“Or the A B C class playing two-old-cat, after a league game of extra innings; right you are, my hearty!” coincided Waldo, feeling pretty much the same way, “only with a difference.”
Shortly after this, Bruno suggested a retreat to the rendezvous, and for a wonder his brother agreed without amendment.
The brothers passed down to the gulch, which formed the easiest route to their refuge, saying very little, and that in lowered tones. The confirmation so recently won served to stir their hearts deeply, and neither boy could as yet see a way out of the labyrinth that discovery most assuredly opened up before them.
“Of course we can't leave them there to drag on such a wretched existence,” declared Bruno. “We couldn't do that, even though we learned they held no relationship to Mr. Edgecombe. But—how?”
“I reckon it's—what?” abruptly spoke Waldo, gripping an arm and stopping short for a few seconds, but then impulsively springing onward again as wild sounds arose from no great distance.
A score of seconds later they caught sight of a huge grizzly bear in the act of falling upon a slender stripling, whose bronze hue as surely proclaimed one of the Aztec children from yonder Lost City.
What was to be done? Disobey their uncle, or leave this lad to perish?
CHAPTER XVIII. SOMETHING LIKE A WHITE ELEPHANT.
Only a lad, slight-limbed and slenderly framed to the eye, yet for all that gifted with a gallant heart, else he surely must have been cowed to terror by the huge bulk of such a dire adversary at close quarters.