TENNIS MATCH

I believe that all battles are evidence of failure; of diplomacy, of politics, of military strategy.  A million minor inconsequential things must go wrong for there to first be a war and then a battle, and another million unintended mistakes must cumulatively be made for a great battle to occur. Even the language we use to describe these disasters is mistaken. In battle, nothing is “great” except the courage of the men caught up in it.  As an example,  I present for you, the battle for Kohima.

Officials in Fukouka Prefecture kept a close watch on the young males growing up in the towns and fishing villages of Kyushu, the southern most island of Japan. Often they would drop in for an unannounced visits, to check on the boys health and status. Then, sometime during the young men’s 20th year, in the middle of the night, their conscription notices would arrive. It was claimed this delivery in darkness was done for security reasons, but it was usually followed by a very public send off to basic training. More likely the military merely wanted to drive home their ability to reach into each individual house in the nation at its most vulnerable members.

During the first year of war with America and the British Commonwealth (1942) the Imperial Japanese forces suffered 2,672 men killed each week (on average), while in 1943 that appalling number increased to 3,563 each week.  And the future promised only exponential growth in those tragedies.  On 26 October, 1943, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito' admitted that his nation’s situation was “truly grave”.  It was accepted that 1944 would be Japan’s last chance to stave off defeat in a war they had started.  In the Pacific the navy planned a counter stroke when the Americans struck the Mariana islands.  In China the Army launched “Operation One”, a three prong attack by half a million men.  And against British India, the Japanese Army decided on Operation “C”, a strike from out of Burma, which they had conquered two years before. 

After their basic training and before leaving Japan, each of the 15,000 Fukouka soldiers wrote out his will and ceremonially gave his life to the Emperor.  By now the nation could no longer wait until their twentieth year.  By late 1943 the Japanese were inducting boys of 17 and 18,  and men up to 44 years old.  But whatever their age, from day one the soldiers were treated brutally.  Officers and non-coms often slapped and beat their men for minor transgressions.  Personal violence was so common that Japanese soldiers often beat each other. 

This brutality was easily transferred to civilians and prisoners of war,  particularly but not exclusively outside of Japan.  The effect on unit moral was devastating, and by 1943 even the army high command wanted to correct it.  But by then the war had grown out of their control

The men from Kyushu were formed into the 58th, 124th and 138th infantry regiments, a Mountain Artillery, an Engineering and a Transportation regiment.. In late 1943 they were all assembled in Bangkok, Thailand and designated the 31st infantry division. 

Their irritable and dyspeptic commander was Lt. General Kotoku Sato.  He was of the opinion that his commanding officer was a blockhead, and openly told his staff that during Operation “C” he expected them all to starve to death.  Late in 1944 the division was moved by rail to the Northwest corner of Burma, to the head of navigation on the Chindwin River. 

Each soldier was issued a 20 day supply of rice.  Their equipment and ammunition were carried on mules and elephants, but there would be no supply line back to the Chindwin. The plan was to move fast enough to capture British supply depots as they advanced, and use those to feed and arm their hungry soldiers.

On 15 March, 1944, the 31st division, operating on the extreme right wing of four other divisions, crossed the Chindwin River by boat and raft on a front 60 miles wide.  Moving quickly along winding jungle trails, their first objective was the tiny village of Kohima, 100 miles away and 4,000 feet up the 5,000 foot high Naga hills.  They planned to reach this objective by a forced march in three days and nights.  In fact it took them 15 days. 

The jungle was fetid, hot and sickening, filled with flies, ticks, mosquitoes and leeches big enough to crawl up your leg and suck your blood until they burst. The mosquito bites could cause septic sores. By the time the advanced elements of the 31st division reached the outskirts of Kohima the monsoon had begun, the trails were reduced to deep sucking mud, and the men of 31st division were strung out along the trials, exhausted and hungry.  Sickness and casualties had already reduced the Japanese force by 3,000 men.  Still the remaining 12,000 Japanese soldiers had caught the British high command off guard, again.  The draftees from Fukouka Prefecture quickly surrounded the barely 2,500 Indian and British troops defending the Kohima Ridge. 

