The Floor of Heaven (4 page)

As for the sign, it did its job. Like the blue-green waters of Bluff Creek, the hanging oval painting of the cowpuncher roping his steer became in time a landmark, too. And cowboys being cowboys, once the first mischief-maker put a bullet through the sign as he charged across the bridge on horseback, the other hands couldn’t help but use it as a target. It remained hanging, but it was soon riddled with bullet holes. Charlie, though, was in no mind to complain. Truth was, it was as if the whole experience of hanging the damn sign had torn a hole through his very being big enough for someone to crawl through.

TWO

ike Charlie Siringo, Jefferson Smith was another cowboy who had come in off the range, only there had been nothing tentative or regretful in his decision. Jeff—or Soapy, as most people would later take to calling him—had spent two miserable years in the saddle; driving herds north from Texas up the Chisholm Trail had turned out to be relentless and irritating work. All the busy, dusty days under a baking sun and the dull, quiet nights in lonesome country had ground down what he quickly realized had simply been an ill-conceived, youthful notion. He found nothing to admire or value in the cowpuncher’s hard life.

Soapy had been a good rider, though, always sitting well in the saddle, and he drew assignments near the front of the herd. That suited him fine; he’d give the cattle plenty of room to move at their own pace through the stretches of open country while he took to daydreaming. His imagination would drift to thoughts about a way of life that was a bit more leisurely, more suited to the whims of a genial, fun-loving man. His ambitions were vague, but he was certain there had to be an enterprise that held out the prospect of allowing him to make his fortune without the inconvenience of hard labor.

At the end of the long day, sitting with his fellow hands in camp, a tin plate covered with a stew thick with brown beans for dinner, Soapy would boast that he was the son of a southern gentleman, a lawyer. That the family had hit on hard times after the war, moved from Georgia to Round Rock, a dry-as-hay Texas town, that his embittered father had given up the law for drink, and that his mother, a crusty, hot-tempered volcano, supported his brothers and sisters by running a down-at-the-heels hotel famous for the foul-mouthed parrot caged on the front porch, well, those were corners of the family history that Soapy never found reason to share. To hear him tell it—and with all the long nights in camp, the boys had plenty of occasions—he was by birth and breeding cut out for something better than cowboying. His self-esteem was unshakable. And he sure could talk. When Soapy got going, he had a rich way of stringing words together that brought to mind a preacher’s Sunday sermon. Yet despite all his eloquence and all his prideful genealogy, a lot of the crew felt there was something about Soapy that didn’t quite measure up. The unspoken truth, they soon came around to thinking, was that Soapy just didn’t have the backbone for the cowpuncher’s demanding life.

But what people thought didn’t touch him much. Soapy kept his determination very close, a well-guarded armory of strength. He had his own plans. And so in the summer of 1879, one evening after the cattle had settled into a good bed-ground, Soapy bundled up his bedroll, tied it to his saddle, and took off. He was a strapping nineteen-year-old, cocky about his prospects and, in his breezy, philosophical way, unencumbered by any restraining scruples.

He held no illusions. Soapy anticipated that in his pursuit of easy money he’d need to tread a bit lightly around some people’s conception of what was lawful. Not that he was setting out to be an outlaw; robbing banks or horse thieving was bold work and, more troublesome, could get a man hung. And gunplay, too, was something he wanted to avoid. Last year he had seen a vengeful posse shoot down Sam Bass, the notorious train robber, and the frightful scene—the desperado groaning for mercy, his gushing wounds spilling a river of wet, red blood into the sandy Texas street—still stuck in his mind. There had to be easier ways to strike it rich in the West. A quick-thinking, enterprising man, he felt, should be able to rely on the gifts God had given him to make his way. Of course, a little gumption, even a card up the sleeve if it came down to that, would certainly help things along, too. He rode out of camp without hesitation, already imagining the fortune he’d make and the bracing good times he’d enjoy.

