noon
He slept on his arms the heavy sleep of utter weariness , which Little Kemper 's bugle call broke at three o'clock the next morning . Before the August sun had crawled over the eastern horizon the armies were swinging up the Peiho river toward Peking . The American troops were leading the column now , as Thaine Aydelot had wished they might , and in all that followed after the day at Peit-Tsang the Stars and Stripes , brave token of a brave people , floated above the front lines of soldiery , even to the end of the struggle . It was high noon above the Orient , where the Peiho flows beside the populous town of Yang-Tsun . The Boxer army routed by the battle of Peit-Tsang had massed its front before the town , a formidable array in numbers , equipment , and frenzied eagerness to halt here and forever the poor little line of foreign soldiers creeping in upon it from the sea . The Boxers knew that they could match the fighting strength of this line with quadruple force . The troops coming toward them had marched twelve miles under the August heat of a hundred degrees , through sand and alkali dust , in the heavy humid air saturated with evil odors .