Not being able to get a look at her wrist watch, Verbeena then lost all sense of time. She knew only that the sun was still up and burning her nose ingloriously. But she would resist to the last pulsation of her strong, young heart this desert creature of the strangely, burning passionate orbs. They were rather nice eyes but, he would find resistance to the last recalcitrant tissue of her turbulent nature. He might use her as a cigar lighter. But just let him try anything else and---- CHAPTER V The mad, passionate ride was over about supper-time. The next thing Verbeena's intelligence became immersed in she was standing within a big tent brilliantly lighted by respectable old candles inside of two hanging lamps. But she didn't have much chance to look over these things. They hung too high. What was solely in her mind, to faithfully reproduce its own process accurately was the thought: "Where's that sapadillo that brought me here?" Right in front of her was he standing and she got a good, unfurtive look at him. Sure enough he was as big as he felt when he had her grabbed to him on horseback. The thing that struck her immediately, stirred her curiously amidst her emotions of hitherto unknown fear and would there be a place in the tent to wash-up properly, was that his hair didn't match. His whiskers were black, his face was really red, not brown as she saw because he had brushed some of the dust off, whilst his head hair was some kind of color or other. Just what she couldn't tell. It wasn't red and it wasn't yellow. Was it as of the cornflower in tassel? She caught her breath. This was no time to become romantic. She was an icicle, she told herself, and must continue to recall that fact. He was looking at her with burning eyes. No wonder. Her own were burning as savagely as her nose. The sand does it. But besides he had a curiously mad and giddy gaze. It was as if he'd caught her in bathing with her clothes on a hickory limb. And wouldn't have the gentlemanliness, the decency to go away. She liked it not a little bit and was so nervous she didn't know whether to throw off her coat and start for him or button it up. She buttoned it up. She wondered why. But, of course, it was the way he was looking at her and kept looking at her. She wished she had more buttons on her coat. And that her clothing generally was fastened more firmly. His malevolent eyes had such a dismantling expression. Certainly the burly wretch wasn't showing any false smoke-stacks. She could see he meant business. And such a business! Verbeena steadied herself on a cigarette. "Frapjous ass!" she said yet well-knowing that her old boyish nonchalance had gone fazizz. "Who are you?" "I am----" Ah, the organ tones of his voice! A little gritty on account of the desert sands perhaps, but deep, thrilling, throbbing. It tickled the very roots of her clubbed curls. Verbeena vibrated. "I am the Sheik Amut Ben Butler!" The name conveyed nothing to her.