"Har-har!" laughed the Sheik Amut Ben Butler.

His manner of laughter was ingrainedly and corruscatedly ironic.

"Har-har!" he laughed anew.

Evidently without even so much of the savor of intention that might take a favorable skid in the direction of the morganatic!

Again with flaring teeth--two touched with gold--he laughed:

"_Har-Har!_"

CHAPTER VIII

Never was any girl in all her life so grateful for a good, stiff boyish training as in that moment found herself Verbeena Mayonnaise!

She thought of all the swimmin', rowin', ridin', boxin', runnin', fightin', wrestlin' she had done in the past with exultation. She even conjured up the long, sad face of Lord Tawdry with its sable curtains and experienced a wave of grat.i.tude. In the nomenclature of Fate she felt that at this moment she had come Seven. Had not her life been one long, mystically symmetrical training for such a situation, such an emergency as this?

So he sat there lawffing at her, did he? He sat there making nasty eyes at her expecting her to quiescently quiver--that soon he would have her where he would be feeding her cigarettes from his hand.

She'd show this Shreik Amut with the mola.s.ses taffy hair and licorice whiskers a thing or two!

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BIG SCENE IN WHICH VERBEENA WITH SPURS AND HATPIN TRIUMPHS OVER THE AWFUL SHEIK.]

Yes, and three and four and five!

Perhaps six.

Seven, eight, nine and ten!

And that counts "Out!"

"_Allah, O, Allah., HEY, Allah!_" suddenly shrieked Amut Ben Butler.

"_What in the name of the howling hoptoads of Heligoland is--is--OW!_"

You will recall I hope there was hereinbefore mentioned that Verbeena had something up her sleeve? Well, I really wasn't in a position for Verbeena's sake to give the real information then. As a matter of fact she had it in one of the patch pockets of her dashing little riding jacket. It was the _cous cous_ that had been so overloaded with red pepper by the vengeful Spaghetti. She hadn't eaten a speck of it.

She'd saved it all for Amut.

When he would have staggered blindly up from the cushions she was on him with a whirlwind of left and right hand hooks. Then came jabs, swings, swats, wallops, biffs and bangs! And hammerlocks, half Nelsons, strangle and toe-holds! This way and that!

All Tawd and the other fellows had ever taught her she was using. She wouldn't leave enough of him to crawl through a rat-hole.

A vamp of violence and vengeance working at top form was then Verbeena Mayonnaise!

"Spaghetti!" squealed the Sheik Amut ardently.

His faithful servant's pallid face appeared in the flapway.

Only to see his august, beloved chieftain on all fours with Verbeena just mounting his back.

"O, momma! O, polpetteenies!" gasped Spaghetti.

"You keep out of this, Mac, or you'll get yours!" warned the fightin'

flapper with flashing eyes which shone from her face.

"Sapristi, Queena Verbeena! Escusa! I come only to maka aska what you lika for eata? What da nica, sweeta lady she lika for deener, eh?"

"_Duck!_" said Verbeena.

Silently, swiftly the perfect servant withdrew.

The while Verbeena had not for an instant paused in ma.s.saging Sheik Amut. She was all dressed, you remember, for riding and when she got on the back of the once proud devil of the desert she gave him the spurs.

And then the hat-pin.

His screams to Allah could have been heard in Mecca. His wild horses strained at their tethers, neighing piteously at the frightful cries arising from the canvas abbatoir that had once been the happy bachelor apartments of the Sheik Amut Ben Butler.

The humps of the camels grew pale with fright and misery.

The swash-buckling horde of Amut's men, after getting what strings of information they could from the gasping Spaghetti, took to the palm trees from whence they tried to make it plain to Allah that their beloved master had gone up against a _sheitana_, which the same is a lady devil of the first water, and that really something should be done to save him but that nothing--nothing short of heaven could really avail.

Meanwhile, the proud Verbeena just roweled that lofty, haughty boy to rags.

And ever, ever, ever, ever, always the hatpin! The more he reared to plunge the fairer the mark.

Truly now had he become what first she had called him--a Shriek. But as not less than a thousand shrieks sounded the plentifully punctured pa.s.sionut of the Sahara!

Besides ordinary damage his proud soul goosefleshed with horror.

His hauteur became hiatic.

And yet--and yet how wonderful she was!

_What a marvelously active Verbie!_

He felt the stirrings in his heart of a love, ponderose, grandiose, glamorous, stupendous!

It was indeed very dominant in his veins just about the time she slammed him back on the cushions and slapped his face for him good.

Her vibrant tones in spite of the inner cries of protest of his desiccated manhood he found adorable as to him then she said:

"You multi-colored, flashy, hieroglyphic son of a spavined grandsire, you stalking, frowning, sneering, swaggering imitation of something that is which amounts to something, you that are nothing whatsoever at all! Rotter, bounder, b.o.o.b--you blurb, blip, you--don't you dare to answer me back or I'll set fire to your whiskers, you flea-bitten--why, what in the world's happened to 'em? Amut, where's your whiskers?"

"Over there on the floor, back of you, my Queen," said the Sheik in strange, shivered accents due to swollen lips.