midnight
`` Hell 's fire and little fishes ! '' said Joe Stallings , as we clambered into our saddles to return , `` it 's not supper or breakfast that 's troubling me , but will we get any dinner to-morrow ? That 's a more pregnant question . '' It must have been after midnight when I was awakened by the braying of mules and the rattle of the wagon , to hear the voices of Forrest and McCann , mingled with the rattle of chains as they unharnessed , condemning to eternal perdition the broken country on the north side of the Brazos , between Round Timber ferry and the mouth of Monday Creek . `` I think that when the Almighty made this country on the north side of the Brazos , '' said McCann the next morning at breakfast , `` the Creator must have grown careless or else made it out of odds and ends . There 's just a hundred and one of these dry arroyos that you ca n't see until you are right onto them . They would n't bother a man on horseback , but with a loaded wagon it 's different .