midnight before
But their blood was up ; they were determined to outshine everybody else with their tin roof , and they toiled on over the mud and rough ground , although every -LCB- 132 -RCB- little while one of them would make a misstep and both would fall , and the heavy weight would seem to mash them into the ground . `` I do n't wonder old Jake Wilson was proud of his tin roof , '' gasped Si , as he pulled himself out of a mudhole and rolled the tin off him and Shorty . `` If I 'd a tin roof on my barn durned if my daughter should walk home with a man that did n't own a whole section of bottom land and drove o ' mules to boot . '' It was fully midnight before they reached their pen and laid their burden down . They were too tired to do anything more than lay their blankets down on a pile of cedar boughs and go to sleep . The next morning they unrolled their booty and gloated over it . It would make a perfect roof , and they felt it repaid all their toils .