A Big Gun Play: Soapy Smith comes close to a shootout in Denver, November 1888

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id not appear to be frightened, and pulled his gun from his hip pocket, directing it at Pomeroy’s breast"

 

 

The following near disaster occurred about 1a.m. in Denver, Colorado, on November 2, 1888. It was published in the Santa Fe New Mexican the following day.

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A Big Gun Play.

      DENVER, Nov. 3.-Clifton Bell’s gambling rooms were filled with people about 1 o’clock yesterday morning [November 2nd]. Some were playing faro and others were dallying with the rattling roulette ball. A larger crowd than usual had congregated about a table at one end of the room where “Soapy” Smith, a well known man in Denver, was playing the limit at faro.
     He had $1,050 worth of chips on the table, and was socking it right merrily to Pomeroy, one of the proprietors, who was dealing. Smith’s pile kept getting bigger and bigger, and soon he had about $1,500 out of the ruck.
     Pomeroy and Smith have been enemies for some time, and angry words passed between the two. Pomeroy reached down in the drawer under the table and produced his revolver, which he pointed full at Smith’s head. The latter did not appear to be frightened, and pulled his gun from his hip pocket, directing it at Smith’s breast [pretty sure the writer meant “directing it at Pomeroy’s breast.”].
     What might have occurred next had not bystanders seized the two men and disarmed them, cannot be told, as they were both in earnest and are said to be desperate men. The game was broken and Smith left the place.
     The police who had been informed of the occurrence, by some man who had fled to the street when the guns were produced, went up in the rooms, but the trouble was over.
     A well known gambler said to-day that there had been bad blood between Pomeroy and Smith for a long time, and an encounter might be expected at almost any moment.

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Is this story real? In preparing to post this article I looked in all of my newspaper archives sites for a Denver or Colorado newspaper source for the event, and I found nothing. This doesn't necessarily mean the act didn't take place. A story that isn't published does not mean the story is untrue, no more than a story is "true," because every newspaper publishes it. The fact that the event took place at 1 a.m., and that an actual conclusion of violence did not take place, it is very possible it was not reported and recorded in the police blog, thus not made known or available to newspaper reporters. Perhaps a witness described the event only to a reporter for the Santa Fe New Mexican. What advantage would there be in making up such a anti-climatic accounting?

     Some questions I have. The newspaper makes mention of the event happening in "Clifton Bell’s gambling rooms." I tried to find which saloon that was. I know that Clifton Bell was a known Denver gambler, but there is not a lot on him. I know that at the beginning of the year 1888 (February), Soapy's friends, John Kinneavy and partner Tim Connors, bought out  Clifton Bells’ Jockey Club, a saloon and gambling house on Sixteenth Street. So did this event take place in another saloon that Bell owned, or did the "witness" believe that the Jockey Club was still Bell's? 

     My next question is who is “Pomeroy?” I found nothing on him.

  

Clifton Bell: pages 133, 142-43.

"Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a lifetime, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her."

—Mark Twain