five o'clock in
the afternoon
The sun was low when the wife of a section boss on a lonely railroad huddled her unavailable progeny behind her and said : `` There 's a woman that 's just took charge of the railroad eatin ' house down at Granite Junction . I hear she 's got a little boy . Maybe she might let him go . '' Trinidad pulled up his mules at Granite Junction at five o'clock in the afternoon . The train had just departed with its load of fed and appeased passengers . On the steps of the eating house they found a thin and glowering boy of ten smoking a cigarette . The dining-room had been left in chaos by the peripatetic appetites .