The assassins and their followers remained with the Indians, where, one after another, they nearly all met the same bloody and violent death they had meted out to their victims. Five years later L’Archevêque with one companion was recaptured by the Spaniards from the savages and sent to Madrid.[3] Tonti of the Iron Hand had waited long and anxiously for news of his friend. In 1684 he had gone in a canoe down the Mississippi to its mouth to meet the expedition from France. The expedition did not appear, and he returned to his post on the upper Mississippi. He questioned the Indian runners from the south and west as they passed his camp on their hunting raids. He could learn nothing of La Salle or his companions. That intrepid captain seemed to have vanished into the unknown west. At last, in 1689, he journeyed southward again in quest of his friend. Vague rumors reached him of men who had passed through his own forts and tarried to tell the story of La Salle’s death. But he would not believe them. He entered Texas and traveled as far as the wigwams of the friendly Cenis. From them he learned the fate of the man he loved; and the rugged soldier turned aside his head and wept.[4] 2. IN THE NAME OF SPAIN. While these things were taking place in an obscure corner of the New World, there was commotion in the court of Spain. Word had come over from the “Golden West” that France had laid an unlawful hand upon some of the Spanish possessions there. Letters flew thick and fast between the Spanish viceroy in Mexico and the Spanish king’s[5] ministers. The Viceroy was ordered to punish the offenders as soon as ever they could be found; the dark-browed king of Spain was very angry. All this stir was caused by the capture of the _St. Francis_, La Salle’s little store-ship in 1684. She was plainly on her way to some new colony. But where had that colony been planted? The wary captain of the _St. Francis_ said that he did not know. Perhaps he told the truth. At any rate, it was not until 1686 and after a world of trouble that the Viceroy in Mexico located the spot of La Salle’s settlement. Spain considered herself at that time the legitimate owner of all that region which we now call Texas; she pretended, indeed, to own everything bordering on the Gulf of Mexico. A military council was therefore held at the new post of Monclova, and Captain Alonzo de Leon, the newly appointed governor of Coaquila (afterwards called Coahuila) (Co-ah-wee′-la), was dispatched to find and destroy La Salle and his colony. La Salle, with a bullet in his brain, had been lying for two years in his shallow grave near the Neches River; but the Viceroy did not know this.