But they passed the night only in the inner belt, and emerged the next morning upon the great plain that ran to the Rocky Mountains.
"Now," said Bill Breakstone, "we leave home and its comforts behind."
Phil felt the truth of his words. He understood now why the Bible put so much value upon wood and water. To leave the belt of trees was like going away from a wooded park about one's house in order to enter a bleak wilderness. It was very hot after they passed from the shade, and before them stretched the rolling plains once more, without trees, reaching the sky-line, and rolling on beyond it without limit. The sun was pouring down from a high sky that flamed like brass. Bill Breakstone caught the look on Phil's face and laughed.
"You hate to give up an easy place, don't you, Phil?" he said. "Don't deny it, because I hate it just as much as you do. Arenberg alone forgets what lies before us, because he has so much to draw him on."
Arenberg was too far ahead to hear them. He always rode in advance now, and the place was conceded to him as a right. They passed through a region of gramma grass which stood about three feet in height, and entered a stretch of buffalo grass, where little clumps of the grass were scattered over the brown plain.
"It doesn't look as if great buffalo herds could be fed on tufts like that," said Phil.
"But they can be," said Bill Breakstone. "It looks scanty, but it's got some powerfully good property in it, because cattle as well as buffalo thrive on it as they do on nothing else. We ought to see buffalo hereabouts."
But for two days after entering this short grass region they saw not a single buffalo. Antelope, also, were invisible, and they began to be worried about their supplies of food. Both Breakstone and Arenberg believed that there were hunting parties of Indians farther westward, and they kept a sharp watch for such dangerous horsemen, Fortunately they had been able to find enough water for their horses in little pools and an occasional spring, and the animals retained their strength. Finally they encamped one evening by the side of a prairie stream so slender that it was a mere trickle over the sand. It also contained a slight taste of salt, but not enough to keep both men and horses from drinking eagerly.
After supper Phil took his rifle and walked up the little stream. It had become a habit with the four, whenever they camped, to look about for game. But they had been disappointed so often that Phil's quest now was purely mechanical. Still he was alert and ready. The training of the wilderness compelled any one with wisdom to acquire such quantities quickly. He walked perhaps half a mile along the brook, which was edged here and there with straggling bushes, and at other points with nothing at all. It was twilight now, and suddenly something huge and brown rose up among a cluster of the dwarf bushes directly in Phil's path. In the fading light it loomed monstrous and misshapen, but Phil knew that it was a lone bull buffalo, probably an old and evil-tempered outcast from the herd. He saw that the big brute was angry, but he was a cool hunter now, and, taking careful aim, he planted a bullet near the vital spot. The buffalo, head down, charged directly at him, but he leaped to one side and, as the mortally stricken beast ran on, he reloaded and sent in a second bullet, which promptly brought him to earth.
Still practicing that wilderness caution which never allows a man's rifle to remain unloaded, he rammed home a third bullet, and then contemplated his quarry, an enormous bull, scarred from fights and undoubtedly tough eating. But Phil was very happy. It was in this case not the pride of the hunter, but the joy of the commissary. Tough though this bull might be, there was enough of him to feed the four many a long day.