After returning from one of my trips to Rawhide I became alarmed on reading on the front page of the leading San Francisco newspapers a harrowing two-column story about the manner in which Ed. Hoffman, mine superintendent of the Rawhide Coalition, had been waylaid the day before on a dark desert road and robbed of $10,000 in gold which he was carrying to the mines for the purpose of discharging the pay-roll. I had just left Mr. Hoffman in Rawhide and he had not been waylaid. I sent for the man who was responsible for the story. "Say, Jim," I said, "you're crazy. There is a come-back to that yarn that will cost you your job as correspondent for your San Francisco paper. It is rough work. Cut it out!" "Gee whillikins!" he replied. "How can I? Here's an order for a two-column follow-up and I have already filed it." "What did you say in your second story?" I inquired. "Well, I told how a posse, armed to the teeth, were chasing the robbers and explained that they're within three miles of Walker Lake in hot pursuit." "You're a madman!" I protested. "Kill those robbers and be quick; do it to-night so that you choke off the demand for more copy, or you're a goner!" Next day the correspondent wired to his string of newspapers that the posse had chased the robbers into Walker Lake, where they were drowned. At the point in Walker Lake where the correspondent said the robbers had found a watery grave it was known to some Reno people that for three miles in both directions the lake was shallow and that the deepest water in that vicinity was less than four feet. This caused some snickering in Reno. Still there was no come-back. The newspapers never learned of the deception. The correspondent had been canny enough in sending the story to keep the local correspondents of all other out-of-town newspapers thoroughly informed. They had sent out practically the same story, and therefore did not give the snap away. In the early days of the Rawhide boom a rumor reached the camp that Death Valley "Scotty," the illustrious personage who had been press-agented from one end of the land to the other as the owner of a secret Golconda, was about to start a stampede into some new diggings. The news bureau decided to kill off opposition. Newspapers of the land were queried as follows: "Scotty's lair discovered in Death Valley. It is a cache containing a number of empty Wells-Fargo money-chests. Scotty has apparently been looting the loot of old-time stage robbers. How many words?" The newspapers just ate this one up. Column upon column was telegraphed from Nevada. The source of Scotty's wealth being cleared up to the satisfaction of readers of the "yellow," Scotty's value as a mine promoter became seriously impaired.