At that time the Sullivan Trust Company of Goldfield was promoting the Jumping Jack-Manhattan mining Company. James Hopper, the gifted magazinist, wrote a story in which the names "Jumping Jack" and "Sullivan Trust Company" appeared in almost every other line. It was forwarded by mail to a great daily newspaper of New York and promptly published as news. The yarn told how the man in charge of the gasoline engine at the mouth of the Jumping Jack shaft had gone stark mad while at work and how but for the quick intervention of the president of the Sullivan Trust Company, who happened to be on the ground, a tragedy might well have been the result.
The miner, the story said, stepped into the bucket at the head of the shaft and asked the man in the engine-house to lower him to a depth of 300 feet. Quick as a flash the bucket was let down. When the 200-foot point was reached there was a sudden stop. With a rattle and a roar the bucket was jerked back to within 50 feet of the surface. Thereupon it was again lowered and quickly raised again, and the operation constantly repeated until the poor miner became unconscious and fell in a jangled mass to the bottom of the bucket.
Hearing the miner's early cries, Mr. Sullivan had gone to the rescue. He knocked senseless the man in the engine-house and pinioned him. Then he brought up the bucket containing the almost inanimate form of the miner.
Turning to the demon in charge of the engine, who had now recovered consciousness, Mr. Sullivan cried,
"How dare you do a thing like this?"
The man responded, "His name is Jack, ain't it?"
"Well, what of it?" roared Mr. Sullivan.
"Oh, I was just jumping the jack!" chuckled the "madman."
This nursery tale was conspicuously printed in a high-class New York newspaper's columns as real news. Undoubtedly the reason why the editors allowed it to pass was that it was believed to be true, but above all was cleverly written.
I was too busy during the early part of the Rawhide boom to do any writing of consequence or even to suggest particular subjects for stories. It seemed to me that the exciting events of every-day occurrence during the progress of the mad rush would furnish the correspondents with enough matter to keep the news-pot constantly boiling. I assembled around me the shining lights of the Reno newspaper fraternity and put them on the pay-roll.