nine o'clock
I ate the rest of the food and called myself names for ever having left the town . The fires , I knew , were out , and everything invited an attack of the robbers , while I lay crippled in a cold shack two miles away , on the road along which they would come and go . I had been in no greater terror at any time since my troubles began than I was now on this Christmas morning . Perhaps it was nine o'clock when I noticed that Kaiser was acting very peculiarly . He stood in the middle of the room with his head lowered and a scowl on his face . Then I saw the hair on his back slowly begin to rise ; next he growled . I told him to hush , and waited .