The ultimate goal for the 31st division was still 40 miles away; Dimapur, a British airfield, rail head and logistics base on the Brahmaputra River. From this depot a winding road climbed the Naga Hills, through a mountain pass along Kohima Ridge, and then ran southward to Impala. At Impala were three Indian divisions, commanded by British officers. The main Japanese thrust of four divisions was initially aimed at Impala. But if the 31st division could capture Kohima, those three Indian divisions would be cut off, and could be starved to death.  And if the 31st could capture Dimapur, the Japanese army would have enough food, ammunition and fuel to invade India by itself.  Sato’s goal was to capture enough supplies at Kohima for the next forty mile march to Dimapur. 

In a first rush on the evening of 3 April , 1944, the men from Kyushu not only surrounded Kohima, they also captured British warehouses containing enough food to supply the 31st division for a year. But less than a month’s worth had been distributed when the Royal Air Force bombed the warehouses, and blew up the supplies.  From this point forward each Japanese soldier received one rice ball, some salt and a bottle of boiled water a day. 

Beginning on 6 April, under daily downpours and heavy mortar fire, the Japanese began a series of infantry attacks, squeezing the defenders back onto isolated hill tops along the ridge until the British still held only one, Garrison Hill.  And atop that, at a 280 degree bend in the switchback Impala Road, was DC Hill, where in peaceful times the District Commissioner had built himself a summer bungalow, complete with garden and tennis court.  By 9 April, the the Japanese and British lines were separated only by the Tennis Court, and the entire battle for India and Burma had been reduced to a battlefield just 36 feet wide. 

Attacks and counter-attacks raged across the court, for day after day . A British officer explained the battle this way. “We were attacked every single night... They came in waves…Most nights they overran part of the battalion position, so we had to mount counter-attacks...” Noted another source, “It was a very primitive battle. The Japanese had no air cover or air supply and attacked each night” Another British writer explained, “The defenders built barricades from the piled bodies of the attackers, the entire area eventually becoming a thick carpet of blackened and rotting corpses. When digging in, they found themselves often digging through the dead before hitting earth.” 

On the night of 13/14 April , the Japanese managed to manhandle a 75mm cannon onto a slight rise to fire point blank into the forward British trenches.  The survivors were forced to retreat.  One of the Indian troopers, Wellington Massar, set up a machine gun on the billiard table in the remains of the club house, and cut down the following Japanese attackers.  A Lt. King led a counterattack which retook the trench.  But the British position had been cut in half.  With daylight the Japanese launched what was supposed to be the final annihilating attack, but it was repulsed.  A British Officer told his commander, “The men's spirits are all right, but there aren't many of us left,”  He said that if relief did not arrive within 48 hours, the position would fall.  Five days later, the battle for the “shattered corpse-covered tennis court” was still raging.

On the morning of 18 April, British artillery began to fall on the tennis court.  It was the advance effect of the arrival of the British 2nd division, which had been flown into Dimapur the week before, and had now fought its way up the road.  On the 19th the reliving column reached DC hill. What they found was “'filthy, bearded, bedraggled scarecrows” defending “shallow muddy trenches, dismembered limbs, empty cartridge cases, ammunition boxes and abandoned equipment, the debris of numerous assaults, and the stench of so many things rotting. The most lasting impression was caused by the litter of war- piles of biscuits, dead bodies black with flies and scattered silver from the DC's bungalow.”

Still the men from Kyushu did not give up.  Now outnumbered and heavily outgunned, they contested every British advance, and were still holding an edge of the Tennis Court. As John Toland reported, in his book “The Rising Sun”, the 31st division was now eating “… grass, potatoes, snails, lizards, snakes – anything they could get their hands on, including monkeys”.  Harold Jones, one of the reliving solders, describe Kohima this way. “I was there about 10 days. It was a terrible place”

By 25 May most the Kohima ridge was back in British hands, and General Sato informed his despised commander that without food or ammunition his men could not survive past June First.  When his commander ordered the 31st division to “fight with their teeth” if they had no more bullets,  Sato instead ordered his men to withdraw.   It was the only time in the Second World War that a senior Japanese officer disobeyed a direct order while under attack, and ordered a retreat..

