Rosa no more knew where the Seven Cities of Gold were than her great-great-grandfather. According to the stuff I read in between moratorium jaunts, he had changed his story every fifteen minutes or so, depending on what Coronado wanted to hear.

The other Indian scouts had warned Coronado, told him there was nothing to the north but buffalo and a few teepees, but Coronado had gone blindly on. “El Turco seems to have exerted a Pied-Piperlike power over Coronado,” one of the historians had written, “a power which none of Coronado’s officers could understand.”

“Are you still working on that crazy Coronado thing?” Jake asked me when I got back to the Record. “I thought you were covering the hearings.”

“I am,” I said, looking up the Grand Canyon. “They’ve been postponed because of the snow. I have an appointment with the United Coalition Against Uncontrolled Growth at eleven.”

“Good,” he said. “I don’t need the Coronado piece, after all. We’re running a series on ‘Denver Today’ instead.”

He went back upstairs. I found the Grand Canyon. It had been discovered by Lopez de Cardeñas, one of Coronado’s men. El Turco hadn’t been with him.

I drove out to Aurora in a blinding snowstorm to interview the United Coalition. They were united only in spirit, not in location. The president had his office in one of the Pavilion Towers off Havana, ut the secretary who had all the graphs and spreadsheets, was out at Fiddler’s Green. I spent the whole afternoon shuttling back and forth between them through the snow, and wondering what had ever possessed me to become a journalist. I’d wanted to travel. I had had the idea, gotten from TV that journalists got to go all over the world, writing about exotic and amazing places. Like the UNIPAC building and the Plaza Towers.