of that thirst
is often fatal to strong men; and that Villagran endured four was little
short of miraculous. At last, fairly dying of thirst, with dry, swollen
tongue, hard and rough as a file, projecting far beyond his teeth, he
was reduced to the sad necessity of slaying his faithful dog, which he
did with tears of manly remorse. Calling the poor brute to him, he
dispatched it with his sword, and greedily drank the warm blood. This
gave him strength to stagger on a little farther; and just as he was
sinking to the sand to die, he spied a little hollow in a large rock
ahead. Crawling feebly to it, he found to his joy that a little
snow-water remained in the cavity. Scattered about, were a few grains of
corn, which seemed a godsend; and he devoured them ravenously.

He had now given up all hope of overtaking his commander, and decided to
turn back and try to walk that grim two hundred miles to San Gabriel.
But he was too far gone for the body longer to obey the heroic soul, and
would have perished miserably by the little rock tank but for a strange
chance.

As he lay there, faint and helpless, he suddenly heard voices
approaching. He concluded that the Indians had trailed him, and gave
himself up for lost, for he was too weak to fight. But at last his ear
caught the accent of Spain; and though it was spoken by hoarse, rough
soldiers, you may be sure he thought it the sweetest sound in all the
world. It chanced that the night before, some of the horses of Onate's
camp had strayed away, and a small squad of soldiers was sent out to
catch them. In following the trail of the runaways, they came in sight
of Captain Villagran. Luckily they saw him, for he could no longer shout
nor run after them. Tenderly they lifted up the wounded officer and bore
him back to camp; and there, under the gentle nursing of bearded men, he
slowly recovered strength, and in time became again the daring athlete
of other days. He accompanied Onate on that long, desert march; and a
few months later was at the storming of Acoma, and performed the
astounding feat which ranks as one of the remarkable individual heroisms
of the New World.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Pronounced Veel-yah-grahn.

VI.

THE PIONEER MISSIONARIES.

To pretend to tell the story of the Spanish pioneering of the Americas
without special attention to the missionary pioneers, would be very poor
justice and very poor history. In this, even more than in other
qualities, the c