Besides these breaks of mesquite there were, as the scouts knew, innumerable swales and “draws.” These were low land, some being grassy depressions but a few yards in diameter, others of much greater extent. In addition, and resembling them, were the old “buffalo wallows,” depressions which the buffaloes had gouged out with their heads and horns in the rainy seasons in their efforts to rid themselves of mosquitoes and other insects.
The two scouts and their young companion sat quietly on their horses and saw the sun rise out of this grassy sea like a ball of red fire. It was truly a glorious sight.
“Nothing down Panhandle way,” said Wild Bill, as he looked southward into Texas—that portion of Texas known as the “Panhandle.”
“And nothing over toward No Man’s Land,” said Buffalo Bill.
“No Man’s Land,” it may be said, is that extension of the Indian Territory stretching between the Panhandle of Texas and western Kansas. It was formerly a possession of the Cherokee Indians, and was called the “Cherokee Outlet,” or “The Neutral Strip.” Over it the Cherokees were privileged to pass from their reservation eastward to the hunting grounds of the West. In later years, being a neglected and forsaken country, with little pretensions to an exercise of legal authority, it became the resort of desperadoes of all sorts and degrees, and was known as “No Man’s Land.” In it were a few towns with no recognized legal standing, some cattle companies that were really lawbreakers by being there, and certain Indians herded on reservations. To these must be added outlaws and “bad men” generally of the kind that infested the frontier.
But when Wild Bill and Buffalo Bill looked out on its peaceful surface that morning, with the red sun rising in the east as if it were a disk of red gold which some giant hand was pushing up out of the ground, there was nowhere a suggestion of anything unlawful, of any bloodshed, or red ruins of the border.
Not an outlaw, not an Indian, not a soldier, was in sight; nothing was visible except the three horsemen, who sat their horses as if they were carved images and who looked, with their horses, like figures in bronze, as the gold of the sunlight fell on them.
“Nothing anywhere,” said Stevens, struggling inwardly with despair and suspense.
He was a handsome fellow, this young cowboy, with tanned face, clear, flashing blue eyes, muscular body, and broad shoulders, with thick brown hair curling under his wide-brimmed hat. He was such a man as a woman would quickly learn to love.
“Nothing anywhere in sight, anyhow,” said Wild Bill; “but that don’t prove that there ain’t any number of redskins, or outlaws, or maybe peaceful folk, within no more than a mile of us, hiding in some of the hollows and draws.”