Stricken with astonishment and resentment at the deception which had been practised upon her, Daphne dashed out into the open only to find that at some shriller cry than hers both her father and the lady were speeding madly toward the beach, where, huddled somewhat conglomerately in the bow of the launch, the Outlaw was holding Lost Man at bay with a distinctly businesslike-looking gun.
"What in thunder's the matter?" shouted Jaffrey Bretton.
For a single relaxing instant the Outlaw glanced back across his narrow shoulder.
"This-here Lost Man ain't got any tact," he sighed.
"Put that gun down!" cried Bretton. "Why, the poor old chap's twice your age!"
"And—twice my size," confided the Out law. But he lowered the gun at least an inch.
"But what's it all about?" insisted Bretton.
Very gloweringly Lost Man essayed to be the real explainer.
"He was silly about a crab," glowered Lost Man. 145
"'Tweren't, either, silly," argued the Outlaw. "He stepped on a crab and hurted it. There ain't no call to hurt nothing, I say."