by Texas
This decision caused the boy much confusion, for he loved Fray Marcos and did not want to leave him in his hour of disgrace. 'I cannot fail him now,' he told Coronado, and the captain-general growled: 'Good. Go with him,' for he saw Garcilaco only as part of Fray Marcos and wished him gone, too.
But Cardenas and Melgosa were disgusted when they heard of the boy's decision, and they took him aside, with Cardenas saying bluntly: 'Loyalty is a fine thing, lad, but loyalty to a condemned man must be weighed carefully '
'It must indeed,' Melgosa agreed. 'Admit it. Your father is a fraud. He's led this great army into deep trouble, and it is proper that he be disgraced. But there are still battles to be fought, and Cardenas needs you for his horses, and perhaps I may need you. Your duty is here.'
To Garcilaco, honor was much simpler: 'I must stay with Marcos,' and he left the two officers, who called after him that he was being a fool. However, when Garcilaco reached his father, who was packing his mule for the long march back to Mexico City, Marcos took him in his arms, eyes wet with tears, and cried: 'I cannot let you damage your life. Stay with the army you have grown to love '
'Without you I'd have no army. I'm your son, and I shall stay with you.'
At these words Marcos clasped the boy tightly and sobbed: 'I've ruined everything. Did you hear the curses they heaped on me?' He stood clinging to Garcilaco, then said in hushed voice, as if he were seeing a vision: 'But the Cities are there. The walls of gold will be found, just as I said.' And with that he shouted: 'Army-Master Cardenas! Come take your little soldier!' and thrusting the boy away, he started his mournful exile.
Garcilaco was not given time to brood about Fray Marcos' disgrace, for as soon as Coronado recovered from his wounds he
dispatched an elite group of twenty-five to make a swift, galloping exploration of lands to the west, and Cardenas, in command, took j the boy along. Now Garcilaco had an opportunity to see what a masterful soldier Cardenas was, for he anticipated everything: where to find water, how many deer to kill for food, in what safe place to camp, i would like to be a soldier like you,' the boy said, [ and Cardenas smiled: Tou could never be an officer like me, but you could serve, and honorably.' When Garcilaco asked why he could not attain command, Cardenas told him truthfully: 'Command is reserved for those born in Spain.' He did not add 'Of white parentage,' but he intended the boy to catch that nuance of Spanish life.
Twenty hot and thirsty days later Garcilaco was riding ahead of the file when he stopped, gasped, and held up his hand to warn the others.
'Look!' he whispered, and when Cardenas drew up he said in reverence: 'Dear Jesus, you have worked a miracle.' And one by one the others moved into line, there at the edge of a tremendous depression, and fell silent. It was a moment of overwhelming discovery, a moment that no one could absorb or summarize in speech.
At their feet opened a canyon so grand, they knew of nothing with which to compare it. A mile deep, mile upon mile across, with a tiny ribbon of river wandering at the bottom, its walls were multicolored, shimmering with gold and red and blue and dancing green. Lovely trees, bent from the wind, adorned its rim and sometimes tried to creep down the sides, their tall crowns like tiny tips of fern, so far away they were. And as the afternoon sun moved across the deep gash of the canyon, it threw weird shadows upon pinnacles far below, and new colors emerged as if some great power were redecorating what was already a masterpiece.
'A miracle!' Cardenas gasped. 'God has prepared this wonder to show us His power.' They had discovered the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and Garcilaco felt himself growing inches taller when Army-Master Cardenas said with affection, as he ruffled the boy's hair: 'Remember, this one found it. Let's christen it El Canon de Garcilaco.' There was cheering, but in the midst of the celebration the boy looked eastward, for he could not forget that the true adventure still waited there, in what Cabeza had described as the land of many lands.
