Chapter 9. 1886: Rio Grande County, Colorado

The next morning saw me on the westbound. It was seventeen miles to Monte Vista and another fourteen to Del Norte. From Del Norte, the D&RGW proceeded west seventeen miles to the farming community of South Fork. The area’s truck farms supplied much of the produce that was sold to the miners at Summitville, high on South Mountain in the San Juans. That mining district was some sixteen crow miles or twenty-five trail miles south and three thousand feet higher than South Fork, which itself was at eight thousand feet.

The railroad, however, turned north, crossing the Rio Grande’s South Fork just upstream of its confluence with the main fork of the Rio.

The tracks carried us into the magnificent confines of the Rio Grande’s Palisades Canyon. For the next fifteen miles, sheer rock walls rose hundreds of feet, making up much of the canyon’s east rim. The western side of the canyon was comprised of steep forested slopes thick with evergreens and cut with ravines filled by dense groves of quaking aspen. The lighter shade of the aspens’ foliage filling the declivities gave the appearance of green rivers flowing down the mountain.

The railroad shared the canyon bottom with a stage road and both gave way to the main fork of the Rio Grande, the canyon bottom just wide enough to accommodate all three.

We passed several flag stops at tiny settlements such as Palisades, Blue Creek, and Cottonwood Cove. We reached its penultimate scheduled stop at Wagon Wheel Gap, the site of General Palmer’s hot springs spa. Here, a number of well-dressed tourists alighted to be welcomed by carriages provided by the resort. As it was but a few hundred yards from the small depot, some of the visitors chose to walk to the rustic spa, enjoying the cool mountain air.

After taking on water, the train crossed to the east side of the Rio and passed through the narrows of Wagon Wheel Gap itself, climbing the gentle grade for the last nine miles into Creede. Above Wagon Wheel Gap, the Rio’s canyon widened to a mile or more, the land providing verdant grazing for herds of cattle.

By this point on the route, the passenger coaches carried mainly miners and the men who preyed on them, those worthies not unlike the biting flies on a horse’s rump. Card sharps and oddment drummers, flim-flam artists and pimps, pickpockets and armed highwayman, saloon-keepers and penurious mine owners, all looking to cash in on the wealth being extracted from the silver mines without the necessity of working as miners themselves.

And the man who ruled these underworld characters in the rip-roaring mining camp of Creede was one Jefferson “Soapy” Smith. My position allowed me to see Soapy Smith in another light: as a fugitive from a federal arrest warrant.

Creede had blown up from nothing to a population of over ten thousand in the course of a couple years. The town — named for Nicholas Creede, a prospector who discovered a rich silver vein in the area — was actually a settlement that was originally known as Willow Creek. Creede was a camp about a mile further up Willow Creek Canyon, but even that camp was first called Jim-Town. But the Jim-Town/Creede camp was flooded out twice and burned down once, and it remained ripe for flooding every spring. Bowing to the inevitable, most of the miners — and those who plundered them — moved down to the Willow Creek settlement, where the canyon broadened out. In turn, that camp became known as Creede.

Here the railroad terminated at a switch yard where Willow Creek Canyon narrowed to a width that provided only enough room for three side-by-side spurs. These spurs would be lined with gondola and hopper cars to be loaded with silver ore from the mines and stamp mills.

Creede, at an elevation of nine thousand feet, in an isolated canyon deep in the San Juan range, was insulated from Denver’s feeble civilizing influence. Moreover, its law and order was overseen by a corrupt and venal county sheriff who was fully in favor of Creede remaining a wide-open, lawless, we-never-close boomtown, while stuffing his pockets with bribes and other illicit funds. I was reminded of the mining camp in the Red River Canyon above Questa, where I’d pursued the Navarras — except Creede was jumped up six or eight times over Red River.

With hordes of miners coming off shift, a horse race taking place on Main Street, two steam locomotives moving hoppers around the switch yard, the echoing cacophony of the stamp mills, and the raucous notes of a brass band filtering through the din, I simply could not imagine wanting riches that much.

What surprised me was the evidence here and there of more permanent occupancy in the form of several brick structures in the commercial district, with more under construction.

