Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (20 page)

Already quite a celebrity due to his time touring with Cody's
Wild West
show, Scott's misfortune aboard the train gained him wide newspaper coverage. Intrigued, Scott hatched plan after plan to gain himself fresh rounds of media exposure.

He became convinced that shameless self-promotion could only help his aims of attracting more and bigger investors in his schemes. In addition to his celebrity status, it helped that he was becoming known as Death Valley Scotty due to his fondness for the unusual place.

His earlier investor pulled stakes and moved on, finally convinced he'd been pouring money into a bottomless hole. Undeterred, by 1904 Scott found a pair of wealthy men to fill the breach. Alas, he milked them only for a few months before they, too, moved on. But in that time Scott managed to extract in excess of $4,000 from their well-off wallets.

Having learned the value of publicity, in 1905 Scott arranged a humdinger of a public spectacle. He turned his sights on the newspapers—and it worked. He rented a train in Los Angeles, dubbed it the
Scott Special
, a four-car juggernaut composed of engine, baggage car, dining car, and sleeping car—lest anyone not know it was him. His goal? To break the train-speed record for cross-country travel. He claimed he could shatter the old record of just shy of fifty-three hours, roaring from Los Angeles to Chicago. And to prove it, he took along two trainmen, himself, his wife, and a
Los Angeles Examiner
journalist. The
Scott Special
made the overland journey in a record-breaking forty-four hours, fifty-four minutes.

Once more Scott was heralded across front pages of newspapers from coast to coast. And in an even bigger twist that surely must have been both flattering and flummoxing to Scott, Buffalo Bill Cody hired a Walter Scott impersonator for his show. Cody, that consummate showman, had managed to capitalize on the attention-grabbing appeal of Death Valley Scotty without having to put up with Scott's bloated ego and constant whining for money.

Throughout this period, Scott continued to attract a number of “investors” by capitalizing on his surging fame to lure them as backers of his gold-mining schemes. He had an uncanny ability to peel money from the billfolds of wealthy men while at the same time to run diversions to head off their justifiable questions. When necessary, he employed evasion tactics whenever he got wind of impending visits by current and potential investors. But as so often happens to men with too many balls in the air and not enough hands to catch them, Scott would eventually fumble in the midst of this juggling act.

Walter Scott's overinflated ego was justified in part by the fact that the media paid him all the attention he craved, and then some. Eager for ever-wider audiences, newspapers knew that the public loves a huckster, and this was the golden age of such shady showmanship. The public, and so the media, didn't seem to care one way or the other if a scheme smacked of truth; they wanted more. Scott did his best to feed the fire by conjuring ever-more fascinating publicity stunts, scams, and schemes.

Each one seemed to top the last, until in Seattle, on March, 11, 1906, Scott became the subject—and star—of a genuine stage play,
Scotty, King of the Desert Mine
. The house was packed that night with a standing-room-only crowd, all there to see Death Valley Scotty himself.

By all accounts the show was not overly impressive, but when the curtain closed that night, the lackluster play quickly became overshadowed by even bigger news: Law officers were waiting in the wings for Scotty. They clapped cuffs on him and again he made headlines, though this time not for undertakings he wished to be known for.

Earlier in the year he had finally been caught scamming men sent to investigate his mine's activities. They of course found nothing, and after repeated visits, with Scott nowhere to be found (and thus no one available to take them to the mine), investors deduced he was the fraud they had suspected.

These backers were livid, and though the ensuing trial proves them wholly correct, Scott, ever the rose in the outhouse, emerged from the trial with charges dropped. True, only on a technicality, but he was free. What did result, however, was a taint to his reputation from which he was unable to recover. For his part Scott continued to proclaim his innocence.

So what, specifically, landed him in this predicament? Earlier in the year, a group of his investors showed up at his door in Death Valley, some represented by investigators, for the express purpose of seeing the mine for themselves. Not surprisingly, they wanted concrete proof that their investments were truly supporting a functioning mining concern. How dare they. . . .

Their arrival was not unexpected but planned well in advance. And when they showed up, Walter Scott was prepared for them. What resulted, however—the Battle of Wingate Pass—was anything but expected and would be remembered as one of Death Valley Scotty's most famous hoaxes.

The party consisted of Scotty, mining promoter A. Y. Pearl, mining engineer Daniel Owen, a potential investor named Albert Johnson (a Chicago insurance magnate who had recently learned of Scotty and became intrigued), and two of Scotty's brothers, Bill and Warner. Also tagging along were Bill Keys, a Cherokee half-breed miner and acquaintance of Scotty's, as well as miner Jack Brody.

After several days of preparation, on Friday, February 23, 1906, two wagons were loaded with ample supplies that included food, whiskey, all manner of camping gear, much fresh water, and trailed by extra horses and mules. By Sunday, the travelers reached Lone Willow Spring, fifty miles into their journey. Only Scotty and his associates knew where they were headed—vaguely toward a mine owned by Bill Keys, but more importantly straight into Wingate Pass.

Scotty had begun to act uneasy around the mine investigators, claiming they were in dangerous territory and that they should be alert. Bandits roamed the hills in these parts, he said, preying on the unsuspecting.

“What do you mean we have to be careful?” Pearl had been a pain in Scott's backside for hours.

Scotty didn't answer, but walked off beyond the campfire light, a rifle cradled in his arms, a look of concern playing on his face.

“What did he mean by that?” whispered Pearl to the others. No one knew, but if they did they kept silent.