Toland tells what the Japanese retreat was like. “On the long trek back over the mountains in pounding rain, men fought one another for food.  Thousands of sick and wounded fell out of the march and killed themselves with grenades. The paths were seas of mud and when a man stumbled he became half buried in slime…Light machine guns, rifles, helmets, gas masks – anything useless – littered the trails.  Only the will to live propelled the survivors…and those who lasted out a day’s march huddled together for sleep that rarely came because of the constant downpour. Many drowned, too feeble to raise their heads above the rising water, and the Chindwin River itself, their goal, claimed the lives of hundreds more in its swollen waters….by the end of the year Japanese rule (of Burma) was on the point of collapse.” (pp 693) 

The 31st division had been destroyed. 67% of its precious 15,000 men were dead or wounded. The British counted 5,000 Japanese bodies on the Kohima battle field alone, and best estimates are that 7,000 of the men from Fukouka Prefecture were sacrificed in the attempt to take Kohima..  Fewer than 600 were taken prisoner.  General Sato was relieved of his command, and sent sent home as unfit for duty because of wounds and physical wastage he suffered before Kohima.  The British poet JM Edmonds left the best epitaph on the battle, which appears on a monument at the British cemetery at Kohima, and which could apply to the sacrifice of both sides. “When you go home, Tell them of us and say, For their tomorrow, We gave our today.”

None of the Japanese counter strokes of 1944 worked. The Imperial Navy blundered into the “Great Marianas Turkey shoot”, which saw 3 Japanese air craft carriers sunk, and 633 air planes destroyed. The Japanese Navy never recovered. In China “Operation One” pushed the Chinese army back, and forced the American 20th Air Force to abandon their advanced bases, which prevented them from bombing Japan. But the Marinna's victory allowed the Americans to simply transfer the B-29 bombers to the Islands of Guam and Tainan, where they would prove even more effective at burning Japanese cities.

And Operation “C” had captured nothing and left 50,000 Japanese dead, and reduced the defence of Burma to an empty shell. And for all the treachery and villainy of the Japanese militarist in fermenting World War in the Pacific, their greatest victims were not citizens of the United States, nor the British nor even China. Their greatest victims were the people of Japan, like the young men of Kyushu, who gave their today for a lie.

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THE GREAT DIAMOND MOUNTAIN Chapter Six

I can imagine what William Ralston felt when his assistant Mr. Colton handed him the telegram from Professor King. His shock, and probably anger at this previously unknown (to him) interloper,  who dared to  question his dream, must have been overwhelming. But this was quickly followed by reports from the London newspapers detailing the bizarre Americans who had bought diamonds in bulk. Wrote the London Times, “The purchasers were evidently unacquainted with precious stones; they purchased without reference to size, weight or quality, the lot including diamonds, rubies, emeralds, etc. to the value of over $15,000.”  Shortly there after King himself arrived in San Francisco, with full details of the salted claims.  Ralston, admiral of the San Francisco money armada,  wasted no time in moving to minimize the damage to his reputation.  And his finances.

First he made arraignments to repay every investor in full. That million dollar hit to his personal finances did hurt, but in the days before the Securities and Exchange Commission, and their meddlesome regulations, tens of millions of dollars in investments could vanish with a mere whiff of rumor against the reputation of one man. If the Bank of California was to have any future, then Ralston had to at once restore the full trust of men like the Baron Rothschild. It was at moments like these that it should be clear that a lack of government regulations is a severe hindrance to the trust which makes larger international investments possible.  But those interested in the short con,  are always opposed to having a cop on the beat. 

Next Ralston moved to get his money back. He hired the best detective he could find, the long time San Francisco Captain of Detectives, Isaiah.W. Lees. Over thirty years of service, Lees had managed to avoid any taint of corruption while rising to the top of a department awash in payoffs and political favoritism. Lees had championed innovations such as photographing all arrested suspects, and originated the rouges gallery of their photographs. Lees was now granted a leave of absence from the department, and Ralston provided him with a salary and an expense account to find out everything he could about the Great Diamond Mountain con men.

Lees immediately set out for Europe and found, as he suspected, that there were many along Tulip Street who recognized the photographs of the two odd Americans from their 1870 expedition. And by tracking the aliases they had used in Amsterdam against shipping manifests Lees could confirm they had sailed – in both 1870 and 1872 – from the Canadian port of Halifax. A railroad had recently been completed, connecting the U.S. State of Maine with Nova Scotia, and that seemed the obvious path they had taken to avoid American ports and American customs agents.

