The youth flushed. "Oh say!" he cried; "you needn't kid me just because I'm new at it. You all had to start sometime. I've always longed for the free life of a tramp; and if you'll let me go along with you for a little while, and teach me, I'll not bother you; and I'll do whatever you say."
The elderly person frowned. "Beat it, kid!" he commanded. "We ain't runnin' no day nursery. These you see here is all the real thing. Maybe we asks fer a handout now and then; but that ain't our reg'lar lay. You ain't swift enough to travel with this bunch, kid, so you'd better duck. Why we gents, here, if we was added up is wanted in about twenty-seven cities fer about everything from rollin' a souse to crackin' a box and croakin' a bull. You gotta do something before you can train wid gents like us, see?" The speaker projected a stubbled jaw, scowled horridly and swept a flattened palm downward and backward at a right angle to a hairy arm in eloquent gesture of finality.
The boy had stood with his straight, black eyebrows puckered into a studious frown, drinking in every word. Now he straightened up. "I guess I made a mistake," he said, apologetically. "You ain't tramps at all. You're thieves and murderers and things like that." His eyes opened a bit wider and his voice sank to a whisper as the words passed his lips. "But you haven't so much on me, at that," he went on, "for I'm a regular burglar, too," and from the bulging pockets of his coat he drew two handfuls of greenbacks and jewelry. The eyes of the six registered astonishment, mixed with craft and greed. "I just robbed a house in Oakdale," explained the boy. "I usually rob one every night."
For a moment his auditors were too surprised to voice a single emotion; but presently one murmured, soulfully: "Pipe de swag!" He of the frock coat, golf cap, and years waved a conciliatory hand. He tried to look at the boy's face; but for the life of him he couldn't raise his eyes above the dazzling wealth clutched in the fingers of those two small, slim hands. From one dangled a pearl necklace which alone might have ransomed, if not a king, at least a lesser member of a royal family, while diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds scintillated in the flaring light of the fire. Nor was the fistful of currency in the other hand to be sneezed at. There were greenbacks, it is true; but there were also yellowbacks with the reddish gold of large denominations. The Sky Pilot sighed a sigh that was more than half gasp.