For a moment the youth appeared dazed, but quickly recovering himself, he looked anxiously around.
“Where is she?” he cried in a piteous voice. “Oh, Cacique! say she is well.”
“She! who, Graviel?” asked Piñone, trembling.
“The Queen, Cacique. Do I not mean the Queen, whom yon creeping thief struck down, and would have murdered as she lay helpless under his horse’s feet, had the good Gualichu not guided my footsteps to the rescue?”
As he spoke, the clatter of horse’s hoofs sounded near them, and looking in the direction whence the sound came, the two Indians beheld Harry and Topsie galloping to meet them. A few minutes later, and both pulled up some fifty yards away, and dismounted beside a motionless figure, which was lying stretched out in a narrow canon, and concealed from view. The motionless figure was Aniwee.
Kneeling down beside the young Queen, Topsie raised her head, and looked long and anxiously into her pretty dark face. Aniwee’s eyes were wide open, her white teeth were clenched, and every muscle seemed rigid.
In a moment Piñone and Graviel were beside her, horror and despair in their eyes.
“Graviel, get water, quick!” commanded Topsie authoritatively, and as the youth rushed off, she sat down on the ground and took Aniwee’s head in her lap.
“Piñone,” she said gently, “keep up thy heart; she is not dead, only stunned. I saw yon villain strike her, but he never touched her afterwards, for Graviel rushed in and engaged him. Water will bring her round in a very short time, you will see.”
And when Graviel came back with a plentiful supply in his skin potro top-boot, she took some in her mouth and blew it into Aniwee’s face, repeating the operation several times. And an unfailing cure—as she knew it to be—it proved on this occasion, for in a few minutes the Indian girl moved, her teeth unclosed, and the light of intelligence came back into her eyes. She at once recognised Piñone, and smiled.