The cause of his predicament, a large, athletic, sharp-featured female, wearing tortoise shell glasses and tennis shorts, stalked him from behind a teepee. She was carrying a baseball bat, and a mad light glittered in her eyes. It would have been apparent to even a retarded child with a disturbed psyche that the young man's chances were slim.
As Toffee and Marc watched, the young lady with the glasses leered evilly from around the edge of the teepee and flourished her bat in a few practice swipes.
"Ho-ha!" she cried with primitive triumph. "So I've got you at last, you stinker!" She paused to cackle fiendishly to herself. "You won't get away this time. I'm going to pound that thick coco of yours so hard you won't wake up for centuries. And when you wake up—you know what?"
The young man, who had ceased to snarl at the beginning of this overwrought recital, looked around apprehensively. "No," he said. "What?"
"You are going to find yourself married, wed, hitched, spliced, mated, united, espoused, wived, coupled, joined and made one with me. You are going to be mine in twenty-three languages, in fifteen churches, ten civil ceremonies and a couple of uncivil ones I just thought up myself. How do you like them apples, Mr. Smart-stuff?"
"No!" the young man yelped, reaching for the jaws of the trap. "No! Never!"
"Let go of that trap!" the girl yelled. "I'll lop your ears off just for the sheer hell of it!"
"We'd better lend a hand here," Marc said. "She'll kill him with love."
"I can't help admiring her frank, forthright manner," Toffee said. "And you can't deny that her intentions are almost too honorable. But I can see where a man might consider her undainty, especially the choosy kind." Marc started forward, but she reached out a hand and drew him back. "I'll take care of this," she said. She raised her hand and faced the ring in the direction of the infuriated Amazon.