The passenger depot was on the west side of the canyon, a short block off Main Street. I alighted from the coach dressed in the rough clothes of a working man, a rucksack over my shoulder, with my marshal credentials stuffed into my money belt. I had the thirty-eight revolver tucked into the waistband of my dungarees in the small of my back, under a stained linsey-woolsey shirt and a faded green woolen coat, topped by a dented and dusty gray bowler. With a two-day growth of beard to accompany my full mustache, I’d every appearance of being just another working man looking for a job.

My plan was the usual: to get the lay of the land before deciding what action to take. To that end, I began by seeking out a bunk.

There were several places that advertised themselves as hotels or with beds to rent, but the best you could hope for was a small tent shared by a dozen or more men, and even those cost as much as sixty cents an hour. Fortunately, Miguel Cisneros had done some work for the owner of one of the mines, and Cisneros had arranged for me to stay at the man’s modest house, posing as the mine-owner’s cousin from Ohio. But when I arrived at the small clap-board house on the bluff overlooking the town cemetery, I discovered a note tacked to the door. The message told me that the owner had to go over to Lake City on business but that I could use the loft for as long as I was in town.

The loft, accessed by a steep stairway, held an army-style cot and a stack of blankets. I left my duffel bag on the cot and moved my short-barreled thirty-eight to my coat pocket. I walked back down into town using the same foot path, with its switch-backs that cut across the bluff on the west side of the canyon. There was a wagon trail to the top of the bluff, but it necessitated going a mile south of town to gain a sufficiently gentle slope for drawn vehicles. The foot trail cut through the camp’s cemetery, which was along the top edge of the bluff.

At the base of the slope, the wider portion of the canyon accommodated a three-block wide, six block long jumble of mostly raw and wide-open business facades. Along the west edge lay the D&RGW right of way. The east side backed against the canyon wall. And Willow Creek splashed and dashed at the bottom of a deep arroyo right through the middle of the camp.

Soapy Smith’s saloon was called the Orleans, and I found it situated near the north end of the commercial district. Here, the canyon narrowed so only a two-block width could be accommodated and Willow Creek cut is ravine at the base of the canyon wall.

I stopped a street vendor, who was hawking smoked trout from a basket he carried on a shoulder strap. I bought one of the trout and I asked the man if he knew where Smith lived. He said it was in the house directly behind the big platform tent that was the Orleans.

However, I wanted to get familiar with the town before visiting the Orleans, so I chose another saloon, a similar half-wooden, half-canvas structure a block south. A fabric banner identified it as the Mud in Your Rye. Overall, the structure was about twenty feet wide and forty feet deep, with four tall posts supporting a center ridge of about twelve feet, the canvas sloping to side walls of six feet. The middle portion of the floor was a narrow pathway of bare rock and mud, partially covered in sawdust. To either side were raised platforms of about six inches, with floors of broad-board lumber. Gaming tables lined the right and there was a long bar on the left.

I figured I could I could get away with a few hands of blackjack without attracting attention. The risk was that card counting required playing the long game. Tracking the played cards provided only a limited advantage, not a guarantee of winning, especially in the short term. To win consistently meant playing through the deck repeatedly, waiting for the count to tell you when you had that slight advantage. And even then, luck was still in play.

I was leaning against a support pole, beer mug in hand, watching a blackjack game, checking on the nature of the play. That’s when I saw the dealer slide a card off the bottom of the deck in a fairly sloppy move. One of the players apparently saw it, too, for he reached across the table and grabbed the dealer’s hand with the card still in it.

“Just one damn minute, me bucko,” was the player’s Irish-accented shout. “Yon card came off the bottom,” he insisted, lifting the dealer’s hand he had in his grip.

The dealer loudly protested his innocence, squawking even louder than the player’s accusation. At the same time, the dealer had reached out with his free hand to grasp the player’s wrist, and both men were more or less holding one another in place.

Meanwhile, another man, somewhat better dressed, stepped over from where he’d been standing at the bar, watching the room. He approached the Irishman from behind, and, without warning, swung something against the side of the Irishman’s head. From the results, I guessed it was likely a weighted leather sap. The Irishman dropped backward into his chair, wholly senseless. The chair, overbalanced, fell sideward, dumping the unconscious man into the center aisle. His legs and feet remained the muddy platform while his shoulders and his head bounced heavily on the muddier rock.

