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

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