e in a way the glib-tongued lad was at a loss just what to say
and how to say it. For, after all, this surely was a redskin, and the
professor had explicitly warned them against--oh, dear!

Was it all a dizzy dream? For the Aztec drew back, speaking rapidly in
an unknown tongue, then sinking to earth like one overpowered by sudden
physical weakness.

Bruno Gillespie, too, was recalling his uncle's earnest cautions, and
now took prompt action. He quickly secured the weapons which had been
scattered as the Indian fell before the grizzly's paw, then the brothers
drew a little apart to consult together.

"What'll we do about it?" whisperingly demanded Waldo, keeping a wary
eye upon yonder redskin. "You tell, for blamed if I know how!"

"We daren't let him go free, else he might fetch the whole tribe upon
our track," said Bruno, in the same low tones, no whit less sorely
perplexed as to their wisest course.

"No, and yet we can't very well kill him, either! If we hadn't come
along just as we did, or if--but he's a man, after all! Who could stand
by and see that ugly brute make a meal off even an Injun?"

Bruno cast an uneasy look around, at the same time deftly refilling the
partly exhausted magazine of his Winchester.

"Load up, Waldo. Burning powder reaches mighty far, even here in the
hills; and who knows,--the whole tribe may come helter-skelter this way,
to see what has broken loose! And we can't fight 'em all!"

"Not unless we just have to," agreed the younger Gillespie, placing a
few shells where they would be handiest in case of another emergency.
"But what's the use of running, if we're to leave this fellow behind to
blaze our trail? If he is our enemy--"

"No en'my; Ixtli friend,--heart-brother," eagerly vowed the young
Aztec, once again startling the lads by his strange command of a foreign
tongue.

He rose to his feet, though plainly suffering in some slight degree from
that brief collision with the huge beast, and smiling frankly into first
one face, then the other, took Bruno's hand, touched it with his lips,
then bowed his head and placed the whiter palm upon his now uncovered
crown.

In like manner he saluted Waldo, after which he drew back a bit, still
smiling genially, to add, in slowly spoken words:

"You save Ixtli. Bear kill--no; you kill--yes! Ixtli glad. Sun Children
great--big heart full of love. So--Ixtli never do hurt, never do wrong;
die for white brother--so!"

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