His cappers, boosters, and shills fought with the yokels for a chance to get something for nothing and always beat them to the pieces of soap containing the money.

As a sleight-of-hand man Soapy had no equal off the stage. When the Gentiles wrested the Salt Lake City government from the Mormons, Soapy was brought out from Denver and sat as an election judge in the busiest polling booth in the city. Equipped with a poker player’s sleeve holdout he went out with enough Mormon ballots to swing a close election in favor of a “clean city administration.”

Always a pioneer, he joined the gold rush to the Klondike. He was killed at Skagway, later, by a bully in the pay of the Vigilance Committee.