about three o'clock
The wind came up suddenly and strongly about midnight , and the locusts decided to take advantage of it and sail away after better grass , but they did not leave any behind them . They set out for the nearest white settlements in hope of getting corn and apple-tree leaves , and all that sort of thing . The band of Nez Percés would have moved away the next morning under any circumstances , but when morning came they were in a terribly bad predicament . Not one of them carried a watch , or he might have known that it was about three o'clock , and very dark , when a worse disaster than the visit of the locusts took place . By five or six minutes past three it was all done completely , and it was the work of a wicked old mule . All but a half a dozen of the ponies and mules of the band had been gathered and tethered in what is called a `` corral , '' only that it had no fence , at a short distance from the lodges . Nobody dreamed of any danger to that corral , and there was none from the outside , even after the boys who were set to watch it had curled down and gone to sleep .