“It is a crime, all right!” Don admitted, hanging his head.
“I didn’t know it!” Alex cried, distressed at the other’s humiliation. “If I had, I wouldn’t have said the word. If you don’t want to talk about it, you needn’t.”
“I want you to know,” Don answered. “I’ve just got to tell some one, or I’ll bust! I’m a thief!”
“Pancakes and honey?” asked Alex. “I knew that before!”
“No; money,” the other went on. “A whole lot of money!”
“Huh!” Alex observed, looking over the hot sand, the hotter hills, the brazen sky, and the starved landscape, “did you come down here to serve out your sentence? Strikes me that you’d better be in some nice cool jail, where there is plenty of pancakes and honey!”
“I’ve stolen about all the money there is in the world!” Don said, in a moment, a troubled look coming over his face.
“Have you got it yet?” asked Alex.
“Every cent of it!” was the reply. “Every last cent of it!”
Don threw off his wet jacket, loosened his waistband, and, after working both hands in the vicinity of his hips for a moment, making wry faces every second of the time, drew forth a waterproof belt the bulging sides of which proclaimed crowded contents. After shaking it to remove any chance drop of water, Don unfastened the buckles and began unwinding the oiled silk which enclosed the contents of the belt.