The King's Fifth (6 page)

Mendoza rode back to urge us on. At his heels trotted a big greyhound with yellow eyes and lean, powerful jaws. Gómez had brought the dog with him and I had seen it skulking around our camp in Avipa.

"How do you like Tigre?" he asked me. "I have just bought him from Gómez. I only paid one peso, a bargain, huh?"

"His tail is worth that," I said. It was, indeed, for it was very long and lashed the air in great sweeps. "A good bargain."

"He has one fault, however," Mendoza admitted. "He was trained to attack Indians. Instead, as things have turned out, he likes them better than Spaniards. But I will give him a few lessons and change his ideas."

From time to time during the morning, Mendoza returned to spur us on, yet by noon we had made only three short leagues. It was then that he decided to ride ahead with Gómez and the soldiers, leaving the rest of us to follow at our own pace.

"Now we travel as we wish," Father Francisco said when the others left us. "Now we get to see the country we pass through. What lives here, what crawls and walks and flies, what grows around us. We can look at the hills and mountains and watch the clouds with quiet eyes."

The cactus fields disappeared, but because of Father Francisco our progress was slow. He was forever darting off the trail at his lopsided trot to gather some leaf or flower or insect, which he carefully stowed in a leather bag. Spare as the wooden cross he carried slung over his back, four times my age, yet he was stronger than I and tireless.

Despite Father Francisco, we came at nightfall of the third day to the brow of a high, tree-covered hill. Through the trees, far below I saw a nest of flickering lights no larger than my hand.

"Coronado's army," Zia said. "Before half the night is gone, we will be there among the fires."

But the rest of us were too tired to go farther, except Father Francisco, so we camped on the hill, and feasted on dried deer meat and melons. Afterwards we sat looking down at Coronado's camp and the dim land rolling away to the north.

I asked Zia what she knew of the country beyond, the land beyond the mountains I had seen at nightfall.

"I have been to this valley twice before," she said. "1 came with my uncle and we brought parrots of every color to trade for silver, which is found in this valley. I have not been farther, but I know tales of the land beyond. The place of Cíbola and the Seven Golden Cities."

"Tell me what you have heard," I said. "Not of the gold for already I have heard much."

Roa said, "No, tell us of the gold."

"Of the gold," Zuñiga said.

Zia turned to me. "Do you wish to know about the country beyond the mountains so you can make a picture?"

"No."

"I will bring the roll, which has the paper and brushes and paint and other things."

"Until I have seen the country with my own eyes, I cannot make a picture."

"Then why do you wish me to speak about it?" Zia said.

"Because," Father Francisco broke in, "he has curiosity, though not so much as you have. You have enough for ten girls."

I learned little from Zia that night, for in the middle of a sentence she yawned and fell asleep.

Not long after, I dreamed that I was among mountains of surpassing beauty, where pines grew tall and high waterfalls tumbled through crystal air. And when I went to find my paints and brushes they were gone. Zia had stolen them and was running away so fast through the trees that I could not catch her.

W
ITH THE FIRST LIGHT
we descended. The valley was still in darkness but here and there breakfast fires were burning. As we dropped lower, I could see men busy in the camp, strings of horses and mules and burros on their way to water, children and their mothers washing at a spring.

When the sun was an hour high we were still threading our way downward through heavy brush. Voices and the neighing of horses drifted up to us. A trumpet blared, an echo answered from the hills. Suddenly, like a great serpent uncoiling, the mass took shape, the bright coils lengthened, and the shape became a moving army.

In the lead rode a man in gilded cuirass and helmet with a tall, black plume.

"The one who rides first," Zia said, "is Captain Coronado. From here you cannot see, but he has a red beard with curls in it."

Behind Coronado rode his officers and the servants, pages, and extra mounts. Five priests came next, carrying crosses. Next came a column of foot soldiers, many
bands of Indians and their wives and children, pigs, flocks of sheep, and a line of pack animals.

