“Great cats!” cried the cattleman. “Is it Jane Ann herself? Is she alive?”
The girl flung herself into the big man’s arms. “I’m all right, Uncle!” she cried, laughing and crying together. “And that man yonder didn’t hurt me–only kep’ me on a desert island till Ruth and Tom and Helen found me.”
“Then he kin go!” declared Bill Hicks, turning suddenly as Crab started through the door. “And here’s what will help him!”
The Westerner swung his heavy boot with the best intention in the world and caught Jack Crab just as he was going down the step. With a yell of pain the fellow sailed through the air, landing at least ten feet from the doorway. But he was up from his hands and knees and running hard in an instant, and he ran so hard, and to such good purpose, that he ran right out of this story then and there. Ruth Fielding and her friends never saw the treacherous fellow again.
“But if he’d acted like he oughter,” said Mr. Hicks, “and hadn’t put my Jane Ann out on that thar lonesome rock, and treated her the way he done, I should have considered myself in his debt. I’d have paid him the five hundred dollars, sure enough. I’d have paid it over willingly if he’d left my gal with these nice people and only told me whar she was. But I wouldn’t give him a cent now–not even if he was starvin’. For if I found him in that condition I’d see he got food and not money,” and the big man chuckled.
“So you haven’t got to pay five hundred dollars for me, then, Uncle Bill?” said his niece, as they sat on the porch of the Stones’ bungalow, talking things over.
“No, I haven’t. No fault of yours, though, you little rascal. I dunno but I ought to divide it ’twixt them three friends of yourn that found ye.”
“Not for us!” cried Tom and Helen.
“Nor for me,” said Ruth, earnestly. “It would not be right. I never should respect myself again if I thought I had tried to find Nita for money.”
“But if it hadn’t been for Ruth we’d never have sailed over there to the Thimble,” declared Tom.