To make a long story short, we had good luck the next ten days as we floated downstream towards Dawson, tying up and camping when and where we wished, and hunting in likely places. The sloughs and little lakes were alive with ducks and geese, and we had our boat half-full of them before we reached Indian river. From that point it was an easy day's run to Dawson.
We made camp on the shore at Indian in the afternoon, and went back into the thick woods on the extensive flats behind us to explore. We came on a pond and got a few more ducks. This pond was peculiar in that at one side a trail led down to it, and the shore was trampled as if herds of cattle were accustomed to water there. It was a "moose-lick," a place to which for years, at certain seasons, the moose came at night from miles around, because the water and soil had in them some salty substance which they liked or needed.
We weren't hunting big game and so had brought only one rifle for emergencies, but here was a chance right under our noses that we couldn't pass, although we knew it was rather late in the season for moose to visit the lick. At the edge of the pond we picked a good-sized tree that we could climb and find secure footing in. Then we went back the half-mile to the shore and had supper.
When it grew dark we went out to our tree and climbed up in it, to watch for the possible coming of the moose. For four long, miserably cold hours we clung to our perch. It was pitch dark and absolutely silent, save for the dull murmur of the Yukon, and the "plunk, plunk" of some little diving duck at long intervals in the pond. Half-a-dozen times we were inclined to abandon our vigil, but one encouraged the other and we hung on. About midnight we were rewarded by hearing, through the darkness, a sound like the breaking of a branch away on the mountain slope. It startled us, coming on us out of the night when we were tense with prolonged listening to unbroken silence. Soon there was no mistaking the approach of the monarch of the woods. It seemed as if some great boulder were crashing down the hillside through the trees. Every now and then there would be a minute of complete stillness, and we could imagine him standing, with lordly, lifted head and wide-branching antlers, listening and sniffing the air for strange noises or smells. He seemed satisfied that no danger lurked in the woods, for he came straight across from the foot of the mountain. At last by the noise we knew he was nearing our tree. Nearer he came and very near, leisurely now, probably feeding. In the dense darkness we could see nothing of him as yet until we heard something scrape against our tree. Looking down with straining eyes, I marked his dark, slowly-moving outline in the brush. I could have dropped on the animal's back had I been so minded. The proverbial "salt" might easily have been placed on his tail. The time for action had come. I had the rifle. In the darkness I couldn't see the barrel, so real aiming was impossible, but the moose was that near I felt I couldn't miss him anyway. I fired where I judged his shoulder should be. I regret to tell you that the flame of the gun showed that the bullet had gone an inch over his back, and I had missed him altogether! My left arm was around a limb and so the second shot was a trifle slow, but after the first, it seemed as if the moose jumped into the air, turned, and was fifty feet away in the timber on his back-trail when he lit! We heard him going at head-long speed and fired at the noise, but he went on until the sound died away in the distance.
We crawled down to the ground, stiff with cold, and dumb with disappointment. I knew it was a complete miss, but "hope springs eternal in the human breast," and we lighted matches and searched the ground and leaves for bloodstains. We searched his trail thus for twenty yards, then gave up, went back to camp and under our blankets. Patton was very decent about it. He knew how I felt. Once only did he make reference to my failure. The next day we were nearing Dawson, where our friends would come and inspect our "bag," when he said, "Well, George, wouldn't it be pleasant to pull into Dawson with a fine moose lying between us in the boat?" "Don't say another word, Tom," I replied, "or I'll burst into tears!"
I felt my almost inexcusable failure very keenly, for I made three separate trips, alone, to Indian river, and hunted there persistently, and very uncomfortably too, for that moose, but he never gave me another chance.
The good shipAraguayaof the Royal Mail Steam Packet Line was under commission during the war as a Canadian hospital ship on the North Atlantic. She and her sister ship theEssequibo, with theLlandovery CastleandLetitia, composed the fleet used to convey our wounded from the old land to Canada. TheLetitiawas wrecked in a fog on the rocks near Halifax with no loss of lives. TheLlandovery Castlewas sunk by a submarine while returning empty to England. Mostly all the ship's officers, M.O.'s, nurses, and crew were drowned or shot by the fiend who commanded the U-boat. The chaplain, Capt. McPhail, was killed. By strange chance his body, with life-belt, was carried towards France and months afterwards was found on the beach and buried.
