midnight
The money burned in their pockets , but as they stood looking out at the long , beautiful Yankee Bar its appeal went home . For more than a hundred years generations of pirates had used there , and no one knows how many tragedies have left their stain in the great band around from Gold Dust Landing to Chickasaw Bluffs No. 1 . After dark they rowed over to the point and put out their decoys , dug their pits , screened them , and brushed over their tracks in the sand . Then they played cards till midnight , turned in for a little sleep , and turned out again in the black morning to go to their places with repeating shotguns and cripple-killer rifles in their hands . When they were in their places , and the river silence prevailed , they saw the stars overhead , the reflections on sand and water around them , and the quivering change as air currents moved in the dark -- the things that walk in the night . They heard , at intervals , many voices . Some they knew as the fluent music of migrant geese flying over on long laps of their fall flight , but some they did not know , except that they were river voices .