"That was how the Spaniards saw her for the first time, and found her so lovely that they forgot to ask her name; they called her 'The Lady of Cofachique,' and swore there was not a lovelier lady in Europe nor one more a princess.
"Which might easily be true," said the Egret, "for she was brought up to be Cacica in Far-Looking's place, after the death of her son Young Pine."
The Princess smiled on the children as she came down the cypress trail. One of her women, who moved unobtrusively beside her, arranged cushions of woven cane, and another held a fan of painted skin and feather work between her and the sun. A tame egret ruffled her white plumes at the Princess's shoulder.
"I was telling them about the pearls of Cofachique," said the Egret who had first spoken to the children, "and of how Hernando de Soto came to look for them."
"Came and looked," said the Princess. One of her women brought a casket carved from a solid lump of cypress, on her knee. Around the sides of the casket and on the two ends ran a decoration of woodpeckers' heads and the mingled sign of the sun and the four quarters which the Corn Woman had drawn for Dorcas on the dust of the dancing-floor.
The Princess lifted the lid and ran her fine dark fingers through a heap of gleaming pearls. "There were many mule loads such as these in the god-house at Talimeco," she said; "we filled the caskets of our dead Caciques with them. What is gold that he should have left all these for the mere rumor of it?"
She was sad for a moment and then stern. "Nevertheless, I think my aunt, the Cacica, should have met him. She would have seen that he was a man and would have used men's reasons with him. She made Medicine against him as though he were a god, and in the end his medicine was stronger than ours."
"If you could tell us about it--" invited Dorcas Jane.