Thank God all the German submarines were not run by such as sank theLlandovery. I have a snapshot taken from the deck of theEssequiboof a U-boat which stopped that ship, searched her thoroughly but courteously and then let her go unharmed.
I spent ten months as chaplain on theAraguayaand a happy time it was. That was the "cushiest" job I have ever had. We were under cover all the time, had abundance of good food and luxuries for everyone, and every device that money could buy to entertain our patients on their nine-day trip across. Besides, in my special work I had a flock which never strayed far from me. They couldn't!
Practically all the staterooms had been taken out, only sufficient being left for M.O's, nurses, and ship's officers. This made fine, large, airy wards for the bed cases, fitted with swinging cots so that they did not feel the roll of the vessel. I had a comfortable room all to myself, for Col. Whidden and later Col. Murray were both very considerate of my comfort.
You will be interested to know that at the celebration of the completion of the Kiel Canal, theAraguayawas loaned by the R.M.S.P. Co. to the Kaiser for use as his private yacht during the regatta, as a token of British goodwill. The suite of rooms our O.C. used had been the Kaiser's, and mine was one of those that "Little Willie" had occupied!
The ship's officers and crew were all first-class seamen of heroic stuff. The majority of them had been through the dread experience of being torpedoed, some two or three times, and had seen many of their mates shot down or drowned. Yet here they were from stoke-hold to pilot-house carrying on as cheerfully as ever.
Capt. Barrett, the skipper, a short, stout, ruddy-faced Englishman sat at the head of the table, with our O.C. and officers to his right and his own officers to his left. Many a merry meal we had together there. I can hear Major Shillington's steadying voice when he thought he saw trouble ahead in our arguments, Gunn with the happy laugh, Langham bringing us down to cold, hard facts, and the others good men all, with whom I companied those days. Tell your choicest funny story and you'd hear Capt. Johnson's stage-whisper, "I kicked the slats out of my cradle the first time I heard that!" I often wore my tartan uniform for "old-time's" sake, and the Cameron trousers always started the skipper bemoaning that now we'd have a stormy night since the padre had put on his "tempestuous pants." Of course we frequently fought the question out around the table. I based my claim to wear Highland garb, blow high or blow low, not only on my connection with the 43rd, but because I was a thorough-bred Scot. I carried the war into the enemy's country by maintaining that it was wrong to let anyone wear it but those of Scottish extraction. My own Camerons were nearly all Scots, this I know from careful official census taken in France. We had ten or fifteen per cent. who did not belong to "the elect," but they became fine fellows from being continually in such good company, and I find no fault with them for wearing the kilts. But the principle is wrong. Suppose on the field of battle a fierce and haughty Prussian surrendered to a kilted man whom he thought to be a Scot, only to find on getting back to the corral that his captor was a peaceful Doukhobor in kilts. What a humiliation and what cruelty! I actually met an officer in France belonging to a Canadian Kiltie battalion (not ours) who asked me the meaning of the words "Dinna Forget," the title of a book which lay before him on the table. I asked him what he thought it was. He said "I suppose the name of a girl, the heroine of the story, 'Dinna' maybe a local way of spelling 'Dinah,' and 'Forget' is her surname. That's my guess." He was in full, Scottish, regimental field-uniform when he spoke these words! I was dumb for a little before I could tell him what the words really meant. It is not the claim of superiority of race but simply a matter of honest practice. The tartan costume has become the recognized badge of Scottish birth or ancestry. It is therefore perpetrating a fraud upon the public for a man of any other race to parade in this distinctively national garb.
It would fill too many pages even to outline the varied aspects of our life aboard the boat. Matron Shaw and her noble band of nurses should have a page to themselves. We carried about nine hundred patients each trip and after two days out, when they became able to hear "The Return of the Swallow" recited without getting pale around the gills, everything went along with a hum. There were lectures, concerts, movies, shovelboard and deck tennis tournaments, dozens of phonographs and all sorts of parlor games and books, and on Sunday our religious services. The boys were all glad to be going home to Canada and they were easily entertained.
