The ruffian laughed, and told him he could keep his worthless timepiece for his wit, but Evelyn shuddered with a disgust that gave her voice. "The pitiful coward! When I took it for granted you would risk your life for me!"
"Faith, but I'm not dying to be corpse at me own wake," jeered Scarlett. "For a lady I might risk my life, but not for the dust the reverend gentleman is treading under foot, nor for the greenbacks sprouting from yonder good woman's botanical headpiece!"
Shrieks from the women, groans and reproaches from the men, denounced this treachery, as the bonnet of the protesting Sarah yielded up its riches and the minister in heartbroken silence suffered himself, perforce, to be despoiled, while old Blenksoe, taken off his guard, in his natural tones cried, approvingly, "Ah, thet's somethin' like!"
As they hurriedly packed their loot, "Rustle, boys," in undertones, warned the leader, "else we shall have that blasted M. P. of a Scarlett on our backs!" His caution came none too soon. At Scarlett's instigation, Barney had contrived to get word to Perdu, and just as the robbers had cleared into the jungle with their booty an armed delegation of citizens appeared upon the scene. As the victims were left penniless, Dave Hastie, proprietor of the Grand Hotel, offered them gratuitous hospitality for the approaching night, a kindness that was accepted only too gladly.
"But before we start," cried Evelyn, amid general acclamation, "I wish to denounce a coward, a poltroon, a traitor! A contemptible being whose betrayal of those who trusted him should not go unscathed. Creature," she turned on her smiling courier, "have you no sense of shame?"
"Sure, but I have," he answered. "Never a day passes that I don't blush for human nature in the lump!"
Evelyn sighed, and again addressed the delegation of Perdu's Law and Order League, who, having missed the robbers, were fairly spoiling with eagerness to kill the next best man. "He never so much as lifted a finger to defend us," she explained.
"Oh, but I did! All ten of them," he defended himself, in injured tones.
"It's only what one might expect," Sarah harangued the throng, "taking on a scallywag without character or references. Practically robbing miss here of every penny of ready money she possesses, and damaging this bunnet that I got at a reduction off of a lady friend as has set up a swell millinery establishment in Sixth Avenue."
"He delivered us to our enemies!" There were tears in Maclane's voice. "He stripped the sick, the suffering; turned into channels of vice the contributions for my hospital."