As the leaders passed below us, Roa pointed to a horseman in a yellow doublet. He cupped his hands and shouted, "
Hola.
"

It was Captain Mendoza. Mounted on the roan, he sat erect, holding aloft a banner which he had brought from Spain, which I had carried on my back from the River of Good Guidance to the village of Avipa—a yellow unicorn on a field of green.

"
Hola,
" we shouted together.

Mendoza glanced up and at last saw us where we stood shoulder-deep in the brush. He pulled his horse aside and with a sweep of his hand waved us down.

We scrambled and slid but did not reach the bottom of the hill until the army had passed. Mendoza was spurring his horse around in circles. He was as restless as he had been on the ship.

"You travel like old women," he called. "At this pace we shall never leave the valley. Tomorrow I will buy horses and three of you can ride. He looked down at his musicians and shouted, "Play!"

Dutifully Roa beat his drum, Zuñiga blew his flute, Zia, Father Francisco and I fell in behind them, and with Captain Mendoza leading us, we marched forward like a regular little army. We overtook a few stragglers and a woman riding a mule, a boy seated behind her.

"That one," Zia whispered to me, "is Señora Hozes. Her husband is a page of Coronado. She thinks the army belongs to her. When she speaks, and she speaks much.
her husband listens like a dumb man. Captain Coronado listens also, but he smiles when he does."

The woman had a lean face and a cold eye. She looked at me and said, "More mouths to feed." She looked at Roa and Zuñiga, listened a moment to their playing, then put a finger in each ear.

We hurried forward, until we reached a place near the head of the column. There we fell in behind our captain. The day was cloudless. The valley sloped gently upward toward dim mountains. The sun shone bright on helmet and breastplate. Banners fluttered in the wind. I could scarce wait until the time when I might draw all that I saw on paper.

Late that afternoon we camped on the banks of a stream where water ran warm and maize flourished. Indians who called themselves Pimas came before long, carrying large trays woven of grass.

On the trays, laid out in rows festooned with fern leaves, were the hearts of deer and rabbits, doves and owls, even the small hearts of hummingbirds. These trays they offered to Coronado and his officers, bidding them to eat.

When Coronado held back, a guide explained the meaning of the gifts, which was to give strength and courage for his long journey.

Coronado took one of the hearts from a tray, a small one, but did not eat it. With a flourish he doffed his plumed hat and raised his sword.

"In the name of Charles the Fifth," he said, "I accept this wondrous gift. Henceforth, as a token of my thankfulness, your fair home shall be known to all Spaniards as the Valley of Hearts."

The friendly Pimas urged Coronado to rest by their stream. High mountains and deep canyons lay beyond, they said, and many hardships. But he was impatient to move on, so at dawn we broke camp, following the stream in a northerly direction.

True to his word, Mendoza had purchased three horses from one of the officers. On this morning, to our great delight, Roa, Zuñiga, and I rode. Zia could not ride because of Cortés' law, and Father Francisco, in true apostolic fashion, desired to walk.

Mendoza was again restless as we started off, thinking that the army should take a shorter route. "We are marching back toward the sea," he complained.

"There is none shorter," I told him. "This is the only route out of the valley."

"Why are you so certain?"

"I have asked the Indians," I said. "And Father Marcos."

"We should be going to the northeast, not north."

"This is the way that Díaz and Father Marcos and the Moor came. They are the only Spaniards who have been through here. Cíbola lies to the northeast, undoubtedly, yet we reach it by this trail."

I had no suspicion that Mendoza harbored such a thought, but now, looking back, I am sure that at this time he was possessed with the idea of being the first among us to sight the Land of Cíbola. If there had been
another way through the Cordillera, he would have taken it and left Coronado to arrive at the SeVen Cities long after he himself was there.

The stream narrowed before we had gone far and led us into a gorge of gloomy cliffs and thundering water. Here we struggled for two days over stony steeps, suffering many injuries and losing a brace of horses and four pack animals.

On the third day the gorge opened upon a wide, green valley seven or eight leagues in length, where ditches fanned out from a stream to water
milpas
of corn and squash and melons. Soon we came to a village called Popi and were welcomed there with gifts of food, of which we were badly in need.