The great event was, of course, our first sight of land and then the disembarkation. The later trips we unloaded at Portland, Maine, and I cannot recollect having seen a more magnificent demonstration of public good-will than was given us by those Yankees. The first time we put in there, while the boat was still twenty feet away from the dock the thousands of people on the wharf commenced to cheer and the bands to play, and we were bombarded with candies, cigars, cigarettes and fruit. Much of it fell into the water. When we tied up a score of committees came aboard and almost submerged us under endless quantities of oranges, apples, bananas, grapes, dough-nuts, cake, sandwiches, ice-cream, tea, coffee and soft drinks, and expensive candies and everything else that we could eat or drink, that the law would allow, in superabundance. They took our hundreds of letters and many telegrams and sent them without costing us a penny. The latest newspapers, bouquets, of choice flowers for everyone, concert parties, and indeed everything good that kind hearts could think of was showered upon us. I remember a western bed-patient asked me if I thought they would get him a plug of a special brand of chewing tobacco. He hadn't been able to buy it in four years overseas and it was his favorite. "Sure thing," one of them said and in half-an-hour two men came aboard lugging along enough of that tobacco to stock a small store! I cannot go further into details. Enough to say that every trip it was the same, except that their hospitality became more systematized. Probably fifteen thousand wounded Canadian soldiers passed through Portland on their way home, and I know they will find it hard to forget the free-handed, warm-hearted welcome they got in that city. This memory will surely be a leaven working towards the maintenance and development of peace and good-will between Canada and the United States.
But I must tell my story of the North. One trip Major Dick Shillington persuaded me to give them a Klondike evening. We gathered down below in "H" Mess and there I told something of the life-story of my old friend of by-gone days, a trail-blazer and prospector, Duncan McLeod.
* * * * *
When first I met Duncan McLeod, "Cassiar Mac" he was commonly called, he and his partner, John Donaldson, both old men, were working far up a tributary of Gold Bottom Creek which had not yet been fully prospected. Each liked to have his own house and do his own cooking, and so they lived within a few yards of each other in the creek bottom at the foot of the mountain summit that rose between them and Indian River. My trail over to the other creeks passed across their ground, and when we became friends I seldom failed to arrange my fortnightly trip over the divide so as to reach their place about dusk. I would have supper with one or the other and stay the night.
McLeod was an old-country Scot, Donaldson born of Scottish parents in Glengarry county, Ontario. I am not using their real names, but they were real men. One of them, Donaldson, is still living in the wilds of the Yukon, still prospecting. He was the first white man the Teslin Indians had seen and known. They looked upon him as their "Hi-yu-tyee," a sort of super-chief, during the years he lived near them. He had been just and kind with them, and his consequent influence saved occasional serious friction between the Indians and whites from becoming murder or massacre.
After supper we would all three gather in one of the cabins and I would hear good talk until far towards midnight. Then there would be a pause and McLeod would say, "Well, Mr. Pringle, I think it is time we were getting ready for our beds." I knew what he meant. "Yes, it is," I would reply. The Bible would be handed me, I would read a chapter and we would kneel in prayer to God. Then to our bunks for a good sleep and early away in the morning for me to make the twenty-five miles over the heights to Gold Run before dark.
What great talks those were I used to hear. I was only a boy then, and these old men had seen so much of the wild free life of the West of long ago days. What stirring adventures they had had! They came west before the railways by way of the American prairies, and, lured by gold discoveries, had entered the mountains, and then following the prospector's will-o-the-wisp, the better luck that lies "just over the divide," they had gone farther and farther north. They had met and become partners in the Caribou camp, and had been together nearly forty years, in the Cassiar, on the Stewart, at Forty-Mile and now the Klondike.
Donaldson had a wonderful native power of description. When story-telling he would pace slowly back and forth in the shadow beyond the dim candle-light and picture with quiet, resonant voice scenes and events of the past. How vivid it seemed to me! How the soul of the young man thrilled as he listened! Often there was a yearning at my heart when under his spell to lay aside my mission and go out into the farthest wilds, seeking adventure and living the free, fascinating life they had lived. How I wish I had written down these stories as they were told to me. But maybe they wouldn't have "written," for much of the interest lay in the personality of the story-teller.
McLeod's part was usually to help with dates or names when Donaldson's memory failed to recall them, but often he too would spin a yarn, and when he did there was always in its telling a gentleness, I can think of no better word, that gave a charm often missing in Donaldson's rougher style.
