ten to me, my dear sister, and keep to yourself what I shall tell
you. The insolence of these men, who expelled us from our homes, is
such that the caciques of the country are resolved no longer to submit
to their tyranny. Five caciques [whom he named one after another] have
combined and have collected a hundred uru. Five thousand warriors on
land and water are prepared. Provisions have been collected in the
province of Tichiri, for the maintenance of these warriors, and the
caciques have already divided amongst themselves the heads and the
property of the Spaniards."

In revealing these things to his sister, the brother warned her to
conceal herself on a certain day, otherwise she might be killed in the
confusion of the fight. The conquering warrior gives no quarter to
those whom he vanquishes. He concluded by telling her the day fixed
for the attack. Women generally keep the fire better than they do a
secret,[2] and so it fell out that this young woman, either because
she loved Vasco Nunez or because in her panic she forgot her
relatives, her kinsmen, and neighbours as well as the caciques whom
she betrayed to their death, revealed the same to her lover, omitting
none of the details her brother had imprudently confided to her.
Vasco Nunez sent this Fulvia to invite her brother to return, and he
immediately responded to his sister's invitation. He was seized and
forced to confess that the cacique Zemaco, his master, had sent those
four uru for the massacre of the Spaniards, and that the plot had been
conceived by him. Zemaco took upon himself the task of killing
Vasco Nunez, and forty of his people whom he had sent as an act of
friendship to sow and cultivate Vasco's fields, had been ordered by
him to kill the leader with their agricultural tools. Vasco Nunez
habitually encouraged his labourers at their work by frequently
visiting them, and the cacique's men had never ventured to execute his
orders, because Vasco never went among them except on horseback, and
armed. When visiting his labourers he rode a mare and always carried a
spear in his hand, as men do in Spain; and it was for this reason that
Zemaco, seeing his wishes frustrated, had conceived the other plot
which resulted so disastrously for himself and his people.

[Note 2: Literally, _Puella vero, quia ferrum est quod feminae
observant, magis quam Catonianam gravitatem_.]

As soon as the conspiracy was discovered, Vasco Nunez, assembling
seventy men, ordere