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Later, on that same afternoon, Wilbur, from the crow's-nest, saw the lighthouse on Point Loma and the huge rambling bulk of the Coronado Hotel spreading out and along the beach. It was the outpost of civilization. They were getting back to the world again. Within an hour's ride of the hotel were San Diego, railroads, newspapers, and policemen.
Henceforward he was easier; he had a pretty clear field before him; there was no one present to poison Clara; no one but himself to court her. And the courtship went forward with a better prospect of success than is quite agreeable to contemplate. Coronado and Clara were Adam and Eve; they were the only man and woman in this paradise.
"You are worth a million," he went on, in a broken-hearted sort of voice which to us may seem laughable, but which brought the tears into Clara's eyes. The next instant she brightened; she knew, or thought she knew, that she was not worth a million; so she smiled like a sunburst and caught him gayly by the wrists. "A million!" she scoffed, laughingly. "Do you believe all Coronado tells you?"
He did work there for one day, and was then found dead at the mouth of the old shaft with marks of bony fingers on his throat. The seven cities of Cibola, that Coronado and other Spanish adventurers sought in the vast deserts of the Southwest, were pueblos.
Have you ever considered that nine of ten among those who went with De Soto and Balboa and Coronado and Cortez and Pizarro, if asked by some quiet neighbor, would have refused him the loan of one hundred dollars unless secured by fivefold the value?
It was he, also, who had been sent, the previous November, as far as the place called Chichilticalli, in an attempt to verify the friar's tale, and had reported that the natives were good for nothing except to make into Christians. The main army, which was in command of Don Tristan de Arellano, in accordance with the orders received from Coronado, now advanced toward Cibola.
Certainly, if he were without a rival; but there was Thurstane, ready any and every day to propose; it would not do to let him have the first word, and cause the first heart-beat. Coronado believed that to make sure of winning the race he must take the lead at the start.
"It seems a long time," stammered Clara. So it did, for the days since had been crammed with emotions and events, and they gave her young mind an impression of a long period passed. "I have been so full of anxiety!" continued Coronado. "Not about our dangers," he asserted with a little bravado. "Or, rather, not about mine. For you I have been fearful.
"That Texas Smith of yours is a humbug," broke out Coronado, his mind reverting to the letter which he had just burned. "I put work on him which he swore to do and did not do. He is a coward and a traitor." "Oh, the pig! Did you pay him?" "I had to pay him in advance and then nothing done right," confessed Coronado.
And he who journeys across the Plains till he reaches the Sangre del Cristo Mountains or the blue Sierra Mojadas enters a land made famous by the exploits of Coronado, De Vaca and perhaps of the great Montezuma himself. In the year 1540, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado was sent by the Spanish viceroy of Mexico to explore the regions to the north.
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