Although John Slack was was nowhere to be found at the moment, the Pinkerton agency had easily tracked down Philip Arnold, living amongst the 2,000 residents in his home town of Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Far from hiding, Arnold had followed the example of William Ralston. He had invested his ill-gotten gains in a troubled bank run by Thomas Polk, now renamed the Arnold and Polk Bank. The move saved the small town from financial ruin. Arnold put the rest of his money into the safe in his two story brick Italiante home at 422 East Poplar street, in the hills on the north side of “E”town, along with 500 acres of farmland where he started breeding horses, hogs and sheep.

Arnold and Slack were both indicted for fraud in San Francisco, but Philip Arnold had no intention of giving himself up.  His family connections in Hardin County, Kentucky, and his donations to local politicians were only reinforced by the interviews he gave to the “Louisville Courier”; “I have employed counsel, a good Henry Rifle” he announced. The feisty talk assured public opinion would materialized firmly behind the local boy who had outfoxed the west coast robber barons,  But Arnold also hired a real lawyer or two.  Philip Arnold was dug in like a tick on a Kentucky mule, and banker Ralston was not going to get him out without an expensive, exhausting and embarrassing court fight. Rather than see himself mocked and derided in Kentucky courtrooms, the robber baron decided to cut a deal.

The details were never made public, but it seems the California banker settled for about a third of what he had lost, about $200,000.  In exchange Ralston dropped all claims against the Kentucky con man.  But the bad news was just starting for the Magician of San Francisco.The capitalist sharks smelled blood in the water.  In August of 1875,  fellow robber baron and close personal friend Senator William Sharon, broke a promise to Ralston and sparked the collapse of the Bank of California. Try as he might to avoid it, William Ralston ended up just like Henry Comestock, and he made the same exit The day after they took his bank away, William Ralston was found floating in San Francisco bay., his pockets full of rocks.  His funeral was attended by 50,000 people. They loved him, they just weren't willing to lend him any more money.

Charles Lewis Tiffany, the man who had vouched for the value of worthless diamonds and sapphires, reestablished his reputation in 1878 by buying himself a French Legion of Honor.  He died in 1902 at the age of 90.  He left behind an estate valued at $35 million.

Shortly after paying Ralston to go away, Philip Arnold opened a hardware store at 58 Public Square in “E” town.  It seems he had gotten considerably more than half of the money from the diamond hoax. Unfortunately, he would not live long to enjoy it. Just five years later, on Tuesday, 20 August 1878, Philip Arnold got into a bar fight with Henry Holdsworth, a clerk at a competing bank. In a story that would be familiar to anyone who watches the local news, Holdsworth left the bar and returned a few minutes later with a double barreled shotgun.

According to the Breckenridge News from Cloverdale, Kentucky, Arnold was just leaving the bar when he saw Holdsworth approaching. Arnold pulled his revolver and fired twice. He missed both times. Holdsworth returned fire with one barrel, missing Arnold but hitting two innocent bystanders, one of them in the neck.  Hodsworth then ducked behind a tree. From there he emptied the second barrel at Arnold, hitting him in the shoulder and “lacerating it terribly”. Not dissuaded, Arnold fired three more rounds, again missing Hodsworth, but this time hitting a local farmer named John Anderson, in the gut, and killing him.  Since everybody was now empty, the gun fight was over, and the tally was seven rounds fired, one antagonists wounded, one innocent bystander killed and two more noncombatants injured - a typical gun fight.

Philip Arnold did die, just not quickly. The 49 year old lingered for almost a year, finally dying  of pneumonia on 8 August, 1879.   At least he outlived his victim,  William Ralston.  Arnold's funeral was one of the best attended in the history of “E” town, and his monument on the rolling slopes of the Elizabethtown Cemetery is one of the tallest. But over time memories of Philip Arnold have shifted and over a century later, every October, the residents of “E”town stage the “Philip Arnold Dead Man Rolling Bed Race”- to raise money for charity, of course. Contact the E-town Heritage Council for details. The final irony is that Arnold's hardware store has now become a law office.

In a footnote - Arnold's nemeses, Henry Hardworths, was not satisfied with having mortally wounded Arnold. He also sued him for $7,600 for injuries suffered in the bar fight. Henry lost. But that figure came up again in August of 1884 when Henry was arrested in New Orleans for passing bad checks  in "E" town, totaling $7,000.

