three
o'clock
Back behind the little cabin old Mike sat calmly smoking his black dudheen , apparently utterly oblivious to all the world save the bound and cursing Swede he was vigilantly guarding , and whose spirits he occasionally refreshed with some choice bit of Hibernian philosophy . Beneath the flaring gleam of numerous gasoline torches , half a dozen men constantly passed and repassed between shaft-house and dump heap , casting weird shadows along the rough planking , and occasionally calling to each other , their gruff voices clear in the still night . Every now and then those two silent watchers could hear the dismal clank of the windlass chain , and a rattle of ore on the dump , when the huge buckets were hoisted to the surface and emptied of their spoil . Once -- it must have been after three o'clock -- other men seemed suddenly to mingle among those perspiring surface workers and the unmistakable neigh of a horse came faintly from out the blackness of a distant thicket . The two lying in the chaparral rose to their knees , bending anxiously forward . Brown drew back the hammer of his rifle , while Hicks swore savagely under his breath . But those new figures vanished in some mysterious way before either could decide who they might be -- into the shaft-house , or else beyond , where denser shadows intervened .