First, just to get it out of the way, I'll start with the part I'm least confident on. If I recall correctly, when Coronado reached Quivira (mostly likely central Kansas), he heard reports that another group of Spaniards were to the southeast. He correctly assumed this was de Soto's entrada, which had departed almost a year before his own entrada set out. He sent some men to make contact with de Soto, but they never actually found them. At the time, de Soto was still alive and he and his men were in Arkansas. However, I can't find the specific citation I had read recently that covers this topic. It's incredibly frustrating! I'll keep looking when I get some more time, but if anyone else can find it first, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Moving on to information I can better confirm, when Coronado was making his way back from Quivira one of the Native slaves escaped. She realized that she wasn't being taken back to the people who had original enslaved her and saw a chance to reach either her homeland or at least friendly territory. Unfortunately, she eventually crossed paths with the remnants of de Soto's expedition during their failed attempt to cross Texas. She was interrogated by tortured and accurately named several of the officers in Coronado's entrada. But de Soto's men didn't know the details of Coronado army and were remained skeptical. The land they were passing through didn't have farm and granaries to raid as the land did to the east. With winter closing in they decided to head back to the Mississippi rather than to attempt to cross the desert to reach either Coronado or Mexico.