"Swift Justice”

Whispering Smith 1838-1914

The outlaws, lawmen and pioneers who helped forge the American West all shared the same great spirit for bold adventure and new opportunity. Their stories of passion and bravery connect us to that time period on the unsettled frontiers of the now Western United States. This bronze series celebrates the colorful lives and stories that make up our shared history as a united nation. Frequently portrayed as combative and belligerent with a trigger happy temperament, the American cowboy, at times could live true to this reputation. Often separated by a mere tin badge and some courage, there seemed to be a thin line between the lawmen and the outlaws in the 1800’s. Deputy Sheriff James L. Smith fell deeply into that gray area of the law and dealt swift and final justice wherever he roamed. In 1877 desperate for a job after the Civil War, James L Smith found himself working as a Union Pacific railroad detective in both Cheyenne, Wyoming and Sydney, Nebraska. While policing those newly laid rail lines he earned the nickname Whispering Smith. He was known to use his soft southern voice during sensitive conversations which were often held in the middle of the night out on the tracks, just out of earshot of the wanted men he was tracking. The police detective job gave him a wide territory in which to chase the much wanted men of that region, something Smith seemed to cherish. So, in the spring of 1879, somewhere deep in the rolling hills of Nebraska, Whispering Smith was assigned to lead one of two different law posses sent out after Doc Middleton and his gang The Pony Boys. For ten days Smith’s posse chased Doc up and down the Niobrara River and all through the Nebraska Panhandle, they never did catch him or his gang. However, on July 27, 1879 the law finally caught up to Doc Middleton. After a brief shootout he ended up in the Nebraska State Penitentiary with a gunshot wound and a five year prison sentence, more or less ending Doc’s gang and his easy money days as a horse thief. Whispering Smith went on living a rough and lonely life behind his reputation and the shield of the badge. His law career spanned some forty years and was both as long as it was speculative. He was a proud and quiet man who stood for his own kind of arbitrary justice, often by way of a gun. Smith had a reputation of being both combative and argumentative in style to the very end. No one ever claimed his body and Whispering Smith lies there today overlooking the Platte River, alone as a man could ever be in a Denver cemetery. In 1906 Frank Spearman wrote a bestselling novel about him and in 1948 Paramount made a blockbuster movie starring Alan Ladd as railroad police detective “Whispering Smith”. Whether it’s a movie, a single piece of art or a well authored book, it is our genuine storytelling abilities that help keep our history and culture alive today. To the guardians of law and order, to the men and women who pushed those limits and to those pioneers who just live free, let us celebrate life as those before us paved the way to greater good and prosperity.