There was a legend on the road that the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City was a veritable storehouse of gold, silver, and precious stones and it was this that lured Smiler back to that city. At that time a high adobe wall surrounded the block on which stood the Tabernacle and the then-unfinished Mormon Temple. We looked it over for several days and nights but could get nothing tangible to work on. Sunday we attended services and the plate was to be seen, silver and gold; more than we could carry away if we got it. At last we decided to go over the wall and give the place a good reconnaissance. If it looked feasible we could get a couple of other idle burglars and give it a thorough looting.
On top of the wall we pulled up our light ladder and placed it inside. Smiler went down first. I barely had my feet off the ladder when a dozen men rose up out of the shrubbery armed with shotguns, and surrounded us. We stood still by the wall. One of them spoke, sternly, evenly: “Go back over that wall.”
Little we knew the Mormons. We went up the ladder, pulled it up, and went down and away.
When Smiler’s good humor returned he held up his hand. “Kid, I’ll never try to rob another Mormon. I’ll go to work first.”
The next day we went into a small gambling house where we hung out to read the papers. We sat at a table near the big safe in a corner of the room. A man in overalls was taking the lock apart. The place had changed hands a few days before and the new proprietors were having the numbers of the combination changed. When the mechanic finished his work he wrote some numbers on two slips of paper. These he threw on the floor beside his tools and went back to the bar for a drink. Smiler stooped, picked up the slips, looked at them closely, and threw them back on the floor.
Outside, he said: “We’ve got the combination of that box, kid. Those two pieces of paper are for the new proprietors, their new combination.”