Arnold's partner in crime, John Slack was eventually tracked down in St. Louis, where he was working in the affiliated professions of cabinet and coffin maker. Evidently he had no money for  William Ralston to recover. But the silent con man missed the mines of his youth and continued his profession as a prospector in the  New Mexico silver strike boom town of White Oaks, where he became “one of the oldest and most universally respected citizens...” of Lincoln County.  He died in 1896, at the age of seventy-six years, two months and six days, leaving an estate of $1,611.14.

The only conventional hero in our tale seems to have been the geologist and professor, Clarence King (above). He had uncovered the scam, and that act rocketed him to fame as a paragon of virtue and science, which saw him made the first director of the United States Geological Survey.  But there was, of course, another side to the rock hound, a human side.  In 1888  Professor King  married Ada Copeland, an ex-slave who had moved from Georgia to New York. What was dark about this marriage  was that King hid his true identity from Ada, telling her that his name was actually James Todd, that he was a black,man and his profession was actually that of a Pullman Porter. Over the next 13 years he continued this divided life, black man James Todd at home, and world renown white geology professor Clarence King while away from home. Ada and James/CLarence  had five children together, but Clarence did not reveal his true identity to poor Ada and the children until December 1901. And did it via long distance, from his death bed in Arizona. The lesson here is that everybody is lying to somebody, usually to themselves. 

If you want to see the Diamond Mountain that has no diamonds, find Diamond Wash Draw, in Moffat County, Colorado, about one mile south of the Wyoming state line and a quarter mile east of the Utah state border. The flat topped mountain in front of you is Diamond Peak. And the square mile scrub brush plain to the north of that is the scene of the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872. If you can get there, you just might be able to pull a diamond right out of the ground. And when you do, if you do,  you will understand why William Ralston had been so willing to believe, and why capitalism has always depended upon a mix of fantasy and fraud to thrive. 

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THE GREAT DIAMOND MOUNTAIN Chapter FIve

I believe it was pure luck that Philip Arnold and John Slack, the co-conspirators in the Great Diamond Hoax, had arrived in Amsterdam at just the right moment in history. The supply of new uncut diamonds from India had slowly dried up beginning after 1800, and output from the newer Brazilian mines had shrunk by 1860 to a mere 5,000 carats a year. But beginning in about 1867, the influx of 20,000 carats a year from South Africa had revived the market. By 1870, along Tulpstraat (Tulip Street) there were seventy companies employing some 12,000 people in the grading, polishing and cutting of diamonds from South Africa. There was so many diamonds about that most of the lesser quality stones were sold at a discount in lots to the lesser talented cutters in Antwerp, Belgium and London, England. And it was at just at this propitious moment, in the fall of 1870, that the two Kentucky con men made their entrance upon the stage.

If you are going to salt a diamond mine, the first thing you need are diamonds. Most of the Dutch dealers read the Kentuckians as stereotypical 'nouveaux riches' Americans with more money than taste. And by carefully picking through the stockpiles of discarded stones from dozens of different companies, Arnold and Slack were able to turn their carefully hoarded $25,000 life savings into enough rocks to impersonate a diamond mine - if no one who looked at them had any experience with diamonds in the  rough. And that was unlikely as the industry was almost completely operated by insular ultra conservative Hasidic Jews – another lucky break for Arnold and Slack. But, as insurance, the Americans picked up a few hundred trash-heaped sapphires as well.  Having completed their shopping trip, Arnold and Slack sailed for Halifax, Canada. By avoiding American ports they greatly reduced their chances of meeting anyone who might know them, now or in the future.

We know that the pair had worked mines in Arizona, and that Philip Arnold had examined other mining claims for Ralston's bank, mostly in California and Nevada. But either man could have heard about the odd “conical” shaped mountain overlooking a worthless claim along the Utah, Colorado and Wyoming border. During the long summer of 1871 Arnold and Slack carefully “salted” their claim with a heady selection of diamonds and sapphires. Then they waited for winter, when harsh weather in the Nevada fields forced prospectors to stay close to San Francisco. And in February of 1872, just when the rock hound's cabin fever would be reaching its height, the two con men floated into the bars of San Francisco and created rumors of a big find.

As the Kentuckians anticipated, Ralston (above) eagerly took the bait and insisted on having his own experts examine the claim. Arnold and Slack made a show of reluctantly agreeing to take David Colton and Major George Roberts to the claim, in exchange for a $50,000 cash investment. And with tha  money in their pocket, they had their investors on the hook. Now they were going to reel them in. 

