five o'clock
At dusk they divided : two men lurking in the brush along the creek rode as close as they could , unobserved , toward the crossing , while Du Sang and the cowboy Karg , known as Flat Nose , rode down to Baggs 's ranch at the foot of the pass . At that point Dan Baggs , an old locomotive engineer , had taken a homestead , got together a little bunch of cattle , and was living alone with his son , a boy of ten years . It was a hard country and too close to Williams Cache for comfort , but Dan got on with everybody because the toughest man in the Cache country could get a meal , a feed for his horse , and a place to sleep at Baggs 's , without charge , when he needed it . Ed Banks , by hard riding , got to the crossing at five o'clock , and told Baggs of the hold-up and the shooting of Oliver Sollers . The news stirred the old engineman , and his excitement threw him off his guard . Banks rode straight on for the middle pass , leaving word that two of his men would be along within half an hour to watch the pass and the ranch crossing , and asking Baggs to put up some kind of a fight for the crossing until more of the _ posse _ came up -- at the least , to make sure that nobody got any fresh horses . The boy was cooking supper in the kitchen , and Baggs had done his milking and gone back to the corral , when two men rode around the corner of the barn and asked if they could get something to eat .