"And that I saw with my own eyes," Antonia put in triumphantly. "So Jim
and Charley were right, and the teachers were wrong!"
The girls began to wonder among themselves. Why had the Spaniards come so
far? What must this country have been like, then? Why had Coronado never
gone back to Spain, to his riches and his castles and his king? I could
n't tell them. I only knew the school books said he "died in the
wilderness, of a broken heart."
"More than him has done that," said Antonia sadly, and the girls murmured
assent.
We sat looking off across the country, watching the sun go down. The curly
grass about us was on fire now. The bark of the oaks turned red as copper.
There was a shimmer of gold on the brown river. Out in the stream the
sandbars glittered like glass, and the light trembled in the willow
thickets as if little flames were leaping among them. The breeze sank to
stillness. In the ravine a ringdove mourned plaintively, and somewhere off
in the bushes an owl hooted. The girls sat listless, leaning against each
other. The long fingers of the sun touched their foreheads.
Presently we saw a curious thing: There were no clouds, the sun was going
down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disc
rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure
suddenly appeared on the face of the sun.
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