The night passed uneventfully. In the morning, before they lit out on what the out-of-towners hoped would be the final day of their journey to the mine, Scotty told his brother, Bill, to stay at the camp with the horses and mules. He instructed Jack Brody and Bill Keys to ride ahead of the main party and scout for signs of trouble on the trail. Scotty then held the party there for a time, saying he was giving the men ample time to ensure the route was safe for them to travel.

Then they rolled out toward Wingate Pass, made it through and down the other side, southward. The day was long and dusty, and everyone's spirits were caked with alkali and rimed with salt from their sweat. They were relieved when, with dusk approaching, Scotty told them to begin searching for a decent place to pitch camp.

Sudden gunshots cracked the still, desert air. They looked up to see a rider, a stranger, hell bent, heading toward them from the north. He told them he'd just been shot at and had his pack animals run off by outlaws. Scotty was visibly shocked—this was unexpected but potentially useful to him. It's exactly what he had intended to unleash on his little band of investors. He wanted to scare them enough to dissuade them from continuing the trip.

“Let's keep it moving,” said Scotty. “We'll travel a bit farther tonight before setting up camp. Put distance betwixt us and the shooters.”

They made it past Dry Lake, then Scotty slid his rifle clean of its sheath and cranked off two shots at something he'd apparently seen in the distance.

“What are you shooting at?” shouted one of the men, but his words were drowned out by the bucking, dancing horses and braying, kicking mules.

Scotty's shot frightened mules pulling the lead wagon, commandeered by Warner Scott and Daniel Owen, who lost his seating and fell backward into the wagon.

Then a shot rang out, not from Scotty this time, and his brother, Warner, screamed and clutched at his groin, already welling dark-red blood.

“Warner!” Scotty shouted, reaching toward his brother, then suddenly reining his mount toward the rocky escarpment from where the shot had drilled. He galloped hard toward it, shouting, “Stop shooting! Stop shooting, I tell ya!”

The shooters did indeed stop, and a hasty camp was set up. By scant fire-light they tried to close up Warner's wounds. It seemed not only had the bullet hit him in the groin, but it had passed through the leg and into his arm. Despite the wounds, it appeared as though Warner would live through the escapade. But Scotty knew they needed to get him to a doctor. And as a bonus, it would get them out of the desert without having to see the mine.

Scotty spent the night mulling over the mess the trek had become. This was exactly what was supposed to have happened, but not in the way it did. No one was supposed to be shot, least of all his own brother. And worst of all, he knew he'd blown the ruse by commanding the “outlaws” to stop shooting. Oh, what a mess.

Further troubling was the fact that the big-city mining dudes, Pearl and Owen, as well as that newcomer, Johnson, talked among themselves in low tones. There would be trouble from this, no doubt. But first things first, thought Scotty. Get Warner to a doctor, and then he had to get himself to Seattle, where his play was due to open in a few days.

The next morning they made it to the town of Daggett and loaded Warner on a train bound for Los Angeles and much-needed medical attention. All of Scotty's fear and doubts on the trail came home to roost in short order. Over the next few weeks, A. Y. Pearl, now fully convinced that Scotty had no mine at all and was instead a desperate con man, also had become convinced that Scotty had intended to have him killed while on the trip.

Pearl went to the authorities with the full story and his suppositions. Scotty was already a highly suspicious character in the eyes of the law, so it didn't take much convincing for them to issue warrants for the arrests of Scotty, Bill Keys, and Jack Brody. The latter two men failed to return to camp before the party left for Daggett, thus affirming their potential culpability.

Scotty was arrested and released on bail no fewer than four times over the next few weeks. In April he learned that his brother, Warner, who had been shot because of Scotty's scheme, was suing him for $152,000 in damages. An impressive case was building against Scotty for the false ambush gone awry, backed by deep investigations and the arrests of Keys and Brody. It looked as if Scotty might finally have come up against a case from which he couldn't wiggle free. Then, astoundingly, on April 27, four days before a preliminary hearing was to take place in San Bernardino County Court, the charges were dropped.

Once again, that luckiest of swindlers, Death Valley Scotty, had evaded big trouble. It seems questions about jurisdiction arose—the shooting had actually taken place in Inyo County, not San Bernardino County. And the authorities in Inyo County weren't interested in pursuing the case. What no one learned until many years later, in a newspaper interview published after Scotty's death, was that he had suspected jurisdictional issues might arise. So Scotty did what he did best—he sneaked out one day and moved the surveyor's post that defined the Inyo–San Bernardino County line.

Despite this spectacular failed ruse, incredibly enough, the Chicago millionaire, Albert Johnson, came away from the debacle of a trip somehow impressed with Walter Scott. Sure, he knew that Scott was a hoodwinker of the first order. But Johnson had solid instincts that had rarely let him down in the business world. He felt sure that this time, as with his other potential investments, there was meat between the bread—promise, buried however deep, in this venture.

A week later, back at his offices in Chicago, Albert Johnson addressed the man he'd summoned to work for him. Johnson detailed what he knew about Death Valley Scotty. Finally, he paused, steepled his fingers, elbows on his desktop, and said, “So you see, Mr. MacArthur, I need someone to head out to Death Valley and shadow Mr. Scott. I want his every move seen and documented. I will tell you that he is a wily creature, prone to move about night and day, a difficult man to pin down.”

“Not to worry, Mr. Johnson. This sort of investigation is what I do. I bird-dog a subject until I learn everything my employer needs to know. That said, I have to tell you that from everything you've told me already, this Death Valley Scotty fellow doesn't sound like he's too interested in playing ball on the up-and-up, if you know what I mean.”

Johnson smiled. “I know, but wait until you meet him before you form too much of an opinion. There's something about him that is mighty convincing.”

MacArthur smiled. “The only convincing I'll need is to see that producing gold mine for myself, firsthand.”