No doubt the old man had a retort ready near his lips, but it was never spoken, and so for a wonder he failed to get the last word, for at that moment Pizarro, who had been looking eagerly ahead with shaded eyes, suddenly pulled up and reined his horse round, holding up his hand as a signal to halt. Instantly the little troop came to a standstill, and Pizarro, riding back to the head of the column, said in a quiet but distinct tone-- “Caballeros, half an hour’s march will take us into the valley, and round the spur of the hill yonder I see a city of some size, and people are coming towards us over the fields; hence it behoves us to enter in due array. So mount and let the ranks be formed.” CHAPTER II. HOW THE HORSES FED AT ZARAN The order had scarcely left the Captain’s lips ere those in the vanguard had already set about obeying it, and it was passed down the line, each rank forming up as it went by, for every man in the little army, from the Captain-General himself to the meanest pike-bearer of them all, knew that on such an errand as theirs each one took his life in his own hands, and more than that, might by his own failure put all the rest in jeopardy. Two days before all the faint-hearts whose courage had failed them in face of the difficulties and dangers of that unknown march had been given a chance to go back to San Miguel without loss of credit, and they had gone. There were only nine of them out of a hundred and eighty men, and all the rest were staunch and true, for their going had made the little army stronger and not weaker, and the Captain knew that on every man that was with him he could trust without fear for his own life and the honour of the great enterprise. More than this, every man knew his orders almost before he got them, and so was worth three who might not have known them. So hardly had the word of command reached the other end of the column than every cavalier was in the saddle, helmed and plumed and in his place in the rank, and every footman was marching step for step with his fellow, and the whole army was moving forward over the desert, not limping or straggling now, but firm and close-ranked like a living wall of steel and iron. The pace was now nearly doubled, for the column was moving with the uniform motion of a machine instead of that of a crowd of straggling units, and not many minutes had gone by before the leading troop of horsemen saw a considerable body of natives emerge from the long low line of straggling thicket which formed, as it might be, the union between the wilderness of rock and dry earth and the green-carpeted, plentifully wooded valley which swept in waves of gentle, rolling wood-crowned hillspurs far away to the eastward where the giant shapes of the mountains beyond loomed dark and vague through the purple haze of the tropical evening.