four o'clock in the afternoon
I 've reckoned mebbe she was a little crazy , and since you 've told me that Spanish yarn , it mout be that she was sort o ' playin ' she was that priest , and trained that mustang ez she did . '' After a pause , something of his old self came back into his blue eyes as he sadly hitched up his braces and passed them over his broad shoulders . `` Yes , sir , I was a fool , for we 've lost the only bit of real sensation news that ever came in the way of the ` Clarion . ' '' It was four o'clock in the afternoon , and the hottest hour of the day on that Sierran foothill . The western sun , streaming down the mile-long slope of close-set pine crests , had been caught on an outlying ledge of glaring white quartz , covered with mining tools and debris , and seemed to have been thrown into an incandescent rage . The air above it shimmered and became visible . A white canvas tent on it was an object not to be borne ; the steel-tipped picks and shovels , intolerable to touch and eyesight , and a tilted tin prospecting pan , falling over , flashed out as another sun of insufferable effulgence .