Monument To a Two-Gun Man

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 170, 8 October 1927, Page 26 (Supplement)

Monument To a Two-Gun Man

The Strange Story of “Soapy” Smith and an Alaskan Feud...

IS lawless word was law in the wild days of the Klondike rush. Like any feudal baron he ruled Skagway when it was a boom town. He levied tribute on the

hardbolled pilgrims of the Chilcoot Pass and Heartbreak Trail. His gambling and drinking joint was the pirate isle of that terrestrial Spanish Main. And now—“ High on the grey limestone cliff it looms, the skull of Soapv Smith,” writes Guy Forshey in the St. Louis “Post-Dispatch.” “Tourists taking the ‘inside route’ to Skagway are startled to see it grinning there on the mountainside. It glares white in the Alaskan sunshine. Late at night, when ‘the long twilight is getting dim, it is the last of the landmarks to disappear. It keeps on grinning through the deepening dusk, a mammoth, eerie death's head, guarding the strait that separates Wrangell Island from the mainland. The ships pass almost under its leering jaw. One can easily count the rough, irregular teeth. There are 15. Anl that great, empty eye-socket, gaping up there 250 ft. above the water, one muses, must be at least four feet across.” Surely one of the most singular monuments by which a liberated community ever expressed its hatred and mockery, mingled with grim satisfaction over the downfall of its former despot. Elsewhere in' America, eminent sculptors hew statuary out of mountain-sides in honour of heroes and patriots; on the Alaskan coast the brow of a cliff is wrought it.to a ghastly skull to commemorate the misdeeds of a “bad man.” Nervous travellers, we are told, exclaim: “What is the meaning of this monstrous sculpture? Who was Soapy Smith?”

It is a delight of the old skippers on Alaska-bound tourist steamers to tell the story of Soapy Smith. It recalls the days of *9B, when men battled the arctic for its gold. It brings back the bold, bad days of Skagway. It recalls the fight at the wharf. There are others, too, who like to tell the story. Stephen Stephens, a St. Louisan, was a newsboy of 14 selling papers on the streets of Skagway when Soapy Smith was at his high tide. He knew Soapy well. He saw the fight at the wharf and was standing a few feet away when Smith Jueatbed his last. He gives a graphic

eye-witness account of the struggle. Soapy Smith, all the storytellers will relate, was the king of Alaska’s bad men. Into his coffers the lesser bad men paid their toll and tribute. A self-appointed two-gun monarch, lie ruled Skagway for a time, and held the road to the Klondike. Through henchmen he robbed and stole, ami when the spirit moved him, he gave generously to widows and children i:i distress and to broken men who came wandering back defeated. It was on July 8, 1898, that Frank Reid killed him—and he killed Frank Reid. Reic, the government surveyor and orgariser of Alaska’s Law and Order League, became with that fatal ercounter a national hero. Strictly, he was Skagway’s, but now all Alaska claims him as its patriot and defender. A monument inscribed with eulogistic legend rises above his grave in the Skagway Cemetery. But for Soapy Smith the monument is a skull, a great death's head 25f:. high and 15ft. wide. At the instance of the Arctic Brotherhood it was chiselled there on the face of the cliff and painted white by quarrymen last fall.

Soapy Smith was in Alaska little more than a year, but he encompassed more in the way of crime and two-gun rule and high finance than most gangleaders encompass in a lifetime. He bobbed up first in Wrangell in the summer of 1897. Record as to his origin is not clear, but it is known that he once operated as a gambler and confluence man in St. Louis. One of his first devices for catching "suckers” was a soap-auction game, in which he sold soap on the representation that each package contained money. It was from Montana that he went to Alaska in quest of fut dividends in the gold-rush. The boom was near:ng its crest, and Skagway, which now contains only 500 inhabitants, wa3 a thriving city of 15,000, with a large drifting population besides, when he made his entry from Wrangell. Almost overnight he became a power. The lawless element flocked to his banner, which was the black flag of piracy. He instructed his followers to bring in results —results being money. His saloon and gambling establishment in Skagway was one of the most elaborate the Northwest ever saw. It had only one rival for size and none for ferocity or

double-dealing. To the smaller fry i among the gamblers he was a source of constant torment. He compelled them to pay a licence to him to operate. He forced them to split 50-50 on their winnings. He was the empire and they the tributary colonies. They quailed at the crack of his whip. Though he always carried two big revolvers on his hips and a small one under his left armpit, and flourished them with a great show of bravado, it isn’t on record that Soapy ever killed a man himself in his life. That is, no man except Frank Reid, whom he shot fatally after Reid had given him his own death wound. Met casually on the street or in the saloon, Soapy was the most genial of men. He was intensely vain, and prided himself upon his liberality, especially to charitable causes. Far and wide he was celebrated as “easy pickings” for the down-and-outer. This and his kindness to children won him many friends and defenders who were loath to war against him. As Stephens tells the story, there were two things Soapy Smith respected and feared. They were the Canadian Mounted Police and Frank R. Reid. He used to say that a country which had an organisation like the mounted police was a “bum country” to live in. So he kept out of Canada. He was almost as respectful of Reid. Reid was 54 and some 16 years older than Soapy, but he was a hard frontiersman. He could shoot fast and accurately. He had come to Alaska

as a government surveyor and had laid out Skagway. His hobby was law enforcement. He believed the citizens should take the law into their own hands when the government authorities couldn’t enforce it.

Trudging over the trail from Dawson one day came Alexander Stewart. He had played against the Arctic and gathered up his winnings. With his poke, containing 3,000 dollars of golddust, he was on his way to the outside. Into lawless Skagway trudged the tired prospector and parked his gold at Soapy Smith’s saloon. There were no banks there at that time, and it was customary for returning miners to leave their pokes at hotels or in saloons for safe-keeping. That evening Stewart called for his poke. It was on July 2. Smith and his bartenders looked at him in feigned amazement. “Who the hell are you ” they asked. He tried to explain. "We never saw you before. Get the hell out of here.” Stewart got out, but he went straight to Frank Reid. It was the third time such a thing had happened within a week. Reid’s patience was exhausted. The next night he called a mass-meeting to organise a law and order league. What happened? Soapy Smith broke up the meeting, says Mr. Forshey. With his gunmen he invaded the hall, seized the gavelj and—