Jefferson Randolph Smith II was born in Georgia in 1860 to a wealthy family that lost everything in the Civil War. In Texas he saw the outlaw Sam Bass die and concluded that a deck of cards was safer than a revolver. His masterpiece was the prize soap racket. He wrapped real bills around a few bars in front of a crowd, mixed them into the pile, and sold every bar for a dollar. A shill would tear one open and wave a hundred dollar bill, the crowd would rush in, and sleight of hand kept the cash with his own men. A policeman who forgot his first name wrote Soapy in the ledger.

A street corner has a ceiling, so Smith used his profits to buy protection. In Denver he paid off the mayor and police chief and opened the Tivoli Club, fake diamond auctions, and a stock exchange selling shares in companies that did not exist. He ran the silver camp of Creede the same way, and in 1897 he carried the whole playbook north to Skagway, Alaska, where gold rush prospectors paid to send messages from a telegraph office whose wires ended at the back wall.

• In Creede he charged ten cents to see a fake petrified man called McGinty while his gang ran shell games on the people waiting in line.
• During Denver’s 1894 City Hall War he held the building’s tower with rifles and dynamite against a state militia armed with cannons and Gatling guns.
• Wearing a deputy’s badge, he staged fake raids on his own rigged poker games so cheated victims would run and leave their money behind.
• In 1898 his Skagway Military Company won recognition from the War Department, and he rode as marshal of the Fourth of July parade.
• Days later his men stole a miner’s $2,700 sack of gold. On July 8, 1898, Smith and guard Frank Reid shot each other on the Juneau Wharf.