They put the Turk in chains, and then he confessed that he had never seen the big stone houses he said were in Quivera, but stoutly insisted that the country was rich in gold and silver.
The Prairie Indians begged Coronado to turn back.
"The land of Quivera is forty days' journey toward the north," they said, "and you will suffer from hunger long before you reach other tribes."
But Coronado had spent all his money and was in debt deeply, so he determined to take twenty-nine picked horsemen and go forward. Leaving the rest of the company to find their way back to Pecos, he engaged some new guides among the Prairie Indians and pushed on determined to find Quivera. They rode directly north until they came to a place in Kansas near where the city of Leavenworth is now located.
In the meantime the Pecos Indians went on the warpath and refused to receive or aid the Spaniards who left Coronado and went back to them. He found them encamped before the pueblo when he returned months after, weary, empty-handed, and disappointed.
"I have found Quivera and explored it well," he said, "but it has no permanent settlement, and no gold and silver. I was expecting to see houses several stories high, made of stone. Instead of that they are simple huts and the inhabitants are perfectly savage."
The Turk tried to secure his freedom by saying that the Pecos Indians had hired him to lose the Spaniards on the plains, but no one paid any attention to him. In revenge he said to the people of Quivera:
"Do not let one of these white men escape alive. They will bring others of their kind and rob you of all your possessions and ill treat your women and children. They have already killed many of the Pecos."
Some one told Coronado what was being said, and he ordered his soldiers to take the Turk out and hang him to the first tree they found, which they did.
Coronado spoke the truth about Quivera, but even the men who went with him believed that there was a land near by where they would find great riches, and they kept repeating all the stories about El Dorado until Coronado was obliged to promise them that he would make another effort to find it.