Another man, dressed in a business suit, came over and addressed the table. “Boys,” he proclaimed, resting his hands on the shoulders of two of the players, “we run honest games here. This joker,” he indicated the Irishman being dragged away by his feet without regard to his bouncing head, “lost big last night and we had to throw him out. I wouldn’t a’ let ‘im back in had I seen ‘im. Next round a’ drinks is on the house, fellas, so enjoy yourselves.” With a big grin on his face, he slapped the players’ backs, shot a warning look at the dealer, then walked over to a table along the back wall, where he sat down next to a woman in somewhat revealing dress.

I slid my shoulder around the pole and watched a poker game at another table. By the third hand, I realized that the dealer was working with a shill among the players. He was passing signals by tapping the other man’s foot with his own.

Obviously, there was no point in playing cards here. I walked by the bar, where I set my still half-full mug of beer, then I headed out through the front tent flaps.

Across the street was another big platform tent. The sign over the entrance proclaimed, “Honest John’s” in a script style that made it look like a very large signature. It made me smile. Beneath that ware two neatly painted lines that captioned, “Negroes and Mexicans Welcome. No Chinese or Indians allowed.” A sign on the support post at the entrance read: “No guns allowed! Check guns with door man.”

Notably, outside the entrance was a line of four colored men on one side and three white men lined up on the other, all of them apparently waiting to get in. This I had to see.

I crossed the street, which was almost exclusively foot traffic. There were only a few horses or mules in evidence, though I could hear braying from further up the canyon. There, at the mines, mules were used to haul ore carts on the steep trails – with not infrequent mishap. But here in camp it was pretty much just staggering drunk miners, some with friends, most alone. I worked my way through the raucous street crowd to the entrance of Honest John’s.

As I stepped in I was confronted by a man with a shotgun held crosswise against his chest. “Get in line, mister.”

I said, “I just want a beer and to watch the card play.”

“Drinks are only served to men at a game table. You want your turn at a table? Then get in line.” He indicated the line of white men.

I nodded in assent, then stood there and looked over his shoulder at the interior. The entire floor was of boards with a large fiber mat at the entrance, apparently placed there to help clean boots and shoes. Notably, a Chinese man was sweeping the dirt toward the entrance. Beyond the mat, two rows of gaming tables lined each side of an open central aisle. To the right were the colored and Mexican tables; tables for whites were on the left. All the tables appeared full. At each corner of the tent, a man on a high stool sat, holding a short-barreled shotgun. White-aproned waiters were bringing drinks to the tables. While not a quiet scene, it was certainly more orderly than had been the Mud in Your Rye and the mood of the place seemed friendlier.

“Mister? Do I need to explain it so you can understand?” the door guard said in warning, showing me the butt of the shotgun stock.

“Yeah, sorry. Just curious.”

I walked past the men waiting in the whites’ line and stood behind the last one, who, from the state of his dress, appeared to be a working miner. I stepped closer and asked him, “Neighbor, can you tell me what’s the attraction here? I mean, why wait in line?”

He spit some tobacco into the street and, shrugging, said, “It’s Honest John’s. Except for the wheel of fortune, the tables are all rented to individual dealers. The house runs the wheel.”

He spit again, then went on. “Honest John won’t tolerate cheaters. Anybody caught cheating is stripped down to his underwear and thrown out. And you can be pitched out for being rowdy, and be charged a fine of ten dollars. The only way you can buy a drink is if you’re playing at a table or at the big wheel. It’s a peaceful place to play some cards or dominoes and have a few beers.”

“And the men with the shotguns? That doesn’t say ‘peaceful’ to me.”

He ginned, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “The guns are charged with half-powder loads and they shoot rock salt.” He pointed to a short club hanging at the waist of the guard at the door. “It’s the truncheons on their belts that do any real work.”

“Is there an actual Honest John?”

He shrugged again. “Don’t know. The man what sits at the head table is said to be him, but I can’t say for certain.”