was so pleased he gave him a thousand dollars. Now wealth and power were no longer enough for him; he wanted homage. Like everybody else, he had gone north seeking a fortune, but in the weeks that remained money ceased to have meaning to him and he gave the entire fortune away. He liked to see his name in the papers; he liked to be known as a good fellow; he liked to be seen patting children on the head and tipping lavishly. For him, the fealty of his followers had become insufficient; he craved the devotion of the entire community. And when, at the end, the community turned against him he acted quite humanly, with pain, astonishment, hurt, resentment, and finally unreasoning rage.

The outbreak of the Spanish-American War on April 24 gave Smith a further opportunity to entrench himself in Skagway. Within three days of war’s declaration he had appointed himself captain of Company A, 1st Regiment, National Guard of Alaska, and, in a burst of old-fashioned patriotism, had opened a military office in a tent and begun recruiting soldiers for service in the Philippines. This move gave him an excuse to arm and drill his followers, so that he had a disciplined force under his command. It also provided his cronies with a perfect base of operations for an ingenious confidence game. The wave of patriotism that swept the nation following the sinking of the
Maine
rapidly made itself felt on the trails to the Klondike, and many stampeders decided to forsake the gold-fields for the service of their country. Pouring back through Skagway, these would-be soldiers were attracted to a sign on a tent reading “United States Army Recruiting Station.” Inside, a brisk, military-looking man, flanked by armed guards, swiftly signed each man up for service, congratulated him on his patriotism, and waved him into the rear for the necessary medical examination. While a fake doctor examined the recruits, others swiftly went through the pockets of their discarded clothing for valuables; if the patriots protested they were thrown out into the street in their underwear.

Captain Smith’s military staff were all close cronies. His lieutenant was a three card monte man known as “the Senator.” The bouncer at Clancy’s Music Hall was named sergeant. The bartender at the Klondike Saloon became chaplain to the Guards, while Stroller White of the Skagway
News
was placed in charge of publicity – an item that Smith never ignored. The Captain bought up all the ribbon in town to make badges for his men, and when the supply ran out he made do with butcher paper. In a few days scores of his followers were decked out in bright badges bearing the words “Smith’s Alaska Guards.”

On Sunday, May 1, Smith arranged the greatest demonstration that Skagway had yet seen, in honour of his newly formed military unit. He marched at the head of a procession that stretched for two blocks, while two thousand people cheered on the sidelines, hundreds of them wearing badges of gold, white, and blue which read: “Freedom for Cuba! Remember the
Mainel
Compliments of Skagway Military Company, Jeff R. Smith, Captain.”

The parade, which was accompanied by a brass band hastily organized by Jake Rice of the People’s Theatre, suffered only one major interruption. When it passed the so-called Princess Hotel, a group of scantily-clad young women, headed by one Babe Davenport, demanded that Smith stop proceedings long enough to organize a women’s auxiliary. “Your turn will come later,” Smith is said to have replied, somewhat cryptically, and the parade got under way again.

At the meeting that followed, the crowd howled for Smith to make a speech, and the self-appointed captain mounted the rostrum, and in a ringing voice offered the services of himself and his men for president and country. As the crowd applauded Smith cried:

“There is one man who, in this terrible strife, has transcended the bounds of fair war. He has murdered the helpless and the weak, debauched women, butchered and starved little children. Mr. Chairman, this man we have with us today. I have him here, and we will proceed to hang and butcher Weyler!”

At a pre-arranged signal, an effigy of the Spanish general in Cuba was swung in the breeze and a bonfire kindled beneath. According to Stroller White, who was present, Smith then cried: “You are fine and brave men, each and every one of you, and I am sure you will unhesitatingly follow me anywhere and at any time.” With that he turned on his heel and marched into his saloon, where seven extra bartenders had been retained “aproned and waiting to start, as they put it ‘shovin’ de booze over de wood.’ “ The Stroller claimed that Smith took in twenty-five hundred dollars that night.

Smith continued to mix patriotism with profit. Shortly afterwards he announced that a benefit would be staged for the widows and orphans of his troops, though he did not explain (nor did anyone dare ask in that emotion-charged period) why such an event was necessary. Smith was able to sell fourteen hundred and fifty tickets at a dollar apiece for the affair whose treasurer, a long-time crony, subsequently vanished with all but seventy-five dollars of the proceeds. Few there were by this time who doubted that Soapy Smith was the benefactor of Skagway, its guiding light, the symbol of its honour and its pride, the emblem of its future prosperity. And when a few days later a personal letter came to Smith from the Secretary of War, thanking him for his patriotism (but politely declining his offer to serve in foreign climes), it seemed to set the seal on the affair. Smith treasured the document. He had it framed and hung in a prominent place on a wall in his oyster parlour. It told the world that Jefferson Randolph Smith was something more than just another tinhorn gambler.

