Soapy Smith arrested Oct. 15, 1889.

(Click image to enlarge)

eff R. Smith for assault with intent to kill, 
as soon as he arrived in the city last night.

     Mid 1889 marks Jeff’s first sequence of violent behavior and his first reported use of a knife and a gun. All within a month and a half, there had been fist-fighting, man caning, destruction of property with a knife, threatening a man with a knife, and a fierce shootout. The causes of these events are not hard to account for. The Logan Park affair that had gone so badly awry; the Rocky Mountain News declaration of war on Jeff and his businesses, including unrelenting public insult of Jeff and his circle; legal peril (and cost); and an explosive, sudden, and nearly successful plot against his life. Any of these events could have released the safety catch on Jeff’s behavior. In matters large and small, violence seems to have become much closer at hand.

—Alias Soapy Smith: The Life and Death of a Scoundrel

     The above newspaper clipping from the October 16, 1889 edition of the Denver Daily News opened a new mystery in the Soapy Smith annuals. Seven days later Soapy was held by the grand jury to answer for assault with intent to kill. 

He was present yesterday in the criminal division of the district court and gave a bond of $1,000, John Kinneavy becoming his bondsman. —Rocky Mt. News, 10/17/1889

     In Alias Soapy Smith, this was question, "another bond for $1,000?" It was originally believed to have been a carry over from Soapy's July attack on newspaperman John Arkins, but this may not be the case.

     On July 30, 1889 Soapy attacked John Arkins, owner and managing editor of the Rocky Mountain News for mentioning his wife and children in with an article attacking Soapy's criminal empire. The trial continued into August but never seemed to come to an official end, at least one published in the newspapers. The News had declared war on the bunco men and then the saloons and gambling. They were successful in pushing a temporary reform movement in Denver which closed up many saloons and gambling houses, including Soapy's Tivoli Club.

     On August 28, 1889 the News reported an altercation in one of the gaming houses in which Soapy slashed a faro layout with a dirk, and then held it to the throat of the dealer.

     Two days later, on August 30, Soapy, his brother Bascomb, John "Shoot-Your-Eye-Out Jack" Vermillion, John Fatty Gray" Morris, and possibly “Auctioneer Roberts” as well as J. W. Allen, are involved in a shootout at the Pocatello, Idaho train depot.
     On October 15, 1889, forty-six days after the Pocatello gunfight, Jeff comes back in Denver and is immediately arrested.Originally it was thought that the arrest had to do with the beating of John Arkins, but it is likely that this new arrest and charge is for the knife at the dealers throat incident just before leaving Denver. So how did it end? That's the mystery at this time. The case seems to have simply vanished.

"Never play cards, or shoot pool, with a guy nicknamed after a city."

—Unknown

NOVEMBER 21

1620: The Mayflower, with 102 passengers, arrives at Provincetown, Massachusetts from Plymouth, England.

1789: North Carolina is the 12th state to ratify the Constitution.

1860: Tom Horn is born in Memphis, Missouri. During his life he worked as a Cavalry scout, Pinkerton detective, range detective, and an outlaw. In 1888 he won a championship steer roping contest. In Wyoming he is tried and hung for the murder of 14-year-old Willie Nickell, a crime that some believe he did not commit. While awaiting execution, Horn made the rope used to hang him, one day before his 43rd birthday.

1867: Carry Amelia Moore's (Carry Nation) wedding in Missouri is delayed due to her drunken groom, Dr. Charles Gloyd, a severe alcoholic. The couple has a daughter, Charlien, who suffers from mental difficulties. Their marriage ends in 1869. Carry believed that her husband's alcohol consumption has caused her child's problems. Charlien is eventually committed to the Texas State Lunatic Asylum (the same asylum Soapy Smith’s father was institutionalized in). Carry meets and weds Dr. David A. Nation in 1877. In 1889 Carry begins her radical temperance life, starting a local branch or of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

1871: M. F. Galethe patents the cigar lighter.

1871: The corpses of two stagecoach robbers, named Taylor and Burns, are brought to Cimarron, New Mexico Territory, after being killed by Bounty hunters on October 31, 1871 near Fort Union.

1877: Thomas A. Edison announces the invention of the phonograph.

1880: Outlaw Billy the Kid, and four of his gang, steal eight horses from the Grzelachowski ranch in New Mexico Territory.

1883: Chet Van Meter, accused of beating his family and threatening others, is shot and killed by Deputy U.S. Marshal Cash Hollister and Ben Wheeler in Caldwell, Kansas. Upon seeing the approaching lawmen, Meter fired his revolver at them. They returned fire, killing Meter with five wounds to the chest.

1884: Denver, Colorado Police Chief William Smith shuts down every gambling house in the city. The reform lasted one month.

1887: The first Montana Central train arrives in Helena, Montana, in a snowstorm.

1891: Bat Masterson marries Denver Palace Theater song and dance performer Emma Walters. It is in the Palace Theater that bad man Soapy Smith and Ed Chase met their wives as well. Ed Chase operated the Palace, which was described as “a death-trap to young men, a foul den of vice and corruption.” In 1887, Chase partnered with bad man Soapy Smith in opening the Tivoli Club, a saloon and gaming house.

1900: Wild Bunch outlaws Robert Leroy “Butch Cassidy” Parker, Harry “The Sundance Kid” Longabaugh, Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan, Ben “The Tall Texan” Kilpatrick, and Will Carver sit for the famous "Fort Worth Five" photo, in Fort Worth, Texas.