two in the morning
It was another sample of regulation clothing , and they laughed at it . `` We all know the way it is , '' said Keyser , `` and I 've seen it a big sight worse . Cumnor , I 've a cap I guess will keep your scalp warm till we get back . '' And so at two in the morning F troop left the bunks it had expected to sleep in for some undisturbed weeks , and by four o'clock had eaten its well-known breakfast of bacon and bad coffee , and was following the `` awful old man '' down the north bank of the Boisé , leaving the silent , dead , wooden town of shanties on the other side half a mile behind in the darkness . The mountains south stood distant , ignoble , plain-featured heights , looming a clean-cut black beneath the piercing stars and the slice of hard , sharp-edged moon , and the surrounding plains of sage and dry-cracking weed slanted up and down to nowhere and nothing with desolate perpetuity . The snowfall was light and dry as sand , and the bare ground jutted through it at every sudden lump or knoll . The column moved through the dead polar silence , scarcely breaking it .