In the time of the fearsome gorge, there was no chance to work on my map, though I carefully had put down all readings. As soon, therefore, as we encamped, I found a place by the stream and spread my materials on a flat stone.

I was sharpening a quill when Zia came at a run through the meadow. Each day since we had left the Valley of Hearts, whether I clung to a perilous crag or lay in camp too tired to lift a hand, she had asked to know about the map.

As she burst upon me, she asked again. "When do you make it? When?"

"Now."

"A picture of the earthly world?" she asked, using words she had learned from me, "and the seven ocean seas?"

"Only that part of the world we have passed through," I answered. "The Valley of Hearts to the Valley of Sonora."

I opened the portolan and showed her how each page of the book was made of thin reed, and how on these pages sheaths of lamb skin had been glued. I showed her the notes I had taken of the country and the readings made with the cross-staff.

Zia moved from one foot to the other, half listening.

I unwrapped the turkey egg, which I had bartered for at Avipa. I separated the yolk and in a clean place on the stone mixed it with water. Then I dipped quill into yolk and drew a cartouche on the lower right hand corner of the page, the shield of His Majesty, Charles V, enclosed by a fanciful scroll.

"I do not see much," Zia said.

"Now there is not much to see. Later it gets better."

When the egg yolk was dry I carefully glossed it over with soot, gathered from the bottom of a pot.

"Watch closely," I said and passed my hand back and forth like a magician above the design.

Zia held her breath.

"Move closer," I said. "Closer, and keep your eyes open." To make things seem more mysterious, I uttered a few strange words. "Now watch carefully."

With a woolen cloth I then rubbed out the smudge of soot. Suddenly, as if by magic, the shield and scroll stood boldly forth, beautiful to see—white letters and lines on a field of black.

Zia let out her breath, "
Ayee,
" in a cry of delight.
"Once more," she begged me, "make it once more."

"Tomorrow," I said. "Now we do the gorge. We color it ultramarine, which is the most glorious of all blues."

We worked until nightfall, making a fine start on the map, there in the meadow beside the quiet stream. It was good to be away from the uproar of the army, from the talk of gold, which went on night and day, whether we were on the march or resting. Everyone—muleteer and soldier, seamstress and page, amorer and blacksmith, the lowliest and the highest—all soon would have more gold than he could carry, or so each one thought.

When it was too dark to work longer I put the materials away to use in the morning, while Zia washed the brushes and pens in the clear-running stream. But at dawn the trumpet blared and again, like a serpent uncoiling, the army moved on.

A
FTER EIGHT HARD DAYS
of fierce suns and short rations, traveling now toward the northeast, we came to Chichilticale, the Red House.

Both Zuñiga and Roa were beside themselves with joy. From Indians at Popi they had heard that Red House was one of the Seven Cities.

"The doors are made of turquoise," Roa told me.

"The women wear belts of gold," Zuñiga said.

"The people have little gold tools," Roa said, "with which to scrape the sweat from their bodies."

"And large golden bowls set with garnets, which they put water in for their animals," Zuñiga said.

"I have talked to Father Marcos," I told them, "and he says that Red House is not one of the cities, though it is a place built by people who once lived in Cíbola. Furthermore, you will see no gold."

My words were of no avail. From the time we left Popi until we reached Red House, for eight days, they talked of the gold that would be found there. They talked with such authority that, despite Father Marcos, many others began to believe them, indeed, most of the army.

"This Marcos," Roa said. "What did he tell us about the Gorge of Sonora?"

"That it was an easy trail for man and beast," Zuñiga replied.

"And what did we encounter?" Roa asked.

"Death at every turn," Zuñiga answered.

"Do you believe that he came here before?" Roa asked.

"No," Zuñiga answered.

"Do you think he is a liar?" Roa asked.

"Yes," said Zuñiga, "the largest."

We came upon Red House suddenly, as we climbed to the crest of a barren hill. It lay below us in a wide, brush-covered arroyo, partly hidden by a grove of ancient trees. Through the foliage I caught glimpses of red walls and paths leading down to them from every direction.