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:

“Can’t you both go over there, get yourselves ten days like I did, make a key for the cell, and go out at night and get the box? You could plant the money and lock yourselves up again. Then when your time is up you can go away and come back for the coin when the thing cools off.”

They looked at me and laughed. An hour later Sanc said to Johnnie:

“Say, there might be something in that, after all. We would have a perfect alibi.”

The bizarre appealed to Sanc.

After some discussion they decided to “look into it.”