noon
He was a unit in that immense throng that waited impatiently for the hour of noon -- a countless host , stretching along the north on the boundary of the Cherokee Strip , on the south , at the edge of the Cherokee Nation ; on the east , along the Kickapoo and Pottawatomie reservations ; and on the west , blackening the extremity of the Cheyenne and Arapaho countries . He was one of those who , at the discharge of the carbines of the patrolling cavalrymen , joined in the deafening shout raised by men of all conditions and from almost every state in the Union -- a shout as of triumph over the fulfillment of a ten-years ' dream . And , leaning forward on his pony , he was one of the army of conquest that burst upon the desert , on foot , on horseback , and in vehicles of every description , in the mad rush for homes in a land that had never known the incense of the hearth or the civilizing touch of the plow . At noon , a wilderness , at night , a land of tents , and on the morrow , a settled country of furrowed fields . `` Pioneer work is awful quick , nowadays ! '' grumbled Bill Atkins , as Brick concluded . `` It was n't so in my time .