Among them they knew six Indian dialects, and could talk with the people after a fashion, wherever they went. Even when two tribes were at war, they made a truce, so that they might trade and talk with the strangers. At last Castillo saw on the neck of an Indian the buckle of a sword-belt, and fastened to it like a pendant the nail of a horse-shoe. His heart leaped. He asked the Indian where he got the things. The Indian answered,
"They came from heaven."
"Who brought them?" asked Cabeça.
"Men with beards like you," the Indian answered rather timidly, "seated on strange animals and carrying long lances. They killed two of our people with those lances, and the rest ran away."
Then Cabeça knew that his countrymen must have passed that way. His feelings were a strange mixture of joy and grief.
As they went on they came upon more traces of Spaniards, parties of slave-hunters from the south. Everywhere they themselves were well treated, even by people who were hiding in the mountains for fear of the Christians. When Cabeça told the Indians that he was himself a Christian they smiled and said nothing; but one night he heard them talking among themselves, not knowing that he could understand their talk.
"He is lying, or he is mistaken," they said. "He and his friends come from the sunrise, and the Christians from the sunset; they heal the sick, the Christians kill the well ones; they wear only a little clothing, as we do, the Christians come on horses, with shining garments and long lances; these good men take our gifts only to help others who need them; the Christians come to rob us and never give any one anything."
The next day Cabeça told the Indians that he wished to go back to his own people and tell them not to kill and enslave the natives. He explained to them that this wickedness was not in any way part of his religion, and that the founder of that religion never injured or despised the poor, but went about doing good. When he was sure that there were Spaniards not many miles away, he took Estevanico, leaving the other two Spaniards to rest their tired bones, and with an escort of eleven Indians went out to look for his countrymen.
When he found them, they were greatly astonished. Their astonishment did not lessen when he told them how he came to be where he was. He sent Estevanico back to tell the rest of the party to come, and himself remained to talk with Diego de Alcaraz, the leader of the Spanish adventurers, and his three followers. They were slave-hunters, like the other Spaniards. When, five days afterward Estevanico, Castillo and Dorantes came on with an escort of several hundred Indians, all Cabeca's determination and diplomacy were taxed to keep the slavers from making a raid on the confiding natives then and there. To buy Alcaraz off cost nearly all the bows, pouches, finely dressed skins, and other native treasures he had gained by trading or received as gifts. In this collection were five arrowheads of emerald or something very like that stone. It was not in Cabeça de Vaca to break his word to people who trusted him. He had suffered every sort of privation; he had traveled more than ten thousand miles on foot in his six years among the Indians of the Southwest; now he had lost most of his profit from that long exile; but he went back to Spain with faith unbroken and honor clear as a white diamond.
In May, 1536, he and his companions reached Culiacan in the territory of Spain. All the way to the City of Mexico they were feasted and welcomed as honored guests. The account which Cabeça de Vaca wrote of his travels was the first written description of the country now called Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.