"I knew you couldn’t move it," said Bill Breakstone. "The Indians have short bows, and you wouldn’t think they could get so much power with them, but they do. It’s no uncommon thing for a buck at close range to send an arrow clear through a big bull buffalo, and it takes powerful speed to do that." They rode back, met the advancing line of wagons, and told what they had seen, to which the men themselves, as they came to the edge of the prairie, were able to bear witness. Yet they were not greatly impressed. Those who believed that it meant a challenge gayly accepted it as Breakstone had predicted. "Let the Comanches attack, if they will," they said, shaking their rifles. Even the face of the quiet Middleton kindled. "It’s a good spirit our men show," he said to the three who were his chosen comrades, "but I knew that they would never turn back because of an Indian threat." The train advanced slowly down into the plain, and then began its march across the vast, grayish-green expanse. The traveling was very easy here, and they made seven or eight miles over the rolling earth before they stopped at sunset. Phil, looking back, could still see the dark line of the hilly country and the forest, but before him the prairie rolled away, more than ever, as the twilight came, like an unknown sea. The camp was beside a shallow stream running between low banks. They built their fires of cottonwood and stunted oaks that grew on either side, and then Phil saw the darkness suddenly fall like the fall of a great blanket over the plains. With the night came a low, moaning sound which Bill Breakstone told him was merely the wind blowing a thousand miles without a break. Phil took his turn at guard duty the latter half of that night, walking about at some distance from the camp, now and then meeting his comrades on the same duty, and exchanging a word or two. It was very dark, and the other sentinels were not in the best of humor, thinking there was little need for such a watch, and Phil by and by confined himself strictly to his own territory. Although his eyes grew used to the darkness, it was so heavy that they could not penetrate it far, and he extended his beat a little farther from the camp. He thought once that he heard a light sound, as of footsteps, perhaps those of a horse, and in order to be certain, remembering an old method, he lay down and put his ear to the ground. Then he was quite sure that he heard a sound very much like the tread of hoofs, but in a moment or two it ceased. He rose, shaking his head doubtfully, and advanced a little farther. He neither saw nor heard anything more, and he became convinced that the footsteps had been those of some wild animal. Perhaps a lone buffalo, an outlaw from the herd, had been wandering about, and had turned away when the human odor met his nostrils.