“Look out!  He’s going to fall!” warned Blake, springing forward to catch the Spaniard.

CHAPTER IV

A DELAYED LETTER

But Mr. Alcando, to Americanize his name, did not faint.  After reeling uncertainly for a moment, he obtained command of his muscles, straightened up, and stood rigid.

“I—­I beg your pardons,” he said, faintly, as though he had committed some blunder.  “I—­I fear I am not altogether myself.”

“Shouldn’t wonder but what you were a bit played out,” put in Hank.  “What we’ve just gone through with was enough to knock anyone out, to say nothing of the crack you got on the head.  Maybe we’d better get a doctor?” and his voice framed a question, as he looked at Joe and Blake.

“No, no!” hastily exclaimed the Spaniard, for he was of that nationality, though born in South America, as the boys learned later.

“I do not require the services of a physician,” went on Mr. Alcando, speaking rapidly.  “I am perfectly all right now—­or, I shall be in a few moments.  If I had a drink of water—­”

His voice trailed off feebly, and he looked about rather helplessly.

“There used to be a spring hereabouts,” said Hank, “but I haven’t been this way in some time, and—­”

“I know where it is!” interrupted Blake.  He and Joe, with a training that had made it necessary for them to “size up,” and know intimately their surroundings, for use in taking moving pictures, had sensed the location of a bubbling spring of pure water along the road on their first visit to it.  “It’s right over here; I’ll get some,” Blake went on.

“If you will be so kind,” spoke the Spaniard, and he extended a collapsible drinking cup.

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!”