As far as I can learn, neither the bank or broker-creditors nor any of the members of the Sullivan Trust Company have ever received a dollar as a result of the settlement. Had the securities been disposed of immediately after the embarrassment, the trust company would have paid dollar for dollar. Those of the public who did not sell their holdings in the Sullivan companies when we were supporting the market to the extent of more than $3,000,000, lost most of their investment. Those who did sell--most of them--made money. The market value of these securities, at the height of the boom, was in excess of $5,000,000. The price paid for them by the public, as already stated, was in the neighborhood of $2,000,000. After settling with the creditors of the Sullivan Trust Company on the basis just outlined, I departed from Goldfield as broke as when I arrived there three years before. The only money I or my partners had drawn from the business during the life of the trust company was about $5,000, just sufficient to pay living expenses. My expenses to New York, where I went to have my head operated on--are you surprised?--were supplied by the proceeds of the sale of my seat on one of the Goldfield stock exchanges, from which I netted $400. I landed back in the big city with $200 in my pocket, the exact sum with which I had left town three years before. My reward for three years of untiring work on the desert was a big fund of Experience. Believe me, I thought it would hold me for a while! But it didn't. CHAPTER VI NIPISSING AND GOLDFIELD CON The embarrassment of the L. M. Sullivan Trust Company, was disastrous to Goldfield, The decline and fall of the camp dated from that very hour. The _Goldfield News_, of nation-wide circulation in those days and up to then unshackled, sought to stem the tide. It published a double-leaded editorial, in full-face type, setting forth that the Sullivan Trust Company had gone down with its flag nailed to the masthead of a declining market and had lost its last dollar supporting its own stocks. The camp took courage. Soon it became evident that the initial smash in stock-market values was not sufficient to convince the natives that the death-knell of the market for its long line of mining securities had been sounded. The population of Goldfield was 15,000. Its life could not be snuffed out in a day. Great was the depreciation in the market price of Goldfield mining issues, but not to an extent as yet that indicated the almost complete annihilation of values which followed. Final destruction for the general list, with some scattering exceptions, came only after a "starving-out" siege on the part of investors, who refused to commit themselves farther and gradually resorted to liquidation.