in were gods in a realm to be!

Swift at the word we sped, we fought in the front of the battle,--
Ah, but the wild men fled when they heard us neigh from afar!
The field was littered with dead, cut down like slaughtered cattle
--Ah, but the earth is red where the Conquistadores are!

Now does the desert wake and croon of hidalgos coming--
Now for her children's sake she is whetting her sword to slay,
And the armored squadrons break, and our iron-shod hoofs are drumming
On the rocks of the mountain pass--we are free, we are off and away!

Hush--did a man's foot fall in the pasture where we go straying?
Listen--is that the call of a man aware of his right?
Hearken, my comrades all--once more the Game they are playing!
Masters, we come, we come, to be one with you in the fight!

XIII

THE WHITE MEDICINE MAN

"Cavalry without horses, in ships without sailors, built by blacksmiths
without forges and carpenters without tools. Now who in Spain will
believe that?" commented Cabeca de Vaca.

It was the evening of the twenty-first of September, 1528. Five of the
oddest looking boats ever launched on any sea were drawn up on the shore
of La Baya de Cavallos, where not a horse was in sight, though there had
been twoscore a fortnight ago. On the morrow the one-eyed commander of
the Spaniards, Pamfilo de Narvaez, would marshal his ragamuffin
expedition into those boats, in the hope of reaching Mexico by sea.

"We shall tell of it when we are grandfathers--if the sea does not take
us within a week," said Andres Dorantes with a sigh. "I think that God
does not waste miracles on New Spain."

"Miracles? It is nothing less than a miracle that this fleet was built,"
said Cabeca de Vaca valiantly. And indeed he had some reason for saying
so.

Narvaez, with a grant from the King which covered all the territory
between the Atlantic and the Rio de los Palmas in Mexico, had staked his
entire private fortune on this venture. He had landed in Baya de le
Cruz--now Tampa Bay--on the day before Easter. The Indians had some gold
which they said came "from the north." Cabeca, who was treasurer of the
expedition, strongly advised against proceeding through a totally
unknown country on this very sketchy information. But Narvaez consulted
the pilot, who said he knew of a harbor some distance to the west,
ordered the ships to meet him there, and with forty horsemen and two
hun