NAVIGATING HIS way in the moonlight across the dark prairie, Soapy was startled to hear the faint, whistling sounds of a calliope playing somewhere in the distance. It was a merry, lighthearted tune, and for lack of any better plan, he followed it. The syncopated clatter led him through the deep shadows that enveloped the unfamiliar country, into the heart of Abilene, Kansas, and on a bit farther, to the outskirts of town. When he crossed the railroad tracks the noise was suddenly booming, and he saw the calliope as well as the pitched tent and wagons of a traveling circus. Years later, after the course of his life had been firmly set, he would look back on this journey and, puffing up his biography another self-important notch, insist that the festive music of a steam organ had guided him through the lonely night to his destiny, as surely as if he had been a wise man following a shining star toward Bethlehem. At the time, though, he just hitched his horse and went off to see if the circus was hiring.

Clubfoot Hall, who ran the shell game in the circus midway, took approving measure of the innocent-looking, smooth-faced young man and was further encouraged by his grand and eloquent way of talking. Here was a boy who with a little instruction might have the makings of a good roper, Clubfoot judged. And moving on his gambler’s instinct, he offered Soapy a job on the spot.

Clubfoot had learned the grifter’s craft on riverboats decades earlier, and, unencumbered by his deformity, he still practiced it with both dash and skill. Yet to his own considerable surprise, he also proved to be an inspired teacher. Of course, he had to concede, it helped that Soapy was such a gifted and eager pupil. It wasn’t long before his protégé had mastered the roper’s conversational gambit of steering the marks to the game, as well as the more subtle ploy of encouraging misguided bets. To Clubfoot’s prideful amusement, he saw that when Soapy got to talking he could be as persuasive as a six-gun aimed at a victim’s heart, and nearly as dangerous. He sure could, as the grifters said, “tell the tale.” Another of the young man’s natural gifts was his dexterity. Soapy quickly learned to mimic Clubfoot’s fast-handed way of keeping the pea deceptively moving from walnut shell to walnut shell. It didn’t take long before the pupil’s hand, too, was quicker than the sucker’s eye.

And from the start Soapy appreciated the one fundamental truth that puts any con into play: A mark desperately wants something for nothing. It was the grifter’s sport and challenge to keep the victim believing he’d receive a payoff that was too good to be true. Soapy relished this tense, often inventively complicated game. Even better, he was good at it.

For a while, Soapy traveled with the circus to the prairie cow towns. It was a comprehensive education. He learned the value of bribing the local sheriff; “putting in the fix,” Clubfoot lectured, was a business expense that prevented the more costly inconvenience of jail and also provided protection in case a seething victim came looking to get his money back. And while sitting in with Clubfoot as the day’s take was divvied up between a half dozen or so players—steerers, inside men, and the requisite muscle—Soapy began to appreciate that the confidence racket was a fraternal enterprise. To pull off the more lucrative and complicated capers, a gang was necessary.

But after more than a year with the circus, Soapy grew restless. He felt he had learned all he could from Clubfoot. The shell game was nimble sport, but he also wanted new, more complex challenges. Besides, Clubfoot would always be the “fixer,” the ringleader of the circus gang. Soapy envisioned a world where he’d be running the show. His mind was brimming with potentially lucrative scams. And so with heartfelt thanks, he said good-bye to his mentor and moved on. At twenty-one, he was now a seasoned bunco man.

SOAPY DRIFTED through a few cow towns before deciding to join the crowds heading up into Leadville, Colorado. Ten thousand feet high in the Rockies, without even a railroad spur to tie it to the big western towns, Leadville, nevertheless, was roaring. In the summer of 1879 the promise of fortune glittered in the thin mountain air. The town’s Matchless Mine was yielding an extraordinary $100,000 a month in silver, and prospectors flocked to the surrounding gulches to try to find their own rich veins. Hotels, saloons, whorehouses, and even an opera house sprang up as if overnight along a muddy stretch of the unruly main street. Each day new arrivals jammed the makeshift town, all chasing after the opportunity to strike it rich. Soapy felt confident that prospectors, men whose trade was the most optimistic of professions, would have a predilection for his kind of speculations, too. They’d be partial to taking a gamble, particularly if it held the promise of an exorbitant return. They’d make the perfect marks.

His instinct was pure cunning. He hit one rich vein after another. But as the silver petered out, so did new prospects for fleecing. Soapy began to realize that continuing to play the same crowd could become a reckless, even fatal enterprise. For the time being people had simply taken to giving him contemptuous looks as he walked the streets. Still, that was enough to make him jumpy. After all, a lot of the miners had a Colt stuck in their belts or a Winchester in their packs. Feeling the moment had turned, he quietly moved on.

