Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (6 page)

Another favored scam, and one that his men loved to try in infinite variation, was to liberate greenhorns from their hard-earned stakes. Soapy's men would often outright pick the pockets of the men, or if they were feeling generous, they might pose as a trusted individual—often a man of the cloth. The gullible newcomer would soon end up losing great sums and be in such a financial hole that his salvation required someone to step in and rescue him. Cue Soapy Smith, often called on to pay the man's way back to his family. Which he often did, coming out looking like a decent bloke, despite the fact that he was the very man responsible for the greenhorn's desperate situation.

Within months of arriving Soapy had set himself up as the boss of Skagway, and the town's fragile new government could do little to change that. He had most cash and credit dealings locked up tight. But not everyone in town was pleased with this development—and he couldn't care less. It was this dedication to criminal pursuits that would bring about Soapy Smith's ignoble end. When it became apparent that their own local law enforcement agency was in the pocket of Soapy and others of his ilk, the townsfolk of Skagway established the “Committee of 101,” a vigilance group.

The group was largely composed of Skagway citizens not inclined to see the world as Soapy Smith and his cohorts did—a wide-open, unguarded purse brimming with riches earned by others, just aching to be picked. Members of the vigilance committee were more interested in creating a community in which they might raise their children unmolested by jackals looking for impressionable, young, nimble-fingered recruits to do their bidding. They wanted a town in which they wouldn't be forced to pay protection fees to thugs in the employ of a bigger thug.

Ever shrewd, and capitalizing on his success and stature in the community, Smith formed his own similar committee, audaciously naming it the “law and order society.” Its membership was triple that of the legitimate group, showing Smith's extensive reach and influence. Despite this, Soapy and his minions began to feel pressure from the town's more honest folks, people who had begun to tire of his heavy-handed thievery.

In a relatively short time, Skagway had taken on the reputation as a place to be avoided at all costs unless you didn't mind being separated from your purse. It was referred to as a “hell on earth,” even by people who lived there.

Other lesser con men drifted away from Skagway instead of risking the wrath of a legitimate vigilante group composed of increasingly disgusted citizens. Sensing a unique opportunity, Smith worked double time to curry favor with the local populace in an effort to make himself appear legitimate and respectable.

In 1898 he wrote to President William McKinley and was granted official status for a volunteer army company he formed in light of the Spanish-American War. He rode as marshal of the town's Fourth of July parade and was included on the grandstand with various officials, including the territorial governor.

But Soapy was a two-sided devil and kept his swindling up day and night as his vast network of weasels continued to bilk innocents. And it all came to a head on July 7, 1898, when his men snatched a sack of gold from miner John Douglas Stewart, who had just scored big in the Klondike and found himself roped into a rigged game of three-card monte. He lost, naturally, and when Soapy's men demanded payment, Stewart refused, knowing he'd been duped. That didn't stop them from taking his money, though.

The Committee of 101 came to the man's aid and demanded that Soapy return the lost gold. But Soapy said no go, a bet's a bet, a deal's a deal. The episode devolved quickly into what has become known as the Shootout on Juneau Wharf.

On the evening of July 8, 1898, a group of incensed Skagway citizens met to hear what the recently robbed John Douglas Stewart had to say. After much wrangling, bickering, and arm waving, it was decided they'd meet on the Juneau Wharf to discuss the matter further.

Soapy Smith and a few of his closest cohorts heard of this meeting and made their way there. Soapy had grown increasingly incensed that these formerly malleable, mewling creatures under his control should suddenly show a distinct stiffening of the spine. He intended to put a stop to the outrage once and for all. Before he left his saloon, he snatched up his Winchester rifle and thumbed in shells, saying, “I will put a stop to these shenanigans once and for all, by God.”

It didn't take long for Soapy and his men, all armed, to stomp their way through the hard-packed dirt street to the waterfront at Juneau Wharf.

Frank H. Reid, by trade a surveyor, and one of Smith's most outspoken opponents in town, was one of the first men Soapy came up against as he strode onto the wharf.

“Halt there, I say!”

“Frank Reid, I'd know that voice in a dark room anywhere. What in the name of all that is sacred are you doing?” Smith's words cut through the still air.

Despite his cool talk, Smith did halt. In the coming gloom of evening, he made out four armed men looking stern and intent to block his path.

“I say halt and stop your talking. You are not welcome here. This is a meeting about you, but it is not
for
you. You understand?”

“Why, you . . . how dare you and your unlawful gang of vigilantes, criminals all, talk to me like that. And in my town!” Within a second the incensed Smith shifted his rifle from his shoulder to a low position of play and covered the few remaining paces that separated him from his nemesis, Frank Reid, that perennial burr under his saddle. The men hated each other with an anger that sizzled the air between them. Their verbal exchange was merely foreplay to an incident each had long anticipated.

As Soapy stomped forward, his boot heels clacking hard against the wood, he brought his Winchester up, leveled square and close-in on Reid's chest.

But the seething surveyor was no wilting daisy. He jerked his arm at the barrel as if to knock it away, hammering down hard with his forearm, all the while raising his own firearm. As in any gunfight, the point of no return had finally been reached. Smith pushed in hard on Reid, and the surveyor reacted out of instinct. Given those elements, what happened next is hardly a surprise.

Witnesses claimed Smith shouted, “My God, don't shoot!” Though it is doubtful that Smith could not have expected gunplay, armed and angry as he was.

