"I asked you first!" laughed Joe. "No, but seriously, what do you make of it all?"
"Make of it? You mean going to Panama?"
"Yes, and this chap Alcando. What do you think of him?"
Blake did not answer at once.
"Well?" asked Joe, rather impatiently.
"Did anything—that is, anything that fellow said—or did—strike you as being—well, let's say—queer?" and Blake looked his chum squarely in the face.
"Queer? Yes, I guess there did! Of course he was excited about the runaway, and he did have a narrow escape, if I do say it myself. Only for us he and Hank would have toppled down into that ravine."
"That's right," assented Blake.
"But what struck me as queer," resumed Joe, "was that he seemed put out because it was we who saved him. He acted—I mean the Spaniard did—as though he would have been glad if someone else had saved his life."
"Just how it struck me!" cried Blake. "I wondered if you felt the same. But perhaps it was only because he was unduly excited. We might have misjudged him."