Drinking in the pure fresh air of the Plains, we rolled from our blankets every morning, clear-headed and ready for any enterprise. Just to feel one's self living in that country was a joy. We heard nothing and cared nothing about politics; it made little difference to us who was president of the United States; we worked hard, had enough money for our common needs, and were happy, happier perhaps that we ever were in later years. Youth probably had much to do with our contentment. The second day's travel brought us to the Cimarron River, and here we stopped at one of my old camp-grounds. We had reached the "dead line"--beyond was hostile Indian country. I am moved here to say something about the Cimarron. This stream rises in New Mexico, and after passing through the northeastern corner of that State, it nips off a small part of the southeast corner of Colorado and passes into the State of Kansas. After a bend to northward, it flows south into that part of Oklahoma once known as "Neutral Strip" or "No Man's Land," jogs back into Kansas between Clark and Comanche counties, and then turns for the last time into Oklahoma, where it pursues a generally southeast course until it meets the Arkansas River in the central part of the State. Cimarron is a Spanish word, meaning "outcast, outlaw, or wanderer," a name sometimes applied in Spanish-speaking countries to a steer that wanders away from the herd and ranges alone, wild and intractable. The Cimarron is true to its name. Though born of white mountain snows, its waters soon become red and turbid. In Oklahoma the Cimarron crosses several large expanses of salt, making its water undrinkable; in fact, so much salt is held in solution that a large swallow of the water is sufficient to produce nausea. The bed of the Cimarron in the Plains or prairie country is flat and sandy, though at rare intervals it has rugged shores. Throughout a greater portion of the year, the volume of water to be seen by the eye is small, the current crawling snake-like along its sandy waste. Rarely, however, is the Cimarron without a perceptible current, and usually this current has a rapid flow. The Cimarron is commonly regarded as one of the most dangerous streams in the southwest. Its width often is three or four hundred yards. If there were no sand, the stream would be rather imposing in size. It is filled to the brim with sand, however, and through the sand is an underflow. The quicksands of the Cimarron are notorious. No crossing is ever permanently safe. The sand grips like a vise, and the river sucks down and buries all that it touches--trees, wagons, horses, cattle and men alike, if the latter should be too weak to extricate themselves. In the old days countless buffaloes bogged down and disappeared beneath the sands of the Cimarron. Their dismembered skeletons are frequently uncovered at this day when the river is in flood.