three in the afternoon
Briggs had slipped up , absolutely , on the biggest thing in many miles around , by salting and selling a quartz claim here to a man with a modest sum of money . The cove was a placer claim , rich as mud in gold , and with everything needed at hand . Then and there the name of the property was changed from the `` See Saw '' to the `` Laughing Water '' claim . Bostwick arrived in Goldite at three in the afternoon , dressed in prison clothes . He came on a freight wagon , the deliberate locomotion of which had provided ample time for his wrath to accumulate and simmer . His car was forty miles away , empty of gasolene , stripped of all useful accessories , and abandoned where the convicts had compelled him to drive them in their flight . A blacker face than his appeared , with anger and a stubble of beard upon it , could not have been readily discovered .