"Robbed! Oh no," laughed her father. "It's your bathing suit! Next to being the honestest man I know this particular Outlaw happens to be also the most squeamishly modest. Creep around the 135 back way by the palmettos," he ordered, "and put on a skirt! I want to see him!"
Dropping the Brown Khaki Lady's fingers he cupped his hands to his mouth and began to halloo across the little distance.
"Hi there, Alliman!" he called.
"How-do, Mr. Bretton!" came the soft-voiced answer very cautiously, then, from the thicket the man himself emerged with the roll of wildcat skins still clutched in his arms. Daphne certainly had not exaggerated the gentleness of him, nor the narrow shoulders, nor the silky old-fashioned brown beard, nor the bland eyes.
"Come to trade me those cat skins for some pipe tobacco and oranges?" smiled Jaffrey Bretton.
"I—don't—mind," drawled the Outlaw.
As one to whom Time meant nothing nor ever would again, he sat down on the edge of the old wreck and drew his empty pipe from his pocket.
"Just behind that broken spar there you'll find a tobacco tin, I guess," said Jaffrey Bretton. "I rather plan to cache more or 136 less of it around on such shelf-room as the island affords. . . . It's such a blamed nuisance to get way off up the beach somewhere and find you've forgotten your 'baccy'. That's the only conceivable fault I could find with this island," he mused. "There's so little closet room and practically no shelves!"
"Puff, puff, puff," without a flicker of expression the Outlaw sucked at his pipe. "Puff, puff—puff—puff, puff."
With a gesture toward the tents, a nod toward the retreating back of the Brown Khaki Lady, Jaffrey Bretton essayed to re- crank the conversation.