ten o'clock
Lessard had created a damnatory piece of evidence against himself by lifting the post funds ; that in itself would bear witness to the truth of our story . It might take the authorities a while to get the proper focus on the tangle , but we could stand that , seeing that we had won against staggering odds . From the mouth of Sage Creek to Fort Walsh it is a fraction over fifty miles , across comparatively flat country . By the time our breakfast was done we calculated it to be ten o'clock . We had the half of a long mid-summer day to make it . So , partly because we might find the full fifty miles an ash-strewn waste , fodderless , blackened , where an afternoon halt would be a dreary sojourn , and partly for the sake of the three good horses we had pushed so unmercifully through the early hours of the night , we laid on the grassy river-bottom till noon . Then we packed , placed the sullen captives in the saddle with hands lashed stoutly , mounted our horses and recrossed the river .