Cardenas and his swift-marching men required three months for this trip to the canyon, and when they rejoined the main party they found that it had acquired a stranger, to whom
Garcilaco took an instant dislike. Tins man, in his thirties, was a good-looking Indian whose height, facial tattooing and turban headdress identified him as belonging to some tribe far from Cibola, perhaps a Pawnee from north and east. He had been captured by the Zurii of Cibola in a raid years ago and was now a slave, except that he seemed more clever than those who held him. He had a glib manner, a sly, knowing look, and Garcilaco often saw him calculating how to play this white captain off against that Indian chief, and it was clear that he did not propose to stay a slave indefinitely.
He was called El Turco, and nothing else, because the soldiers who found him thought that he looked the way a Turk should, although none had ever seen one, and if the boy intuitively disliked El Turco, the Indian reciprocated with intensity, for he saw in Garcilaco the kind of innocent intelligence which might quickly pierce the lies he was about to tell. El Turco had but one ambition, and everything else was subservient to it: trick Coronado into marching toward the empty east, where his army would perish in the desolate wastelands. When confusion was at its peak, he would escape and travel north to his home village of Quivira, whose valleys and running streams he remembered each night of his captivity.
And the tales he told! He started cautiously, for like Fray Marcos, whom he resembled in certain ways, he always wanted to know first what the Spaniards hoped for, then he tailored his reports to please them. For example, after listening closely to every word the soldiers spoke he learned that coins were of extreme value, but he had never seen one. Cautiously he began: 'We have coins, you know.' When pressed as to what form his coins took, he guessed blindly: 'Colored stones,' and then withdrew into his shell as the Spaniards ridiculed him. To demonstrate how foolish he was, the men showed him coins of silver and gold, and in that instant those two metals became part of his arsenal.
To a different group of soldiers he said casually one day, using signs and grunts and a smattering of Spanish words: 'In my land the great chief has a staff made of something that glistens in the sunlight . . . yellowish . . . very heavy.' He did not at this time mention the word gold, nor did he again refer to the chief's staff, but he could almost see his rumors whirling about the camp, so that when Cardenas came casually by to ask, as if the question were totally unimportant, in your land, have you any hard things like this?' as he tapped on his steel sword, the Indian said: 'Oh, yes! But in my tribe only our big chiefs are allowed to own it. Glistens in the sunlight . '. . yellowish . . . very heavy.'
At first Cardenas affected not to have noticed the description, but later he asked in his offhand manner: 'Your big chiefs, do they have much of the . . .' He tapped his steel again.
'Much, much!' And both men left it there.
Two members of the army were aware that Cardenas had been trapped by this clever manipulator: El Turco knew it, and so did Garcilaco. Reporting to his master after evening meal one night, Garcilaco said: 'Captain, El Turco is a great liar.'
'You should know something about that.'
'I do. My father Marcos lied because he dreamed of doing good. El Turco lies to do something bad.'
'He's told us about gold in his land, and that's what we've come north to find.'
'Captain, he did not tell us about gold. We told him about it.' And he tried to explain how El Turco never told them anything but what they had already betrayed as their need or interest. But Cardenas and the others wanted to believe El Turco, and they did.
El Turco also impressed the Spaniards by making shrewd guesses about the past and future, the kind of clever nonsense any reasonably observant person could make, but when some of them proved true, and the Spaniards asked how he had gained this power of clairvoyance, he said slyly: 'Sometimes the devil comes to visit with me, telling me what will happen.'
When Coronado heard about this he became intensely interested, for he had always suspected that the devil hovered near his army, and
since it was essential that the Spaniards know what El Turco was up to, Coronado kept close watch on him. One night, as the general was passing where the prisoner was kept, he heard El Turco talking with the devil, who was hiding in a jug.
'Devil, are you in there?' El Turco whispered, tapping on the jug.
'You know I am. What do you want?'
'Where do you want me to lead them?'
'Take them anywhere but Quivira in the east,' the devil said, 'because if they march there, they'll find all that gold I've collected. They must not have it.'
'Where shall I lead them?'
To the north. Get them lost in that emptiness.'
I shall do so, Prince of Evil.'
'If you keep them away from the east, I'll reward you.' And with those clever words El Turco tricked Coronado into going east toward nothingness.
