It was decided to send out a search party, and four men were therefore dispatched on the hunt for the settlements. Soon after some disease broke out in the camp which reduced the thirty-six to fifteen. Then the natives, who were not otherwise unkind, separated these and they never again all met. When spring once more turned the country green, all the Spaniards but Cabeza de Vaca and one Lope de Oviedo, who were too sick to travel, again started westward. Cabeza and Oviedo necessarily remained with the natives, and in spite of Cabeza's tale of cruelty we can see that he was not very badly treated, for after awhile he was allowed to make trading tours into the interior. On these journeys he saw the "hunchback cows" and learned much about the country, the first white man to tread that northern soil. In the course of time he and Oviedo turned their faces westward also and presently learned from other natives of three men like themselves farther on. Oviedo lacked the courage to proceed, and he went back to the first natives they had been with while Cabeza kept on alone and came to the other Spaniards, the fag-end of the company that had previously started. They were Andreas Dorantes, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, and Estevan, an Arab negro. The Amerinds they were now among did not seem to like the idea of their departing, but after one or two attempts, the four succeeded in taking up the broken march for the West. The tribes they met treated them kindly. In one place a man came with a headache which Castillo cured by making the sign of the cross and "commending him to God." Many more came to be healed, each bringing venison in payment, and the Spaniards found thereby the road to safety and comfort as well as to their desired goal. Cabeza even claims to have revived the dead; at least he became so proficient as a "medicine man" that everywhere the natives came to him in large numbers to be healed. Cabeza was successful, hence his progress was uninterrupted, but the role of medicine man is sometimes dangerous to assume. They think that if one is able to cure a single case, that he can cure all, and if the patient dies his "medicine" is bad. The reputation of Cabeza grew, till the progress of the four wanderers was little short of triumphal.