Johnnie laughed. “Sanc, are you going to plant that stuff in the ‘jug’?”
“Certainly, the bank will take good care of it and it won’t deteriorate. I’m not going to carry the box key around on my watch chain and put the receipt carefully away in my pocket. If I get snared by the bulls they won’t know I’ve got a safety box unless I snitch on myself, and if I were going to stay in this town my money would be in that box, too.”
When the bank opened next morning I rented the box and was given two keys and a password, and was told that anybody bringing a key and the password would have access to the box. “Even if it’s a Chinaman,” said the attendant.
The receipt was destroyed, and the stuff, in a neat parcel, put in the box. Sanc took the keys, planted them somewhere about the premises, and buried the password in his fertile mind.
“Go down to the depot, kid, and get three tickets to Pocatello. We’ll all stay uptown till the train is ready to pull out. No good hanging around that depot, it’s lousy with bulls.”
Johnnie was a typical knight of the road. He believed that beds were for sick people in hospitals, that room rent was wild extravagance, and paying fare on the railroad nothing but ostentatious spending. He protested.
“Sanc, you’re not going to start paying fare?”
“Yes, I am, and I’ll buy you a ticket to California if you’ll come. Just look at the pleasure you would have beating your way from there back to your home town in New Hampshire.”
“That’s the funny part of it,” said Johnnie. “My home town is twenty miles off the railroad and I always have to pay fare on the stage going in and out.”
Back at Pocatello we paid Mary the borrowed money, and spent some in her place for interest. She gladly undertook to deliver the money we wanted to go to our friends at the prison, and we gave it to her, capable woman that she was, feeling as sure they would get it as if we were doing it ourselves.