Seeking to have his army in the best possible condition for the march, Coronado decided that if his men had to fight in winter,
they would require three hundred sturdy cloaks, which he ordered the villages of the area to provide. When this proved impossible, for there was no surplus, the soldiers went on a rampage, stopping any Indian they encountered and ripping from his shoulders the cloak he was wearing. In this rough way they collected their three hundred, and also the enmity of the owners.
During the confusion, a Spanish cavalryman whose name was known but never disclosed because of the great guilt that lay upon him, went to a quiet part of one village, summoned an Indian to hold his horse, went inside the pueblo, climbed to an upper room, and raped the man's wife. In order to avert trouble, Coronado ordered all his mounted soldiers to line up with their horses so that the husband could identify the culprit, and since the husband had held the horse for nearly half an hour, he could easily identify it, but the owner denied that he had been in that part of the village and the wronged husband got no satisfaction.
Next day the enraged Indians assaulted the Spaniards in a most effective way. They stole many of their horses and drove them into an enclosed area where the animals had to run in wild circles. Then the Indians, screaming with delight, proceeded to kill them with arrows.
Furious, Coronado summoned Cardenas, and ordered: 'Surround the village and teach them a lesson.' After Cardenas had disposed his troops in a circle that enclosed the pueblos, he directed two captains, Melgosa and Lopez, to perform an extremely hazardous action: 'Break into those tall houses where the lower floors are not defended. Fight your way to the roof, and shoot down into the streets.' As Melgosa started toward his assignment he called: 'Little Fighter, come along,' and with no hesitation Garcilaco did.
When they reached the roof, the captains directed the boy to stand near the ladders: 'Push them down if any Indians try to climb up.' And there he stood through a whole day, a night, and most of the next day as his captains fired into the mob below. But without food or water the Spaniards began to tire and might have been forced to surrender had not one of the soldiers below devised a clever tactic: he built a fire on the ground floor of the pueblo, then sprinkled it with water, making a thick smoke. Soon the choking Indians were forced out, making with their forearms a kind of cross and bowing their heads, a most ancient signal for peaceful surrender. It was not binding, however, until the victors also made a cross and bowed their heads, but this Melgosa, Lopez and Garcilaco gladly did. The ugly siege was over.
But Cardenas, infuriated by the attack on his horses, was so
determined to demonstrate the power of the Spanish army that he ordered his other soldiers to surround these men who had honorably surrendered, and then to cut two hundred wooden stakes, each six feet tall, at which the prisoners would be burned alive.
'No!' Garcilaco shouted as dry brush was piled about the first victim. 'We gave our word.'
Cardenas in his fury would not listen, so Garcilaco appealed to Melgosa and Lopez, who had accepted the truce, but they too refused to support him.
'Master! No!' he pleaded, but Cardenas was obdurate, his face a red mask of hatred, and the burning started.
The Indian men, seeing five of their comrades screaming at the stakes, decided to die fighting, and grabbing whatever they could reach—clubs, stones, the still-unused stakes—they began a furious assault upon the Spaniards, whereupon Cardenas bellowed: 'All Spaniards out!' and after Melgosa and Lopez had rushed Garcilaco to safety, soldiers rimmed the area in which the two hundred had been kept and began pouring shot and arrows into it, killing many.
Those who survived now broke free and began running helter-skelter across open land, whereupon Cardenas and other cavalry officers spurred their horses, shouting and exulting as they cut down the fleeing Indians, other horsemen lancing them with spears until not one man of that entire group was left alive.
Garcilaco was horrified by what had happened, by the faithlessness of his hero Cardenas, by the cowardice of his other hero Melgosa, who would not defend the truce he had authorized, and most of all by the burning and chasing and stabbing. He was appalled to find that Coronado did nothing. 'We taught them not to offend Spanish honor' was all he would say, and Garcilaco was left to wonder what honor meant. Fray Marcos, he felt certain, would not have permitted such a slaughter had he been in charge of the army's conscience, and from that moment Garcilaco began to see his father in a much kinder light. Because of his enthusiasm, Marcos may have told many lies, but he was a man who had at least known what honor was. Cardenas did not.