They were both big men physically, but McLeod had been magnificent. He was now nearly eighty years old and broken with rheumatism, but in the giant frame and noble face and head crowned with its snow-white hair I saw my ideal of what a great Highland Chieftain might have been in the brave days of old.
Donaldson told me one night, while his partner was making a batch of bread in his own cabin, what he knew of McLeod's history. "I have never known a man," he said, "that would measure up to my partner. None of us want our record searched too closely but it wouldn't make any difference to him. Nothing, nobody, seemed to have any power to make Mac do anything crooked or dirty. Whisky, gambling, bad women—he passed them up without apparent effort. Very strange too, even the few good women we have met in these camps never won anything from him but wholesome admiration. He had only to say the word and he could have had any one of them, but he didn't seem to care that way. What his experience had been before we met I do not know, he has never spoken much about it to anyone. But he and I have lived together as partners for nearly half a century, through the crazy, wicked days of all these gold camps, and Mac never did anything that he would be ashamed to tell his own mother."
A fine tribute. Perhaps under the circumstances the finest thing that could be said of any man, for you cannot imagine the thousand almost irresistible temptations that were part of the daily life of the stampeders in those northern camps. Enough for me to say that many men of really good character back East, where they were unconsciously propped up by influences of family, church, and community, failed miserably to keep their footing when they came to the far north where all these supports were absent and temptation was everywhere. I do not judge them. God only knows the fight they had before they surrendered. So it was an arresting event to meet a man who had seen it all and whose partner of forty years told me he had lived clean.
I often wondered what McLeod's story was. I had known him for three years before I ventured to ask him details about his home in Scotland, and why he left it to come so far away. I knew he had been reared in a village south of Edinburgh, in a good home with good parents, and much else he had told me, but there had always been a reticence that made you certain there was something else held back.
One winter night when we were alone in his cabin, he opened his heart to me. He was an old-fashioned Scot. I was his "minister" and he knew me well. Besides he was coming to the end of the trail, and he needed a confidant.
He said his story was hardly worth while bothering me with, I knew most of it, but what he could never tell anyone was about the lassie he had loved and lost. He had fallen in love with the brown eyes and winsome face of Margaret Campbell, a neighbour's daughter. They had gone to the same school, had taken their first communion together, and had both sung in the village church choir. When he revealed his love to her she told him she had guessed his secret and had lang syne given her heart to him. They were betrothed and very happy. But Margaret took ill in the fall and died before the new year. Early in the year he sailed from Leith for Canada, hoping that new scenes would soften his grief. As the years passed he kept moving west and then north. He grew to like the free life of the prospector and had not cared to leave the mountains and the trails.
Time had healed the wound but his love for the sweetheart of his youth was just as true and tender as ever. From a hidden niche at the head of his bed he took down a small box, brought it to the table near the candle and unlocked it. He showed me his simple treasures. His rough, calloused hands trembled as he lifted them carefully from the box. There was a small photo so faded I could barely see the face on it. "You'll see she was very beautiful," he said, for he saw with the clear vision of loving memory what was not for my younger but duller eyes to discern. There was her gold locket with a wisp of brown hair in it. "She left me this," he said, "when she died." Last, there was an old letter, stained and worn, the only love-letter she had ever written him, for he had only once been far enough or long enough away to need letters. He had spent a week in Glasgow after they became engaged and she had written to him. This was all.
Somehow I felt as if I were on sacred ground, that the curtain had been drawn from before a Holy Place, and I was looking upon something more beautiful than I had ever seen before. As the old man put the box away his eyes were shining "with a light that never was on sea or land." Mine were moist, and for a little I couldn't trust my voice to speak as I thought of the life-time of unswerving fealty to his dead lassie. Such long, lonely years they must have been!
We did not say much more that night but the words we spoke were full of understanding and reverence. When it grew late and he handed me the Bible I hesitated in choosing a chapter, but not for long. The comfort and rejoicing of the twenty-third Psalm were all we wanted.
One morning, not long afterwards, Donaldson came into my cabin on Hunker creek in evident distress. McLeod hadn't come out as usual to his work that morning, and he had gone to see what was wrong and found him in his bunk hardly able to speak. He had taken "a stroke." A neighbouring miner watched by the sick man while Donaldson hitched up his dogs and raced to Dawson for medical aid. Donaldson went off down the trail and I hurried up the gulch to my old friend. He lingered for two or three days. The doctor could do nothing for him but to ease his last moments.
I stayed near him until the end came. When he tried to speak his utterance was indistinct and what few words I could make out showed that his mind was wandering. Sometimes he was on the trail or in the camp, but oftenest he was home again in the far away land he loved, and in boyhood days among folk we did not know save one, known only to me, whose name was continually on his lips.
He had a lucid interval just before he died and for a minute or two he thought and spoke clearly. I told him that death was near. Was there anything that we could do for him? "Not very much," he said, "I want Donaldson to have all I own. He's been a good partner. Bury my box with me. I'm not afraid to go now. It's just another prospecting trip to an unknown land and I have a Great Guide. He won't forsake an old prospector. He was one Himself, I'm thinking, when He came seeking us. He will keep a firm grip of me now that the trail is growing dark. I'm not afraid."
These were his last words, and as he slipped away, we, who were gathered in the dimly-lighted little cabin, felt somehow that the Guide he spoke of was right at hand. He would surely keep "a firm grip" of the old miner on his last prospecting trip, even if strange storms were blowing, and it was black dark when they crossed the Great Divide. It would come morning too in that land when night was past, and when the new day dawned I know he would soon find the one whom he had "loved long since and lost awhile."
My billet on the hospital shipAraguayawas very comfortable and my duties agreeable, but every time we reached port on the Canadian side of the Atlantic I had an impulse to desert the ship and become a stowaway on the hospital-train bound for British Columbia. It was there my wife and boy lived and I hadn't seen them for three years. However I got the chance at last to go without breaking regulations, for when I requested it, leave was readily granted me to stay ashore over one round-trip of the boat. This was supplemented by my taking the place of an absent conducting officer on the western train. So my transportation cost me nothing, except the congenial task of making myself generally useful to the returning soldiers.
We had crossed the prairies, dropping many of our crowd at way points, and were climbing slowly along after supper up through a lonely stretch of mountains, when someone in the car where I was "visiting" gave it as his opinion that this would be a good piece of road on which to stage a train-robbery. This, of course, led to the mention of gun-men that they had known or heard of, men of the same ilk as Jesse James and Bill Miner. I contributed the story of Soapy Smith, the man who pulled off the most remarkably prolonged hold-up of which I have ever read. In the most approved dime-novel style he terrorized a town, not for a few days or weeks, but for six months.
* * * * *
"You'll have to see the spot where Soapy died." The Skagway man who said this was rather proud of the celebrity which the bandit had brought to the place. I had come by the steamboat the nine hundred miles north from Vancouver, and was forced to spend a day in Skagway before going over the White Pass on my way to Dawson. A resident of the town was taking me around showing me the sights of this mushroom camp. It was humming with life and packed with people. The rush to the goldfields was then at its height. I judged by my friend's tone that he expected me to be deeply impressed with this particular sight. So down to the sea we went and out on the wharf. As we walked down he outlined the story of Smith's career in the camp. On the pier he showed me a dark stain, covering about a square foot, made by the life-blood of the man who for half-a-year forced Skagway to pay him tribute in hard cash. He was the leader of a group of men who robbed and cheated in wholesale style, and when it was necessary, in getting their victim's money, did not stop at murder. No one had attempted successfully to interfere with him. Reputable merchants were all intimidated into handing him their "life-insurance premiums" whenever he asked for them. His reputation as a "killer" was such that on the fourth of July, when good Americans celebrate their freedom, he rode at the head of the procession on a white horse! Very few complained loudly enough for Soapy to hear. Without question his nerve is to be admired. I have never heard or read in the annals of the west anything to equal his record in that Alaskan port. Desperadoes have ridden into towns, "shot them up," took what they wanted and got away with it. But this man and his gang lived openly in a town of several thousands and in the most brazen fashion ran the place for months, although he was known as a crook, gunman, and leader of a gang of thugs. Skagway, it is true, was simply an eddy in a stream running into the gold-fields. In their mad haste to get on and over the Pass people wouldn't take time to straighten out the morals of the camp. The Soapy Smith business was especially uninviting as something to mix into. "It isn't my funeral," they would say, "and I don't want it to be."
