"Don’t you worry yourself, Sir Philip of the Wagon and the Great Sleep," replied Bill Breakstone grinning. "A good wilderness rover rests when he can, and doesn’t rest when he can’t. Now you could rest, and it was the right thing for you to do. I haven’t been up myself more than half an hour, while Captain Middleton and Arenberg are still asleep. Now, my merry young sir, I hope that will satisfy you." "It does," replied Phil, his conscience satisfied, "and between you and me, Bill, it seems to me that we have come out of our troubles so far mighty well." "We have," replied Bill Breakstone emphatically. "The curtain has gone down on act one, with honest and deserving fellows like you and myself on top. Act two hasn’t begun yet, but meanwhile the winds blow softly, the air is pure, and we’ll enjoy ourselves." "Have you seen anything of our Comanche and Mexican friends?" "Not a peep. We’re marching in looser order now, because if they came we’d have ample time to form in battle array after we saw them." But no enemy appeared that day nor the next day, and they rode south for many days in peace. Although eager to reach the Rio Grande as soon as possible, they were too wise to hurry the animals. The steady, measured pace was never broken, and they took full rest at night. They stopped sometimes to kill game and replenish their supplies of food. They found plenty of buffalo, and the most skillful of the hunters also secured all the antelope that they wished. Now and then they crossed a river that contained fish, and they added to their stores from these, also. They were now far into the summer, but the grass was still green, although the heat at times was great, and rain fell but seldom. The character of the vegetation changed as they went south. Bill Breakstone defined it as an increase of thorns. The cactus stood up in strange shapes on the plain, but along the banks of the creeks they found many berries that were good to the taste. Four weeks after the turn to the south they met two messengers coming from the direction of Santa Fé and bound for the mouth of the Rio Grande. They were American soldiers in civilian dress whom Middleton knew, and with whom it had evidently been a part of his plan to communicate. He received from them important news, over which he pondered long, but, some time after the two men had disappeared under the horizon to the eastward, he spoke of it to Phil, Breakstone, and Arenberg.