In order that they might not suffer from their
confinement, Pearson was to start the screws in the lock, so that there
would be no difficulty in opening the vault, after giving us time to
make good our escape. It was understood that there was about twenty
thousand dollars in the vault, in gold, silver and notes, and Pearson
was to take his share out in advance and hide it, so that no danger
should be incurred in the attempt to divide it afterward. As the time
approached for carrying this plan into effect, Johnson began to show
signs of weakening, and finally declined to have anything to do with it,
although he promised to make no disclosures regarding our movements, and
to keep our secret inviolate. After Johnson's backing out we did not
know what to do, and were just about abandoning the whole thing, when I
came across an old traveling friend of mine in Chicago, who had been on
a protracted spree, and who was without money and friends, in a strange
city, and who came to me to borrow enough to get him home to Denver. The
idea at once occurred to me to induce him to join us and in this I was
successful, for he was in a desperate state, and anything that promised
to furnish him with money would have been greedily accepted at that
time.
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