about midnight
The makeshifts of poverty were seldom if ever the subject of ridicule or comment , for most had a sympathetic understanding of the emergencies which made them necessary . Kindness , helpfulness , good-fellowship were in the air . When Ephriam Baskitt loomed up on the horizon with two freight wagons filled with the dust-covered canned goods of a defunct grocery store and twenty-four hours later was a fixture , nobody saw anything humorous in the headline in the _ Courier _ which heralded him as `` The Merchant Prince of Crowheart . '' Two new saloons opened while `` Curly '' resigned as chef for the Lazy S Outfit to become the orchestra in a new dance hall which arrived about midnight in a prairie schooner . As Dr. Harpe made friends with the newcomers and continued to ingratiate herself with the old , she sometimes felt that the death of Alice Freoff was not after all the tragedy it had at first seemed . She missed the woman -- not the woman so much either , as the association -- and there was no one in Crowheart to fill her place , so she was frequently lonely , often bored , with the intensely practical , unsophisticated women whom she attracted strongly . Sometimes she thought of Augusta Kunkel and a derisive smile always curved her lips as she attempted to picture her in a worldly setting and the smile grew when she tried to imagine Symes 's sensations while presenting her to his friends .