How Don Diego de Almagro, after the death of García de Alvarado, determined to prepare for departure from Cuzco; how he sent one Juan de Aguirre with ten other mounted men to reconnoitre, and how they were taken and killed.

AFTER the captain García de Alvarado had been killed in Cuzco, as we have written in earlier chapters, some who had been his friends expressed discontent on account of his death; and it pleased God that there should be so much disagreement amongst them that the civil war they were engaged in should come to an end; and that the youth Don Diego, constrained by necessity, would either put himself separately into the hands of Vaca de Castro, or retire, with the few who would follow him, into the regions lying beyond [the] Maule. Pondering over the discontent which was showing itself among some of his party, Don Diego secretly called for Martín Carrillo and Baltasar de Castilla, and the other leaders, and said to them that inasmuch as he, and not García de Alvarado, was the person who must provide rewards and distribute the various tracts of the Realm amongst them, he asked them all to be faithful friends and such loyal companions, that they would all count on his constancy. They well knew, he said, the important reason there was for killing García de Alvarado, and the little cause that captain had, after Sotelo\'s death, to mix in conspiracies against himself and his friends. These and[239] other things said Don Diego to those who came, and they were content to follow him, and all of one mind to pursue the course they had entered on. Though the Indians reported that Vaca de Castro had arrived at Lima, there was no certainty of his actual position, so it was agreed to send a Biscayan named Aguirre, with ten other mounted scouts, in the direction of Guamanga, to see if he could capture anyone from whom to gain information of what was afoot thereabouts, as it was very important for them to be posted in what was happening in the lower provinces.

Presently Aguirre and his ten followers started to carry out the order of Don Diego. By this time all the provinces had information that Vaca de Castro was at Jauja with a force larger than that of Don Diego. It therefore seemed to the inhabitants wholesome advice to be on the winning side, and not to help Don Diego. The party who left Cuzco with the object I have stated proceeded on their way. In a valley called Uripa the Indians killed Aguirre, who had gone on ahead from another village where his companions had tarried. The Indians then attacked the others and so harassed them that they could not get back to Cuzco. They withdrew towards Guamanga, where Diego de Rojas was, but the Indians warned him and they were all captured and judicially executed. Don Diego heard of this disaster through the Indians, and grieved at the fate of his scouts, though without letting others know it. He reflected very seriously and felt that his followers must hasten their preparations, and look well to their lances, for the whole power of Peru was uniting against him. He had suspicions of Martín Carrillo and of a citizen of Cuzco, so he had them arrested, and wrote letters to Arequipa, to one Idiáquez, in whom he truste............