It was to be expected that neither expert on this March expedition knew anything about diamonds, since nobody in California did. There are no diamonds in California. And since both Colton and Roberts were also investors in the mine it was easy to convince them they were about to become fabulously wealthy. All they had to do was be greedy. And greed makes you stupid. In Oakland, on the return from the claim, Arnold and Slack collected their initial payment and then hurried off again. Ralston was told they were returning to work on the claim. In fact the pair was headed back to Europe, to fetch more diamonds.

During the spring and early summer of 1872, while Asbury Harpending was in New York, receiving Charles Tiffany's glowing appraisal of the diamonds and sapphires salvaged from the disposal bins in  Amsterdam, Philip Arnold and John Slack were in London, repeating their performance. Things went quicker this time because there was less of a language barrier. But there were also fewer cutters to chose from. This time the Kentuckian con men were more knowledgeable about what they needed. Also, with their scam approaching its apex, there was less need for secrecy. Again they sailed from and to Canadian ports – a five day sail to and from Halifax, Nova Scotia.

But something held them up on this trip, and  they did not have time to salt the mines. Instead, carrying  about $35,000 worth of low grade diamonds and sapphires, they were forced to return directly for San Francisco .  But there was no need to worry, for in their absence, “Billy” Ralston had been dreaming again. He thought that, as usual, his victims were playing by a different set of rules than he was. But this time the Kentucky con men were playing the same game Ralston was.  But better.  On their return, Ralston offered the two Kentucky con men $660,000 and a percentage of future profits for the precise location of the claim, and a quit claim, once the value was confirmed by yet another expert. Any concern Arnold or Slack may have initially felt on hearing about this additional inspection was dissipated when they met the final expert who stood between them and a fabulous fortune.  He was not some mysterious South African or Brazilian diamond expert. He was Henry Janin.

From the moment he boarded the train that August, Henry Janin was like a child being read his favorite story book. He wanted to believe. He knew the plot so well, he could almost say the lines before they were read to him. What he expected to see, Janin saw. Arnold must have known the man from their decades in San Francisco mining circles. Slack must have recognized the amazing avarice that drove Janin. Once Janin was picked, both men must have known the already in $330,000 in escrow and the $330,000 promised upon revelation, was as good as theirs.

The mystery of the 36 hour train ride, the darkened “abandoned” station, the blindfolds, the almost biblical wandering four day journey across the desert, everything about the trip seemed to be calculated to inspire mystery and romance. It was a perfectly calculated performance, except for Philip Arnold's final trip to “get his barrings”. On that fourth morning he must have rode off in desperation, and spent a hurried few hours salting the claim. Perhaps this is why the second trip from the railroad to the diamond mountain took twice as long as the first. But Arnold need not have worried. Greed makes people stupid. And even so obvious a slip in their veil of conspiracy failed to awaken the would be millionaires from their slumber. Arnold returned in time to lead his audience directly to a camp site at the foot of the diamond mountain, and any lingering doubts evaporated at the first glint of bling.

Ashbury Harpending (above) had almost blown their happy ending when he had heard the train whistle on the wind. But  Philip Arnold quickly assured him that the railroad was a hundred miles away, when in fact it was only twenty – just over the horizon. Lucky again, for the Kentuckians, the  western trains were still burning wood to supply their steam. Wood smoke is white, and seen from a distance might be a cloud on the horizon. In another decade the tiny deserted station at Rawlings Springs, where the party had left the railroad, would be a very crowded place, the skies above it darkened with a constant pall of thick black smoke, as the transcontinental trains were switched to burning coal, found in great quantities by Professor King's 40^th Parallel Survey a mile or so north of the station.

It was Arnold and Slack who took over the panning duties for Janin. And this allowed them to magically  produce diamonds and sapphires with even a clumsy slight of hand. Half hour of dull unrewarding work would have discouraged any of the more zealous members of the party from panning themselves. And having been relieved of the real work, the robber baron want-a-bees could concentrate on the more enjoyable task of building castles in the air. They split up, each man wandering off to look for his own personal fortune, like Janin and his claim on the water rights. It was a storybook voyage to a fantasy island within  a desert mirage. The only person who did not seem to enjoy the trip was John Slack. It appeared he was cursed with the confidence man's worst enemy – a conscious.

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