present the other at the Union National Bank, where also Mr. Sharpless kept an account.  I had no difficulty whatever in obtaining the money, and after dividing it among the other two, I left town on the first train.  I received two hundred dollars for my share, and the forgeries were not discovered until a long time had elapsed, and when it was almost impossible to obtain any information concerning them.  To this day I don’t believe that any of the officers of the two banks have the slightest idea as to how the thing was done.  Soon after this forgery, Johnson left Geneva and located at St. Louis, where he still resides.  Emboldened by the success of this first venture, Eugene Pearson, who was really the master-spirit in these later efforts, boldly proposed to rob the bank in which he was engaged, but this was something too audacious to be considered for a moment.  At length, by dint of repeated suggestions, Johnson and myself began to give some consideration to the matter, and upon Pearson’s assuring us of the perfect ease with which the robbery might be accomplished, we at last began to discuss various plans by which the bank might be robbed.  Several ideas and propositions were discussed, but either through fear or some other consideration, they all fell through.

“At last we decided upon the plan which was finally carried out.  Johnson and myself were to come to Geneva disguised as much as possible, and after the business of the day was over, and the other officers had gone home, Pearson was to give us the signal that the coast was clear.  We were then to enter the bank, the doors of which would be left open, and after securing the young lady and Pearson, we were to rob the vault and place them within it.  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.