"I can hold out as long as Neal; but neither of us are a match for Poyor."
"He could run all day."
Two moments later, when they were nearing a broad street which Cummings fancied led to the woods on the eastern side of the city, Poyor slackened his pace to say:
"There is one close behind who must be stopped. Will you do it, or shall I?"
"Help Teddy along, while I try it."
As the Indian took Teddy by the arm, thus having a boy on either side of him, Cummings unslung the rifle which had been strapped over his shoulder, and, wheeling suddenly, raised it at a man who was not more than forty yards in the rear.
"Don't shoot! It's me!" a familiar voice cried, and as Cummings turned to resume the flight he muttered to himself:
"It's a pity they haven't caught you. But for your folly we could have passed through the city unobserved."
Jake no longer believed the Chan Santa Cruz Indians to be such a peaceable race. When, as Cummings had suspected, the shaft he was trying to climb toppled over, he was able to escape injury by leaping to one side, and immediately made an effort to detach the statue which was cemented firmly to the stone.
It seemed to him that he had but just begun the task when two men rushed from the interior of the temple. Fortunately for him they were unarmed or his term of life would have expired at that moment; but as it was one of them seized a fragment of the stone as he turned to run, and threw it with such accuracy of aim that Jake's cheek was cut from the eye to the chin as smoothly as if done with a razor.