midnight
By devious turnings and breath-taking climbs , the trail finally reached the top at the only point for miles , where it was possible for a horseman to pass up or down . Then began the desert , a great stretch of unlovely sage and lava rock and sand for mile upon mile , to where the distant mountain ridges reached out and halted peremptorily the ugly sweep of it . The railroad gashed it boldly , after the manner of the iron trail of modern industry ; but the trails of the desert dwellers wound through it diffidently , avoiding the rough crest of lava rock where they might , dodging the most aggressive sagebrush and dipping tentatively into hollows , seeking always the easiest way to reach some remote settlement or ranch . Of the men who followed those trails , not one of them but could have ridden straight to the Peaceful Hart ranch in black darkness ; and there were few , indeed , white men or Indians , who could have ridden there at midnight and not been sure of blankets and a welcome to sweeten their sleep . Such was the Peaceful Hart Ranch , conjured from the sage and the sand in the valley of the Snake . There is a saying -- and if it is not purely Western , it is at least purely American -- that the only good Indian is a dead Indian . In the very teeth of that , and in spite of the fact that he was neither very good , nor an Indian -- nor in any sense `` dead '' -- men called Grant Imsen `` Good Indian '' to his face ; and if he resented the title , his resentment was never made manifest -- perhaps because he had grown up with the name , he rather liked it when he was a little fellow , and with custom had come to take it as a matter of course .