“With Ixtli, my child, and may the good God of our own people grant them both life and liberty! If I thought—your father, Gladys! Alive and looking for his beloved ones! See! from his own dear hand, and he says—Hold! who comes there?”
But the alarm appeared to be without actual foundation, for the sounds came no closer, remaining beyond the drapery past which Lord Hua had staggered only a few brief seconds before.
Gladys rallied more speedily than one might have expected, and she spoke with even greater interest than at first.
“My dear father, and alive? Oh, mother, why is he not here to—why should he send another? And that one—he spoke our dear language, mother; surely he is not—not as Ixtli?”
“No; he was of our own people, child, and I can hardly conceive how he came hither, save that Ixtli must have acted as guide.”
“And those awful warriors!” shivering as the war-cries followed the muffled roar of the great drum. “If found, he will be slain! Do you think there is any hope for him, mother? And he seemed so—so—”
“He is gone with Ixtli, and Ixtli is true to the very core,” Victo hastened to give assurance. “I would rather trust him than many another of thrice his years and warlike experience. Ixtli is true; ay, as true and tried as his father, Aztotl!”
“Who loves you, mother, and would win—”
“Hush, child!” just a bit sharply interposed the elder woman, yet at the same time tightening that loving clasp. “Merely as the daughter of his Sun God, Quetzalcoatl, and—ha!”
Once again there came the echoes of rapid foot-falls beyond the heavy draperies, and again this Amazonian mother drew her superb form in front of her shrinking child, poising the javelin in readiness for stroke or casting, as might serve best.