noon
His home was in South Dakota , and he was now on his return from Fort Meade , at the eastern foot of the Black Hills , and had fully twenty miles to travel , though the sun was low in the horizon , as he well knew , even if it was veiled by the snow vapor . His father 's ranch lay to the north of the Big Cheyenne , and the son was familiar with every foot of the ground , having traversed it many a time , not only on his visits to the fort , but in the numerous hunting excursions of which he was so fond . He could have made the journey by night , when no moon was in the sky , had there been need of doing so , but he decided that it was better to give his pony the rest he required , and to push on at an early hour the next morning . He had eaten nothing since the noon halt , and his youth and vigor gave him a powerful appetite , but he had learned long before that one of the first requisites of the hunter is to learn to endure cold , heat , hunger , and hardship unmurmuringly . But the youth was in so uneasy a mental state that he rode slowly for nearly an hour , debating with himself whether to draw rein or push on . The rumors of trouble among the Sioux were confirmed by his visit to Fort Meade . A spirit of unrest had prevailed for a long time , caused by the machinations of that marplot , Sitting Bull , the harangues of medicine men who proclaimed the coming Messiah , the ghost dances , the eagerness of the young bucks to take the warpath , and the universal belief that the last opportunity for the red men to turn back the advance of the Caucasian race was to be made soon or never .