midnight
Andy looked up at him with the blank stare of preoccupation , and changed expression as the question filtered into his brain and fitted somehow into the puzzle . He grinned , said maybe he would , folded the sheet of paper filled with what looked like a meaningless jumble of letters and figures , bought a plat of that township and begged some government pamphlets , and went out humming a little tune just above a whisper . At the door he tilted his hat down at an angle over his right eye and took long , eager steps toward an obscure hotel and his meagre baggage . There was no train going east until midnight , and he caught that train . This time he actually got off at Dry Lake , ate a hurried breakfast , got his horse out of the livery stable and dug up the dust of the lane with rapid hoof-beats so that he rode all the way to the first hill followed by a rolling , gray cloud that never quite caught him . When he rode down the Hog 's Back he saw the Happy Family bunched around some object on the creek-bank , and he heard the hysterical screaming of the Kid up in the house , and saw the Old Man limping excitedly up and down the porch . A man less astute than Andy Green would have known that some thing had happened .