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-29Llano Estacado: The Naming When Coronado and his three hundred soldiers and six hundred Pueblo slaves pursued El Turco across this grand plateau, he could not have known what he had entered until mile after trackless mile they followed their phantom prey and found on all sides the same stretch of grass and sky, only at night orienting themselves, gazing at the same constellations they had known before their ascent into a shadeless hell. In this land of alkaline waters, broken by sudden ravines that yawned hotly open as if the earth would swallow them, the plated soldiers rode, sweltering in the merciless sun, the shimmering air. Some fell, clattering, never to rise again, some threw their armor aside and faced the sun. Behind them, where nearly a thousand had passed, the grass closed like water and all about them was nothing but the sameness of the grassy sea. So in time they came to cut from stunted trees that lined dry washes poles to mark their way. Mile after mile they drove the sticks as they moved, stakes that leaned in the wind, trailing out behind them, monuments to their folly, telling them nothing of where they were going and little of where they had been. ...

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