Jefferson B. Smith hailed from the city of St. Louis in the U.S.A. He got the nickname he bore because at the beginning of his career of crookedness he used to sell soap to some of the citizens of Denver, Colorado. There is nothing remarkable about selling soap unless you do it Smith's way. In the evenings he and a confederate would set up their "stand" on a suitable downtown street. All he needed was a high box for a "pulpit" and a smaller box behind it to stand on. This with a flaring torch giving an uneven light, some cakes of cheap soap, a couple of five-dollar bills and some change, completed the outfit. A little clever "spieling," kept up more or less all evening, and the usual crowd would gather out of curiosity. He would show them an unwrapped piece of soap all the while extolling its great merits as a cleanser. To show how disinterested he was in introducing this superior article that only needed to be known to become popular, he would say he was going to wrap a five-dollar-bill in with some of these cakes of soap. He would sell the soap at fifty cents each piece, and everyone that bought stood to get the soap and make four dollars and fifty cents in cash out of the deal. Further if they watched him carefully they would see him actually put the five-dollar bill in when he wrapped up the soap, although he wouldn't guarantee that it would always be found there when the purchaser unwrapped his package. Of course he deceived them simply by clever sleight-of-hand. Rarely would any money be found, but people liked to be fooled if it is done the right way. To get them "biting" he might let one of the bills go to a confederate who was seemingly just one of the crowd. It was a money-making business as a rule for there were ordinarily quite a number of "easy-marks" around. They got the soap anyway. So came the name "Soapy."
Well, it was the same old clever, crooked game in other bigger and bolder forms that he now worked in Skagway, with the gun-play in addition. When the steamboat City of Seattle came into port there on January 17th, 1898, Soapy and his "merrie-men" were among the passengers. He was a slight built man, only five feet seven inches tall, very dark complexioned with a full beard and moustache. He wore a round Stetson hat with a hard brim. He soon established headquarters in the "Kentucky saloon" and "Jeff Smith's Parlors." These were liquor saloons, not providing board or lodging, and running crooked gambling games in their rear, a fruitful source of revenue to Smith's card-sharpers. Then he and his confederates got busy on all sorts of other schemes to steal people's money. He had at least thirty followers, and there wasn't a dishonest trick known to the underworld of those days that some of them couldn't work. They wore Masonic, Oddfellow, Elk and other fraternity emblems that might help in working "confidence-games." They opened up Information Bureaus where newcomers could be conveniently sized-up and robbed then or later on. One member who was very successful in luring victims was Old Man Tripp. He had grey hair, a long white beard and a benevolent countenance. It seemed impossible to suspect him of criminal intent. Smith had most of the gambling-joints paying him a big percentage. He even had men clever at the old, old "shell-game" running it in the fine weather at relay points on the trail.
One of his favorite stunts for a while at first was to recruit for the Spanish-American war which was just then stirring the fighting blood of Americans. While the would-be soldier was stripped, having a fake medical examination, his clothing was looted of whatever money or valuables it might contain.
A rather amusing incident occurred during Smith's regime in connection with the efforts of a Sky Pilot to raise some money at Skagway to build a church in a little place along the coast called Dyea. The parson came to Skagway in a rowboat one morning and started out with his subscription list. One of the first he tackled by chance and unknown to himself was the notorious bandit. Smith heartily endorsed the proposition and headed the list with one hundred dollars which he paid over in cash to the clergyman. Then he took the latter gentleman along to the principal merchants, hotel-men and gamblers and saw to it that they all gave handsome donations. At the close of the day the visitor decided to make for home. He was happy in the possession of over $2,000 in cash for his new church, thinking too what a splendid fellow this Mr. Smith was. On the way to the beach he was "held up" by one of Mr. Smith's lieutenants and relieved of all the money he had collected. He could get no redress.
Other occurrences, such as the smothering of the negro-wench in order to steal the few hundred dollars she had earned by washing, were despicable and worthy only of the meanest type of criminal.