But for a boy of fourteen to pass moral judgment upon adults is a perilous undertaking, for now that Coronado was injured and confused, Garcilaco saw that it was Cardenas who proved to be the true leader. It was he who supervised the killing of animals for meat to feed his men. Marching across deserts blazing with heat or swirling in storm, it was Cardenas who buoyed the spirits of the army, and when brief, explosive battles with Indians became unavoidable, his horse was always in the lead. Like his general, he
was driven by a lust for gold and fame, those terrible taskmasters, but in discharging his duty like a true soldier, he recaptured Garcilaco's reluctant respect.
But now he did a most unsoldierly thing. He broke his arm, and when it refused to mend and the army set forth to conquer the opulent city of Quivira, he had to stay behind.
On the morning that Coronado started his triumphal march east—toward disaster in the drylands if he persisted—he summoned Garcilaco: 'Son, can you count?'
'Yes, sir. And I know my letters.'
'Good. Start now, and count every step you take. When we strike camp, tell me how many. I'll measure your stride and know how far we've come.'
So the boy walked in dust behind the horses, counting 'Uno, dos, tres, cuatro,' and whenever he reached a thousand he made a mark on a paper the Franciscans had given him. At the end of that first day it showed twenty-three such marks, and when he presented the paper to Coronado, the general thanked him: 'Nearly four leagues. Good for a first day.' And next morning the counting resumed.
After many such days, continuing to count even in his sleep, Garcilaco calculated correctly that considering the distance east from Cibola, the expedition must have entered the lands traversed by Cabeza de Vaca. He was at last in Tejas, the fabled land of many lands.
What a massive disappointment it was, for Coronado, always obedient to the urging of El Turco, had entered those bleak lands at the headwaters of what would later be called, in Spanish, El Rio Colorado de Tejas. Distraught by the lack of any sign of civilization, he then angrily turned north, only to find himself locked in a series of deep canyons of a river of some size, El Rio de Los Brazos de Dios, The River of the Arms of God. Here, surrounded by dark cliffs, the Spaniards had to face the fact that they had been led not to gold-encrusted Quivira but into a barren wilderness where they stood a good chance of dying. Sensible men would have abandoned the enterprise right there, but Coronado and his captains were Spanish gentlemen, and a tougher breed was never born. 'We'll go on to the real Quivira,' Coronado said. 'Wherever it is.'
&n
bsp; In this extremity, on 26 May 1541, the expedition had been campaigning for more than four hundred and fifty strenuous days without capturing one item of value or finding any kingdom worthy of conquest, so the leaders knew that their venture would be judged by what they accomplished at Quivira, and this powerful
obligation made them believe that gold still waited. In a council there in the ravines, Coronado decided that he, with thirty of his ablest horsemen, six sturdy foot soldiers and the Franciscans, would make a last-ditch sortie to the north, relying on the gold they would surely find there to salvage the reputation of his expedition. The bulk of the army would return to familiar territory and there await the triumphant return of the adventurers.
But now the Spaniards were confronted by a quandary best expressed by Captain Melgosa: 'Where in hell is Quivira?' Fortunately, Coronado's group contained two scouts of the Tejas tribe, and they spoke the truth: 'General, Quivira lies there'—and they indicated true north—'but when you reach it you will find nothing.'
'How can you say that?' Coronado thundered, and they replied: 'Because we have hunted at Quivira. Nothing.' Such discouraging information Coronado refused to accept, so the frenzied search for gold continued.
About this time an extraordinary act of Garcilaco's caused much amusement. Late one summer afternoon, when he saw the northern horizon turn blue and felt the temperature begin to drop, he supposed he was about to experience what Cabeza had so often spoken of with fear and respect. 'It may soon be winter!' he warned the Spaniards, but they laughed: 'Lad, it's July!' However, within the hour a bitter wind was roaring across the empty spaces, and in the midst of this sudden storm, while others were huddling inside their blankets, Garcilaco threw off his clothes to stand naked in the wind.
