Word: fraying
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...summer day in 1539 a young friar named Marcos eased himself into a barber's chair in Mexico City, unburdened himself of the biggest piece of news his barber had heard all summer. As almost everybody in Mexico City knew, Fray Marcos de Niza had just returned from a four-month trip into the unexplored country to the north, in search of the legendary "Seven Cities of Antilia." What he said while his whiskers were coming off took his story dramatically out of the reach of expedition yarns. North of the Gila, he said, there was a fabulously wealthy...
Before the summer was out, Fray Marcos' barber had peddled the news as far east as Cuba. The viceroy at Mexico City was quick to act. He decided to send an expedition up the Pacific coast to take possession of Cibola and its neighboring kingdoms. To head the expedition the viceroy chose 30-year-old Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, who helped finance it with a million dollars of his wife's fortune...
...made up of more than 300 soldiers, "several hundred Indians who went as servants, hostlers or herdsmen," more than a thousand horses and mules, and a flock of sheep. On Feb. 22, 1540, Coronado's cumbersome, armor-clad host headed northward up the western coast of Mexico, with Fray Marcos in the vanguard...
Friar's Secret. Before they had gone far, Coronado's men began to distrust everything Fray Marcos had told them. Instead of the one "small hill" that he had reported between them and Cibola, they found almost impassable mountains. Machetes had to be used to hack a way along roads he had called "good." But Marcos remained cheerful. What seemed like outrageous hardship to the tenderfoot caballeros was easy going for the hardy friar, veteran of long treks through Peru and Central America. Besides, he had his secret. The royal road to riches he had talked about back...
...hold-'em" alliance between the defensive and offensive units that prompted Cal's Safety Man Carl Van Heuit to apologize to the offense after a 35-21 victory over U.C.L.A. Never before, with platoons rushing in & out of the fray, had football been so akin to modern war and its specialists so dependent on G.H.Q...