nine o'clock
He imagined the boy sitting up there at some coign of vantage on the bluff , admonishing , advising him dryly , while he laughed in his sleeve . It was undeniably funny . Alone , with one of Lighter 's saddle-horses under him , his baggage secured behind the saddle , he might have been threading the dunes of the Columbia now . This incipient slide need not have caused him ten minutes ' delay , and eight , nine o'clock at the latest , would have found him putting up for the night at the hotel in Wenatchee . But here he was hardly over the divide ; it was almost sunset , but he was dragging a buggy by hand around a mountain top . He hoped Foster never would find out what he had paid for these bays -- the team of huskies that had carried him the long trek from Nome to the Aurora mine and on through Rainy Pass had cost less . Still , under the circumstances , would not Foster himself have done the same ?