“It’s just as easy to make big money as little money. In my profession, a hundred dollars is just chicken feed. We think in thousands, not tens. Experience has taught me that it is as easy to separate a sucker - the right sucker - from five thousand dollars as from fifty. We always offered our services to well-to-do men, holding out the promise that their investments were certain to net them profit in three to four figures, at least - and that’s the real bait for the sucker - particularly if he’s the close-fisted kind that always wants something for nothing. Yes, there always was a lot of satisfaction as well as cash profit in trimming some old skin flint who would rob his grandmother if he had a chance.” - Doc Bags; a legendary con artist and frontier gambler who plied his trade throughout the West.
Although Doc is largely forgotten today, his lasting legacy was his most notorious apprentice, a young man from Georgia who’d come to be known as Soapy Smith. You see it's on the streets of Denver that Smith learned all Doc Bags had to teach. And when it came time for Doc to move on, young Soapy took his spot as the undisputed kingpin of the mile-high city. But he wasn’t a gunman, at least not really. Instead of colt revolvers, Soapy’s weapon of choice was a quick wit coupled with a silver tongue, a whole helluva lot of charisma, and the magical ability to make people see and believe things that did not exist; all of which would earn him the title of King of the Frontier Conmen. That said, Soapy certainly wasn’t afraid of resorting to violence if the situation called for it. With an army of thugs at his disposal, Smith would face down more than a few deadly killers. And like many other icons of the Old West, Soapy would ultimately go down in a blaze of gunfire.
They say fortune favors the bold and they don’t get much bolder than Soapy Smith, a charming rogue who spent his life operating in the shadows, leaving behind a legend as complex as the frontier he called home. #history #wildwest #western
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