an hour after midnight
It was the last attempt of the week . For , from dawn until the sun was an hour high , the watchers watched in vain . Three signal glasses , telescope and binocular , were trained upon the heights and no one of them caught the faintest spark of reflected light . The nearest approach to a signal was seen by a corporal of the guard and sentry Number Six an hour after midnight , when , in quick succession , two faint , firefly flashes , unrepeated , were visible afar out due east of the Picacho , and they could have been caused in only two ways -- somebody experimenting with a mirror and the moonbeams , the moon being then about three hours high and three-quarters full , or else , as they were ruddier than moonshine , somebody taking two quick shots , probably at somebody else . The corporal counted seconds up to twenty and more , and even in that breathless silence , heard not a sound to warrant the belief . Yet a few hours later that sun-blistered morning , the bookkeeper Case `` blew in for a bottle , '' as he expressed it ; remarked with engaging frankness that he believed he had still a day or so in which to taper , and would be home and on deck if the Apaches did n't get him meantime ; and , being delicately invited to state where he had spent the night , replied as frankly as before , `` Down at José Sanchez 's , '' meaning thereby the down-stream resort two miles distant , where prospectors , packers and occasionally men from the post , in peace times , at least , went for unlimited mescal and monte . Since the death of Comes Flying , the disappearance of ` Patchie Sanchez -LRB- the runner , half-brother to Sanchez , the gambler -RRB- , and the general outbreak among the Indians , it had been shunned as utterly unsafe , and reported abandoned .