After supper they lay upon their blankets in a circle, with their feet to the fire, and spoke of the land that stretched beyond the two belts of trees, the Great Staked Plain. "We’ll find it hot," said Breakstone, "and parts of it are sandy and without water, but we should get through to the Rio Grande, especially as we have, besides the sand, a big region of buffalo grass; and then the land of gramma grass, in both of which we can find plenty of game. Game and water are the things for which we must look. But we won’t talk of trouble now. It’s too fine here." They spent the next day and the following night among the trees, and were fortunate enough to find in the oaks a number of fine wild turkeys which abounded in all parts of the Southwest. They secured four, and added them to their larder. The next day they rode through the belt, and across the twelve miles of bare country into the second belt, which was exactly like the first, with the oak predominating. "Makes me think of the rings of Saturn," said Phil, as they entered the timber once more. 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."