Naturally there were many shooting scrapes in connection with the operations of the gang, and some killings, but nothing was done to end it. Not only was no move made to interfere with Soapy, but almost everyone refrained from speaking against him openly for reasons easy to understand. Of course there were men in Skagway who hotly resented the hold this outlaw had on the town, and were doing what they could to bring public sentiment to efficient action against him. One of these, a Canadian, was the editor of a local news sheet. In later years he became governor of Alaska. His name was Strong and it suited him, for he wasn't lacking in strength of character. One day, after his paper had appeared with an editorial making a scarcely-veiled attack on Soapy and his gang, he was met and stopped on the street by Smith accompanied by a tough named Mike Daley. They were loud and boisterous in accusing Strong of having offered personal insult to them in his newspaper. They demanded a retraction and apology and evidently meant to force a street-fight. Strong refused to withdraw his statement and declared that he intended to stand by his editorial. The loud quarrelling tones of the two desperadoes attracted the attention of two friends of Strong's, named D. C. Stephens and Allen, who happened to be walking down the same street. They hurried to the aid of their friend who at the risk of his life still refused to back down. The sight of reinforcements spoiled Smith's game and he and Daley went on without accomplishing their sinister purpose.
There was another man who did not hesitate to say anywhere, and in most forcible terms what he thought of these criminals. This man was Frank Reid, a land-surveyor. He was fearless, and too quick with a gun for these crooks to attempt to silence. But he got very little open support and could do nothing single-handed.
Of course things couldn't go on like this. In the Spring matters reached a climax. Word had at last got into the Klondike that it wasn't safe to come out by way of Skagway with your gold, that you were likely to be relieved of your "poke" by desperadoes. This news commenced to turn out-going gold-laden traffic down the Yukon and out by way of St. Michaels. The Skagway merchants saw "the goose that laid the golden eggs" flying away, and it put them at last into a ferment of anger at the cause of it. This led to the formation of a Vigilance Committee of which Reid was the moving spirit.
Finally a Nanaimo man named Stewart, waiting for the steamboat on his way home from the Klondike, had $3,000.00 in nuggets stolen from him by one of Soapy's confidence men who had offered to turn it into currency. It was all he had and he made such a fuss that the whole town knew about his loss. He reported it to the U.S. Deputy-Marshal, a man named Taylor who was in Smith's pay. He got no satisfaction. The Vigilance Committee then took it up, and made it a "casus belli" against Soapy. They attempted to hold a secret meeting in a private hall but Smith and his confederates managed to break in on them. They then adjourned to Sylvester's wharf. At the land-end of the pier Frank Reid and a man named Murphy were posted to stop anyone approaching who was not a member of the Committee. Smith heard of this move and set off on the war-path down the main street towards the water-front. He carried a loaded .30-.30 Winchester rifle and as he went down the road he called on everyone to put up their hands. There were hundreds of men there but Soapy got a completely unanimous "vote" as he passed along, until he reached Reid and in him he met a man who called his bluff. Reid ordered him to stop and fired at him, but his revolver, a .45 Colt, failed to go off. He then grabbed the muzzle of Smith's gun and shoved it up in the air before he could shoot. Smith in the struggle backed away hanging on to his rifle, and while the gun was thus lowered and pointed momentarily at Reid's groin he fired. Reid fell to the ground but instantly fired at Smith again. This time the revolver responded and Smith dropped shot through the heart. He bled to death in a few minutes where he lay. This was the evening of July 8th, three days after the celebration already mentioned in which the gunman had taken the leading part. So the wharf was stained, and so ended the life of a man with a career of which the last six months were unique in the history of the wild west.
Their leader gone, the break-up of his followers was quick and easy. After caring for Reid the Committee split up into armed groups of five or six men each. Some guarded the exits from the town, others closed the dance-halls, saloons, and gambling places. Every cabin was searched. Smith was killed on Friday and by Sunday the lot were rounded up and jailed. The captures included the five most dangerous members of the gang, Old Man Tripp, Slim Jim, Bowers, Mike Daly, and Scar-faced Charlie. It was indeed hard for any of them to escape. In front was the sea and behind the mountains with only one passable trail through them over into the Yukon Territory. They were all deported on out-going steamers. Most of them got long terms in penetentiary. Before the shooting a few of them who saw danger ahead straggled over into Canada by way of the White Pass but they changed into "model citizens" when they came under the surveillance of the Mounted Police.
Smith was buried with scant ceremony and no mourners. Frank Reid lingered for two weeks when he also died. The whole place turned out at his funeral to do honor to his bravery in ridding the town of the pestilential group of criminals who had been in control so long.
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