One of the loungers threw me a Salt Lake newspaper, another gave me a sack of tobacco, cigarette papers, and matches. When they had gone I opened the paper and found the story of my escape from the courtroom. The reporter treated it humorously, and made fun of everybody connected with my trial. I didn’t know what he saw about it that was so funny till I got to the end of it, where he said the jury came in with their verdict of “not guilty” before I was out of the block.
This took a big load off my mind; nothing to fear now. I could go back to Salt Lake and wait for my friends to come out of prison. The Sanctimonious Kid had but two weeks more to do, Soldier Johnnie but a month. George had almost a year yet to do.
All thought of going home was gone. I owed money to Shorty and George. That must be paid. All worry was off my mind now and I began planning to get some money when I got out. My head was full of schemes I had absorbed during my month in the penitentiary. George’s tales of fat post offices and country general stores came back to me. Idle all day in my cell, my eyes and thoughts turned to the big general store directly across the street from the jail.
The constable often talked to me in the evening while I ate supper. I learned from him that all the money in the town was in the big safe in the store, his post office money and stamps included. The store owner, as was often the case in small towns, did a banking business and had acquired about all the money in the place.
It was a puzzle to me how to get out of the town when my time was up without spending my ten dollars for fare. This was not to be thought of. The constable solved it by volunteering to put me on a freight train that stopped there in the daytime and fix it with the crew to let me ride back to Salt Lake, where I could start east over the Union Pacific.
The morning my ten days expired I went over to the store, bought some tobacco, and waited around till time for the train. I got the make of the big safe, its location in the store, and any other information I could, without asking questions, and decided to report the matter to my friends at Salt Lake. The constable fixed me for a ride, as he promised, but instead of stopping at Salt Lake I went on to Ogden and wrote a letter to Sanc, telling him where I would be when he came out. I was careful with my ten dollars and had half of it when he appeared at Ogden.
I at once told him of my ten-day sentence and about the fat general store. He had promised to wait for Soldier Johnnie, who was due in three weeks, and offered to pay my expenses till then, when something might be done about my store.
Johnnie was discharged in due time and arrived at Ogden. He was pretty well supplied with money and there was no rush about doing anything. We talked over the general store, but Johnnie didn’t like the looks of it. The night trains didn’t stop at the town, and it was so far from Salt Lake that horses were out of the question.
“No getaway,” he said. “I can beat the box all right, but we can’t get out of there if we do get the money.” Sanc agreed.
During my ten-day stay in the town I had turned over in my mind a hundred plans, but only one of them seemed feasible, and I was almost afraid to broach that to them. At last, when I saw they were going to give it up as a bad job, I said to them: