Michener, James A. (10 page)

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.'

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.

'What are you doing?' Melgosa shouted from his tent, and when he ran to the boy with his blanket, all Garcilaco could answer was: 'Cabeza told me he lived for seven years attacked by such winds, and he was naked. I wanted to test him.'

'Cabeza de Vaca was a liar. Everyone knows that. Come inside.' When Garcilaco sat crouched by the fire, with the others thinking he had drifted toward insanity, he thought of Cabeza: He must have been a liar, for no man could survive such a norther, yet he did. We know he did.

On a blistering July day in 1541, Coronado and his small band lined up at the southern bank of a miserable arroyo and stared across at Quivira (in what is now Kansas). They saw an indiscriminate collection of low mud huts surrounded by arid fields with few trees and no rich meadowlands. Smoke curled lazily from a few chopped openings in roofs, but there were no chimneys, no doors and no visible furniture. Such men and women as did appear were a scrawny lot, dressed not in expensive furs but in untanned skins.