For once in a way the glib-tongued lad was at a loss just what to say and how to say it. For, after all, this surely was a redskin, and the professor had explicitly warned them against—oh, dear!
Was it all a dizzy dream? For the Aztec drew back, speaking rapidly in an unknown tongue, then sinking to earth like one overpowered by sudden physical weakness.
Bruno Gillespie, too, was recalling his uncle's earnest cautions, and now took prompt action. He quickly secured the weapons which had been scattered as the Indian fell before the grizzly's paw, then the brothers drew a little apart to consult together.
“What'll we do about it?” whisperingly demanded Waldo, keeping a wary eye upon yonder redskin. “You tell, for blamed if I know how!”
“We daren't let him go free, else he might fetch the whole tribe upon our track,” said Bruno, in the same low tones, no whit less sorely perplexed as to their wisest course.
“No, and yet we can't very well kill him, either! If we hadn't come along just as we did, or if—but he's a man, after all! Who could stand by and see that ugly brute make a meal off even an Injun?”
Bruno cast an uneasy look around, at the same time deftly refilling the partly exhausted magazine of his Winchester.
“Load up, Waldo. Burning powder reaches mighty far, even here in the hills; and who knows,—the whole tribe may come helter-skelter this way, to see what has broken loose! And we can't fight 'em all!”
“Not unless we just have to,” agreed the younger Gillespie, placing a few shells where they would be handiest in case of another emergency. “But what's the use of running, if we're to leave this fellow behind to blaze our trail? If he is our enemy—”
“No en'my; Ixtli friend,—heart-brother,” eagerly vowed the young Aztec, once again startling the lads by his strange command of a foreign tongue.