seven o'clock
An immense distance under the sky crouched the village of Fish , minute , dismal , and forgotten . There were twelve men , so it was said , in the village of Fish , twelve sombre and inexplicable souls who sucked a lean milk from the almost literally bare rock upon which a mysterious populatory force had begotten them . They had become a race apart , these twelve men of Fish , like some species developed by an early whim of nature , which on second thought had abandoned them to struggle and extermination . Out of the blue-black bruise in the distance crept a long line of moving lights upon the desolation of the land , and the twelve men of Fish gathered like ghosts at the shanty depot to watch the passing of the seven o'clock train , the Transcontinental Express from Chicago . Six times or so a year the Transcontinental Express , through some inconceivable jurisdiction , stopped at the village of Fish , and when this occurred a figure or so would disembark , mount into a buggy that always appeared from out of the dusk , and drive off toward the bruised sunset . The observation of this pointless and preposterous phenomenon had become a sort of cult among the men of Fish . To observe , that was all ; there remained in them none of the vital quality of illusion which would make them wonder or speculate , else a religion might have grown up around these mysterious visitations .