Everything Soapy had heard about Denver was promising. In his mind it loomed as a bit more substantial and established version of Leadville, a boomtown that had kept booming. But when he arrived in 1881, the reality proved even more exciting. Denver was on its way to becoming a full-grown city. Its scale, hustle, and already imposing stony grandeur went way beyond anything in his imagination.

Like Leadville, there were streets filled with a seemingly constant buzz of raucous activity. The Larimer Street and Market Street saloons, dance halls, and gambling parlors kept their doors open around the clock. And on Blake Street the sporting girls provocatively worked their trade. Never had he encountered such throngs—an always flowing sea of people looking for good times. Yet, Soapy discovered to his fascination, a sturdy prosperity had wrapped itself around other parts of the far-spread city. Denver was filled with handsome red brick and yellow stone residences, grand public buildings, and wide, elm-shaded streets under piercing blue skies. It was a city where families were digging roots.

Each new day the Union Pacific brought in farmers and merchants from around the country, all hoping to start their lives again out West. Many would continue on to the mountain mines or head off to California, but others looked around and decided to stay. By 1886, there would be nearly 70,000 people living in Denver. And the town was growing rich. Flush with its share of the treasures of gold, silver, coal, iron, and lead that had been ripped from the surrounding mountains—in the mid-1880s, ores worth about $26 million annually were being carted off from the Colorado mines—Denver promised to be the future capital city of the West. Soapy reckoned Denver would be fertile ground for his own ripe future, too. Touring the bustling city left Soapy brimming with an excited, nearly giddy joy. At last, he decided, he had found his home.

THREE

ot every boy growing up in the West in the years after the Civil War, though, wanted to be a cowboy like Charlie Siringo and the young Soapy Smith. That notion never took hold of George Washington Carmack. True, he wound up spending some years in the hill country herding sheep, but that wasn’t of his own choosing. And, of course, tending a grazing flock was an entirely different vocation than sitting in the saddle of a sloped-back pony, punching an ornery herd of longhorned cattle. Unlike steers, sheep tended to run together, and one man and his dog would have no trouble moving a herd of considerable size. Cows required much more control, and a crew of mounted cowboys was needed to drive a herd. But it wasn’t the solitary nature of sheepherding that troubled George; that part suited him fine. It was just that he had grander aspirations. All George ever really wanted to do was to follow proudly in his father’s footsteps. He wanted to find gold.

Like so many other dreamers of the golden dream, Perry Carmack had traveled across the continent in 1849 by covered wagon from the farmlands of Pennsylvania to the gold fields of California. It proved to be a feckless adventure. All his energy, all his high hopes, all his deprivations, all his sweaty, backbreaking ambition—and in the end, only frustration and an overwhelming sense of failure. He never panned a nugget worth bragging about.

Perry didn’t have the funds to return to the East, and anyway, he doubted there’d be any work waiting for him. So he found himself homesteading a rocky, inhospitable bit of land in the foothills above the small wheat-shipping center of Port Costa, about thirty-five miles north of San Francisco. The wind coming off San Pablo Bay would lash like a mule skinner’s whip, and there was always the unsettling threat of marauders like the Joaquin Murrieta gang preying on lonely ranchers. It was a demanding, unsatisfying life, but he did his best to make a go of it.

He met Hannah Shiles, an Illinois native so sour-faced that it appeared as if all the fun had been wrung out of her, and very quickly they married. They had a daughter, Rose, and then five years later, in September 1860, George was born. In the hot summer before her mother took ill, Rose would remember, the young family would picnic on the grassy banks of the winding San Joaquin River. But even these dalliances could not have brought Perry much amusement. The San Joaquin was busy with swift side-wheeler steamships carrying gold from the Sierra mines to San Francisco. The specially constructed “treasure rooms” in these gold ships famously held millions of dollars of newly mined metal, and the sighting of each big vessel no doubt stung Perry like a rebuke—a reminder of his failure and, no less cruel a taunt, what other, more fortunate prospectors had achieved.