As if in mutual agreement, the two combatants each pulled a trigger on his respective gun, the cracks of shots split the cooling night, and the men stiffened, convulsing with the first sudden realization that their lives had changed with eyeblink speed. Then the pain set in as the men collapsed on each other, flopping away.

A shot—Frank Reid's or, other witnesses said, one delivered by another of the four guards, Jesse Murphy—had pierced Soapy Smith square in the heart, killing him almost at once. It was later learned that Smith had also received a shot to the left leg and another in the left elbow. Clearly Reid hadn't been the only man to fire a shot into Soapy Smith, though given the outcome, desired by many in town, it matters little who fired the killing shot.

It is said the king of con men was dead when he dropped to the warped boards of the pier. But just before that, his last conscious act was to trigger a death-dealing shot to Reid's gut. As with everything in Soapy Smith's life that led him to that point, this last action was not straightforward and direct, but sneaky and roundabout.

It took the gut-shot Reid a full twelve days of wallowing in agony before he succumbed to his wounds, including a shot to the leg and another in the groin.

But their mutual shooting didn't put an end to that evening's hellish events. They merely provided the impetus for action, especially for the fedup citizens of Skagway, those in the majority who had long endured Smith's underhanded, heavy-handed tactics. No doubt feeling the sudden promise of freedom offered them, the citizenry ran riot throughout Skagway, rounding up Smith's minions. Anyone who had even been suspected of being affiliated with Smith, no matter how remotely, was nabbed.

The worst of the lot, eleven in all, were arrested and shipped to Sitka to stand trial. So well had Smith and his men covered their tracks through the years that the numerous alleged murders they committed, let alone the many thievings they undertook collectively and individually, could not be supported with the evidence necessary to sustain the deserved punishments a court of law would have delivered upon them. In the end the eleven received little more than light sentences.

Skagway rebounded and thrived once Smith's legacy of thievery and taint had been swept away. In the year following the decisive gunfight on the wharf, proper town council and schools were established, and most revealing of all, the town's crime rate plummeted.

In a telling footnote, the two men who shot each other dead, Soapy Smith and Frank Reid, were buried in Skagway's cemetery but a short distance from each other. For all his wily ways, or perhaps because of them—and because we all love a good (or bad) swindler—Soapy Smith's grave sees far more visitors than does Frank Reid's.

A
h, Kentucky . . . home of tasty whiskey and birthplace of two cousins with more audacity in their pinky fingers than most folks gain their entire lives.

They are also the fathers of what's considered the most infamous grift in the history of the United States. Philip Arnold and John Slack, cousins with long experience prospecting for gold and other valuable minerals and metals, were but two of thousands of people following the 1848 California gold rush to view America's vast West as one big ol' mother lode just waiting to be unearthed, exposed, and exploited. After a few decades, however, it began to become clear to such hopeful grubbers and speculators that this vast region of unlimited potential for instant and easy wealth was a well with a distinct bottom.

But for natural-born opportunists such as Arnold and Slack, a lack of nature's compliance posed little problem. It was Arnold who first came up with what seemed like a surefire way to cash in, and in a big way. And true to con man form, it came to fruition as a scam, one they never imagined would become the biggest in US history, one that quickly gained the name the Great Diamond Hoax.

The incredible level of bravado and bold demeanor it took these two garden-variety con men to pull off this infamous hoax is staggering. Even today, nearly a century and a half after the dust of the event settled, the names of the people who were duped still raise eyebrows. They are none other than global captains of industry and finance, politicians, and lawyers. How did they do it? Simple: by appealing to that most base of desires, the yearning for money. And how they did it is a most entertaining tale.

Though his hands were more used to physical toil, those of a man adept at swinging a pick, grasping a shovel, and hauling raw rock, in the past few months Philip Arnold had found employment in San Francisco working for the Diamond Drill Company.

While there he'd been pleasantly surprised to learn that uncut raw diamonds were employed for industrial use by the bagful on the tips of drill bits. He'd heard of diamonds' ability to cut through just about anything thrown at them, but it had still come as a shock to learn that his employer had vast amounts of these low-grade, poor-quality, uncut diamonds stored for use on his products.

And then it hit Arnold—square in the forehead like a nine-pound rock sledge. Why not make such diamonds work for him? Surely there must be a way. Arnold was no stranger to the notion of salting a claim. But the efforts he'd heard of often involved gold or silver melted down and fired into the ground with a shotgun. How would one go about salting a diamond mine?

By not mining for them, of course! By making them part of the landscape, by sprinkling them here and there as a chef would seasoning. From there it had been but a short bit of thinking to further the plan. Why stop at diamonds? Why not really make the possibilities exciting for . . . whom? Whom was he going to impress? Whom was he going to try to convince that gemstones could be found on the ground in the middle of nowhere?

Why, men with money, of course. They were the only ones he was interested in impressing. And how was he going to go about this? By salting a claim somewhere, that's how. But first he needed to sweeten the deal. He didn't have to venture far to find what he was after: garnets, sapphires, and rubies. They were more of the same—uncut stones that would attract the eye and the wallet and provide a perfect rainbow of contrasting, sparkling colors for anyone interested in making a fortune.

But he would need a confidante, someone who could help him with the various tasks such an undertaking would demand. And who better than someone he knew and trusted?

“Tell me, John,” said Philip Arnold, smiling across the table at his cousin from back home in Kentucky. “You see what I see?”