After leaving Brookville, Ben went to Pittsburg again, where, falling in with a young man whom we will designate as George, he made his way into Indiana county. There he entered upon the counterfeit money game, on a somewhat different plan from that adopted in New York. I will attempt to describe the method used.
Ben would call upon a leading farmer, whose love of lucre he believed to be stronger than his conscience. He would go provided with two or three hundred dollars in crisp, new bank notes. Falling into conversation with the intended victim, he would tell him, in a delicate and round-about manner, that he had a project in mind, by which his friend might make a fortune in no time. Drawing out some of the genuine bills, he would say:
"Just look at these. You wouldn't think they were counterfeit, now, would you?"
"Counterfeit!" the farmer would exclaim, in amazement, at the same time taking the bills and examining them critically. "Well, I swan! If them is counterfeit bills, I'd like to have about a million of them, that's all!"
"Yes, they're counterfeit!" Ben would rejoin, in a matter-of-fact sort of way. "The best imitations ever made. Bankers themselves can't detect them!"
"Well, how much do you charge for this money?" the farmer would inquire.
"We sell it at the rate of four dollars for one--that is, where the amount taken is big enough to make it an object. You see I am the agent, and I carry this with me simply as a specimen. When we get enough orders in any place, we ship it on in large quantities. But it doesn't pay us to handle small amounts."
"Couldn't you let me have, say a hundred dollars' worth?" the farmer would ask.
"No," Ben would answer, "that isn't enough. But I'll tell you what I'll do. You take me round and introduce me to some of your neighbors--men who can be trusted, you know--and then you can make up a purse together, and buy enough to make it an object for us to ship it."
This proposition would almost always meet with a ready acceptance, and so, in company with his first victim, Ben would start out in search of a second. In this way half a dozen or more farmers would be visited, and on the strength of the introduction, it was comparatively easy to broach the subject. Having secured enough to make up a purse of perhaps five hundred dollars, Ben would take the farmers' money and inform them that one of their number could drive in to the village with him, while he obtained the "queer." It is almost needless to explain that Ben would give the farmer the slip, and that not a dollar of the counterfeit notes ever found its way into the would-be speculators' pockets. Not any of them would dare to make any noise over the swindle, because if he did, the whole matter would of course come to light, and that would put him in a good deal worse boat than it would Ben.