of investors to just north of what is now called Diamond Peak in the remote northwest corner of the Colorado Territory, where Janin and the investors found enough diamonds in the soil to satisfy themselves. Janin submitted a highly optimistic report, which found its way into the press. Geologist Clarence King who had led a survey team that recently completed a Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel had a chance meeting with Janin on a train. King and his team were alarmed at the reports of such an prominent diamond field which their survey had not noted. King sent geologist Samuel Franklin Emmons and cartographer A. D. Wilson ahead to investigate, with King joining them soon after. Upon locating the site, they quickly concluded that it had been salted (as a geologist, King was aware that the various stones formed under different conditions and would never be found together in a single deposit), and notified investors. Further investigation showed Arnold and Slack bought cheap cast-off diamonds, refuse of gem cutting, in London and Amsterdam for $35,000 and scattered them to "salt" the ground. Most of the gems were originally from South Africa. Arnold returned to his home in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and became a successful businessman and banker. Diamond-company investors sued him, and he settled the cases for an undisclosed sum. Years later he died of pneumonia after he was wounded in a shootout with a rival banker. John Slack dropped from public view. He moved to St. Louis, where he owned a casket-making company. He later became a casket maker and undertaker in White Oaks, New Mexico, where he lived quietly and died in 1896 at the age of 76. Dramatizations The story of the great hoax was featured in several television programs in the 1950s and 1960s. Marc Hamilton played investor Asbury Harpending (a colorful character known for numerous escapades) in the 1955 episode "A Killing in Diamonds" of the syndicated western television series Death Valley Days. Vaughn Taylor played Harpending in a 1965 episode of the same series, "Raid on the San Francisco Mint," which was hosted by Ronald Reagan, who was cast in the starring role of banker William Chapman Ralston. Death Valley Days aired a third story devoted to the hoax, the 1968 episode "The Great Diamond Mines", with Philip Arnold played by Gavin MacLeod, John Slack by John Fiedler and Ralston by Tod Andrews. A