Castilian and demanding in the tones of those used to obedience that
they be taken to his noble and magnificent Viceroyship. Amazement,
incredulity, surprise, gave way to congratulations and rejoicings, when
it was found that these were the human drift of the expedition of which
not a whisper, not an echo, had been heard for eight long years.

Then curiosity came rushing in like a flood. Had they seen anything on
the journey? Were there any cities, any peoples worth conquering;
especially did any of them have wealth in gold, silver and precious
stones like that harvested so easily by Cortés and Pizarro?

Cabeza didn't know really, but--, and his long pause and brief story of
seven cities that he had heard of, one or two days' journey to the north
of his track, fired the imagination of the Viceroy and his soldiers of
fortune. To be sure, though, they sent out a party of reconnaissance,
under the control of a good father of the Church, Fray Marcos de Nizza,
a friar of the Orders Minor, commonly known as a Franciscan, with
Stephen, a negro, one of the escaped party of Cabeza de Vaca, as a
guide, to spy out the land.

Fray Marcos penetrated as far as Zuni, and found there the seven cities,
wonderful and strange; though he did not enter them, as the uncurbed
amorous demands of Stephen had led to his death, and Marcos feared lest
a like fate befall himself, but he returned and gave a fairly accurate
account of what he saw. His story was not untruthful, but there are
those who think it was misleading in its pauses and in what he did not
tell. Those pauses and eloquent silences were construed by the vivid
imaginations of his listeners to indicate what the _Conquistadores_
desired, so a grand and glorious expedition was planned, to go forth
with great sound of trumpets, in glad acclaim and glowing colors, led by