She apparently hadn’t inherited her great-great-grandfather’s scouting ability. I went around the block and turned left, and was overjoyed to see the Eldorado Cafe down the street. I pulled into the parking lot and we got out.

“They make their own cinnamon rolls,” she said, looking at me hopefully as we went in. “With frosting.”

We sat down in a booth. “Have anything you want,” I said. “This is on the Record.”

She ordered a cinnamon roll and a large Coke. I ordered coffee and began fishing in my bag for my tape recorder.

“You lived here in Denver a long time?” she asked.

“All my life. I grew up here.”

She smiled her gold-toothed smile at me. “You like Denver?”

“Sure,” I said. I found the pocket-sized recorder and laid it on the table. “Smog, oil refineries, traffic. What’s not to like?”

“I like it too,” she said.

The waitress set a cinnamon roll the size of Mile High Stadium in front of her and poured my coffee.

“You know what Coronado fed El Turco?” The waitress brought her large Coke. “Probably one tortilla a day. And he didn’t have no shoes. Coronado make him walk all that way to Colorado and no shoes.”

I switched the tape recorder on. “You say Coronado came to Colorado,” I said, “but what I’ve read says he traveled through New Mexico and Oklahoma and up into Kansas, but not Colorado.”

“He was in Colorado.” She jabbed her finger into the table. “He was here.”

I wondered if she meant here in Colorado or here in the Eldorado Cafe.

“When was that? On his way to Quivira?”

“Quivira?” she said, looking blank. “I don’t know nothing about Quivira.”

“Quivira was a place where there was supposed to be gold,” I said. “He went there after he found the Seven Cities of Cibola.”

“He didn’t find them,” she said, chewing on a mouthful of cinnamon roll. “That’s why he killed El Turco.”