Blake lost little time in filling it, and soon after drinking Mr. Alcando appeared much better.
"I am sorry to give all this trouble," the Spaniard went on, "but I have seemed to meet with considerable number of shocks to-day. First there was the runaway, which I certainly did not expect, and then came the sudden stop—a stop most fortunate for us, I take it," and he glanced, not without a shudder, in the direction of the gulch where the dead horse lay.
"And then you pulled us back from the brink—the brink of death," he went on, and his voice had in it a tone of awe, as well as thankfulness. "I can not thank you now—I shall not try," he went on. "But some time, I hope to prove—
"Oh, what am I saying!" he broke in upon himself. "I never dreamed of this. It is incomprehensible. That I should meet you so, you whom I—"
Once more his hands went to his head with a tragic gesture, and yet it did not seem that he was in physical pain. The cut on his head had stopped bleeding.
"It is too bad! Too bad! And yet fate would have it so!" he murmured after a pause. "But that it should turn in such a queer circle. Well, it is fate—I must accept!"
Joe and Blake looked at each other, Blake with slightly raised eyebrows, which might mean an implied question as to the man's sanity. Then the moving picture boys looked at Hank, who had driven them about on several excursions before they bought the motor cycle.
Hank, who stood a little behind the Spaniard, shrugged his shoulders, and tapped his head significantly.
"But I must again beg your pardon," said Mr. Alcando quickly. "I most certainly am not myself this day. But it is the surprise of meeting you whom I came to seek. Now, if you will pardon me," and he looked at the letter, addressed to Blake and Joe jointly—which epistle had been handed to him after it had been picked up from the ground.
"And were you really looking for us?" asked Joe, much puzzled.