noon
At first , an interval of hushed and awed restraint when he and Susy were kept apart , a strange and artificial interest taken little note of by him , but afterwards remembered when others had forgotten it ; the burial of Mrs. Silsbee beneath a cairn of stones , with some ceremonies that , simple though they were , seemed to usurp the sacred rights of grief from him and Susy , and leave them cold and frightened ; days of frequent and incoherent childish outbursts from Susy , growing fainter and rarer as time went on , until they ceased , he knew not when ; the haunting by night of that morning vision of the three or four heaps of ragged clothes on the ground and a half regret that he had not examined them more closely ; a recollection of the awful loneliness and desolation of the broken and abandoned wagon left behind on its knees as if praying mutely when the train went on and left it ; the trundling behind of the fateful wagon in which Mrs. Silsbee 's body had been found , superstitiously shunned by every one , and when at last turned over to the authorities at an outpost garrison , seeming to drop the last link from the dragging chain of the past . The revelation to the children of a new experience in that brief glimpse of the frontier garrison ; the handsome officer in uniform and belted sword , an heroic , vengeful figure to be admired and imitated hereafter ; the sudden importance and respect given to Susy and himself as `` survivors '' ; the sympathetic questioning and kindly exaggerations of their experiences , quickly accepted by Susy -- all these , looking back upon them afterwards , seemed to have passed in a dream . No less strange and visionary to them seemed the real transitions they noted from the moving train . How one morning they missed the changeless , motionless , low , dark line along the horizon , and before noon found themselves among the rocks and trees and a swiftly rushing river . How there suddenly appeared beside them a few days later a great gray cloud-covered ridge of mountains that they were convinced was that same dark line that they had seen so often . How the men laughed at them , and said that for the last three days they had been CROSSING that dark line , and that it was HIGHER than the great gray-clouded range before them , which it had always hidden from their view ! How Susy firmly believed that these changes took place in her sleep , when she always `` kinder felt they were crawlin ' up , '' and how Clarence , in the happy depreciation of extreme youth , expressed his conviction that they `` were n't a bit high , after all . ''