midnight
To me this campaign of the Arickaree has always read like a piece of bloody drama , so terrible in its reality , it puts the imagination out of service . We had only one chance for deliverance , we must get the tidings of our dreadful plight to Fort Wallace , a hundred miles away . Jack Stillwell and another brave scout were chosen for the dangerous task . At midnight they left us , moving cautiously away into the black blank space toward the southwest , and making a wide detour from their real line of direction . The Indians were on the alert , and a man must walk as noiselessly as a panther to slip between their guards . The scouts wore blankets to resemble the Indians more closely in the shadows of the night . They made moccasins out of boot tops , that their footprints might tell no story .