5

Shoot-out at the Juneau dock

Independence Day in Skagway … The sharp white peaks look down upon a sea of waving flags. The wind, whistling incessantly through the long shaft of the White Pass, rustles the gay bunting with which Jeff Smith has bedecked the main streets. The air is blue with gun-smoke and the scent of burning powder, and the mountain walls resound with the shouts of the holiday crowd and the blare of martial trumpets
.

On a flag-draped rostrum the Governor of Alaska is speaking, and beside him, cross-legged and smiling, sits the dictator of Skagway. This is his moment of triumph. The world is his oyster. And yet, almost at this very instant, his nemesis is trudging down the White Pass trail towards the town…
.

J. D. Stewart, the prospector, did not look at all like an instrument of fate. There is a picture of him extant, and if ever a man looks like a sucker, it is he. There he stands, in front of a Skagway shack, clutching his poke of gold fiercely in his right hand, his cloth cap, a little too small for him, perched squarely across his bullet head. It is ironic that this square-faced, sombre-eyed man, with his thickly knotted tie, his heavy boots, and his shapeless, high-waisted trousers, should have been the unwitting instrument that brought the sudden downfall of the suave and elegant con man.

Stewart was in the advance guard of a human exodus from Dawson, and Skagway stood to be enriched by it. With the river open again after the long winter, the successful miners were clamouring to reach civilization and spend their gold. They could go downriver via St. Michael, or upriver and across the pass via Skagway. The former route was the easier, but the upriver route was the shorter, and Skagway was waiting in anticipation for hundreds of wealthy men to descend upon the town.

Stewart had twenty-eight hundred dollars in gold dust when he arrived in Skagway on July 7, en route to his home at Nanaimo, British Columbia. Friends in town warned him about Smith’s gang and urged him to lock his gold in a safe at a hotel and leave it there until he booked passage south. It says something for the gang’s powers of persuasion that they were able to talk Stewart out of it. On the morning of July 8 the sanctimonious Tripp and the saintly Bowers, posing as gold-buyers for a fake assaying company, convinced the prospector that he could get a better price for his dust if he brought his poke over to Jeff Smith’s Parlor.

Stewart was taken into the notorious back room, and here, while the supposed price was being negotiated, a member of the gang, dressed like a fellow Klondiker and laughing to give the appearance of a joke, seized the bag and made for the door. The thief was almost out of sight before Stewart, in a daze, took after him. At this the others in the gang, pretending to misunderstand the situation, seized him and treated him as if he were drunk. Before Stewart knew it, he had been eased out into the street, the crowd had melted away, and all his gold was gone.
^*

This was too much. He went straight to the U.S. deputy marshal, a man named Taylor; but the officer, who was in Smith’s pay, retorted that he could do nothing, as Stewart was unable to identify the man who had stolen the gold. He had only one suggestion: why didn’t Stewart head back for the Klondike and dig out another twenty-eight hundred dollars? Having said this, he returned to the task at hand – supervising the carpentry work on a handsome new home for himself.

This infuriating attitude got Stewart’s dander up, and he began to spread the story of his loss about the town. He told Calvin Barkdull, a horse packer who had brought his duffel bag over the pass the previous day, and Barkdull told his boss, Charles De Witt, who owned one of the large packing outfits. De Witt was shocked – not so much, apparently, by the moral aspect of the robbery as by its economic significance.

“My God,” he exclaimed, “this won’t do! If word gets down the river that the first man coming out by way of Skagway was robbed, no one else will come this way.”

The three men walked a block to Sperry’s sheet-iron warehouse, where Frank Reid’s friend and cohort, Captain Sperry, operated a storage place for miners who wanted to leave their valuables behind before risking the pass. By noon of Friday, July 8, Reid and Sperry, together with Major Tanner, had reorganized the vigilantes, and the story of Stewart’s loss was being discussed all over town. Tension began to rise as knots of people gathered in the street. The news went round that the U.S. commissioner at Dyea, C. A. Sehlbrede, had been sent for. Men began to mutter that all of Dawson’s wealthiest prospectors were leaving the country by way of St. Michael because they were afraid to use the Skagway trail. As suddenly as the wind shifts in the mountains, the whole town started to turn against Soapy Smith.

Smith himself did not remain oblivious of this change of temperament. He had runners all over town bringing him news of the excitement. One arrived with the intelligence that M. K. Kalem, a Yukon outfitter, was haranguing a throng in front of his store a block or two up Broadway. As the crowd discussed ways and means of getting Stewart’s poke back, Smith suddenly arrived in their midst. He was wearing a mackinaw coat and he kept both his hands in his pockets, but the square lines of a revolver showed in each. He shouldered his way through the throng and faced it, as he had faced so many others in his lifetime.