But gun-running, that staple form of border lawbreaking, did not fit into any part of Cliff's activities, though opium might.

But when he had made an excuse for handling one or two of the packages, they routed the opium theory.

They were flat and loosely solid, as packages of paper would be.

Not state documents such as melodramas use to keep the villains sweating--they did not come in reams, so far as Johnny knew.
He could think of no other papers that would need smuggling into or out of a country as free as ours where freedom of the press has become a watchword; yet the idea persisted stubbornly that those were packages of paper which he had managed to take in his hands.
As a pleasing relief from useless cogitation on the subject, Johnny took his bank roll from a pocket he had sewed inside his shirt.

Like a miser he fingered the magic paper, counting and recounting, spending it over and over in anticipatory daydreams.