Here Scotty’s trail is lost in the fantastic stories of writers, press agents, and promoters. Several years afterward when his yarns began to backfire, Scotty swore in a Los Angeles court that E. Burt Gaylord, a New York man, furnished $10,000 for the Scotty Special’s spectacular dash across the continent—the object being to promote the sale of stock in the “secret mine.”
More remarkable than any yarn Scotty ever told is the fact that although headlines made Scotty, headlines have failed to kill the Scotty legend.
You may toss our heroes into the ash can, but we dust them off and put them back. Likable, ingratiating, Scotty will brush aside any attack with a funny story and let it go at that.
In a law suit for an accounting against Scotty, Julian Gerard asserted he was to have 22½% of any treasure Scotty found. Judge Ben Harrison decided in Gerard’s favor, but the only claim found in Scotty’s name was the utterly worthless Knickerbocker and Gerard got nothing. The claim showed little sign of ever having been worked. A few broken rocks. A few holes which could be filled with a shovel within a few moments.
Passing the claim once, I stopped to talk with a native: “This is the scene of the Battle of Wingate Pass,” he told me. “In case you never heard of it, it was fought for liberty, Scotty’s liberty—that is. Gerard got suspicious about Scotty’s mine and decided to send his own engineers out to investigate. He ordered Scotty to meet them at Barstow and show them something or else. It worried Scotty a little, not long. He’d learned about Indian fighting with Buffalo Bill and met the fellows as ordered. When he led them to his wagon waiting behind the depot, the Easterners took a look at the wagon, another look at Scotty and one at each other. The wagon had boiler plate on the sides, rifles stacked army fashion alongside. Outriders with six-guns holstered on their belts and Winchesters cradled in their arms.
“‘Don’t let it worry you,’ Scotty said. ‘Piutes on the warpath. Old Dripping Knife, their Chief claims my gold belongs to them. Dry-gulched a couple of my best men last week.’
“The Easterners turned white and Scotty gave ’em another jolt. ‘Butchered my boys and fed ’em to their pigs. But we are fixed for ’em this trip. They sent word they aim to exterminate us. Maybe try it, but I’ve got lookouts planted all along. Let’s go....’ He shunted them aboard, shaking in their knees and headed out of Barstow.
“The party had reached that hill you see when suddenly out of the brush and the gulches and from behind the rocks came a horde of ‘redskins,’ yelling and shooting. Scotty’s men leaped from their saddles and the battle was on. The Easterners jumped out of the wagon and hit the ground running for the nearest dry wash and that was the closest they ever got to Scotty’s mine. You’ve got to hand it to Scotty.”
The story made front page from coast to coast and it was several days before the hoax was revealed. Unexplained though undenied, was the statement that Albert Johnson was in Scotty’s party listed as “Doctor Jones.” It is assumed that he had no guilty knowledge of the hoax.
The most astounding achievement of Scotty’s career was attained when he interested in an imaginary Death Valley mine, Al Myers, a hard-bitten prospector and mining man who had made the discovery strike at Goldfield; Rol King, of Los Angeles, bon vivant and manager of the popular Hollenbeck Hotel, and Sidney Norman who as mining editor of the Los Angeles Times knew mines and mining men.