four o'clock in
the afternoon
The main Santa Fé trail , broad and deeply rutted by the innumerable wheels of early spring caravans , followed the general course of the river , occasionally touching the higher level plains , but mostly keeping close beneath the protection of the northern bluffs , or else skirting the edge of the water . Night or day the route was easily followed , and , in other years , the traveller was seldom for long out of sight of toiling wagons . Now scarcely a wheel turned in all that lonely distance . The west-bound stage left the station at Deer Creek at four o'clock in the afternoon with no intimation of danger ahead . Its occupants had eaten dinner in company with those of the east-bound coach , eighteen miles down the river at Cañon Bluff , and the in-coming driver had reported an open road , and no unusual trouble . No Indian signs had been observed , not even signal fires during the night , and the conductor , who had come straight from Santa Fé , reported that troops from Fort Union had driven the only known bunch of raiders back from the neighborhood of the trail , and had them already safely corralled In the mountains . This report , seemingly authentic and official , served to relax the nerves , and the west-bound driver sang to himself as he guided the four horses forward , while the conductor , a sawed-off gun planted between his knees , nodded drowsily .