Coronado had laid aside his American dandy raiment, and was in the full costume of a Mexican of the provinces--broad-brimmed hat of white straw, blue broadcloth jacket adorned with numerous small silver buttons, velvet vest of similar splendor, blue trousers slashed from the knee downwards and gay with buttons, high, loose embroidered boots of crimson leather, long steel spurs jingling and shining.

The change became him; he seemed a larger and handsomer man for it; he looked the caballero and almost the hidalgo.
Three hours took the party thirty miles to a hacienda of Garcia's, where they changed horses, leaving their first mounting for the return.

After half an hour for dinner, they pushed on again, always at a gallop, the hoofs clattering over the hard, yellow, sunbaked earth, or dashing recklessly along smooth sheets of rock, or through fields of loose, slippery stones.

Rare halts to breathe the animals; then the steady, tearing gallop again; no walking or other leisurely gait.

Coronado led the way and hastened the pace.