The King's Fifth by Scott O’Dell Read Free Book Online

country does everyone speak this language?"
    "Yes, but there are many dialects. Many ways of speaking, as you have just said."
    "Here, also, there are many ways."
    "How many do you know?"
    "Six," Zia said proudly and named them one by one on her fingers. "But I do not know much of what they speak in Avipa. It sounds like the fighting of cats."
    Zia wore a deerskin jacket and around her waist, cinched with a belt of woven string, a red velvet kirtle that looked as if it had been fashioned from a soldier's cast-off cloak. But it was her hat that caught my eye. From the rim hung balls of red wool, intermingled with small silver bells that tinkled as she walked.
    "Is this the hat of your country?" I said.
    "Yes, of Nayarit, which is close to the town of Compostela. Do you wish to hear me speak of it?"
    Before I could answer and for the next league or more, she told me about Nayarit, of her father who had died soon after she was born, of her mother, who was a seamstress for Coronado and had sickened and died and was buried on the trail near Culiacán.

    "Have you come like the others to find gold in the Land of Cíbola?" she asked. "Do you talk about gold and dream of it?"
    "No."
    "Why not? The others do."
    "Because I am a cartographer, a maker of maps. And therefore I dream of maps. Do you understand what I mean by map?"
    "I have seen one, which belongs to Captain Coronado." She glanced at the roll under my arm. "These are maps that you carry?"
    "Maps and the colors to make them," I said. "Paper and ink, brushes and pens."
    "Sometime I would like to see these maps."
    "Sometime I will show them to you."
    "Now?"
    "Later."
    "When we come to Coronado's camp?"
    "Then."
    She looked at me to make certain that I meant what I had said. Then from a pocket in her skirt she took a small, ratlike creature, with long back legs, and held it up in the palm of her hand.
    "What is it?" I asked.
    "An aguatil. It lives in the deserts and never needs to drink water. It does not like water. It's name is Montezuma."
    I doubted her story but it was true. In the days to
come, when horses and men thirsted, this ratlike creature thrived, getting by some means from the seeds it ate, the water it needed.

    "Now that I have shown you my pet," she said, "I wish to see the maps."
    "Later."
    "At Coronado's camp?"
    "Yes."
    Thrusting Montezuma back into her pocket, she ran with skips and jumps toward the head of the column.
    Our way led through fields of cactus and we went slowly. Many of these plants were like trees, in the shape of a cross, tall as a man on horseback. Others looked like small barrels, others like friendly bushes. But all were covered with secret spines or claws, needle-sharp and painful to the touch.
    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