ten P.M.
Two came in during their long conference in the afternoon , and the quartermaster had lowered his hand long enough from that lurid welt on his sallow cheek to hurriedly write two or three in reply . One Folsom felt sure was sent in cipher . Two days before , Burleigh had urged him to protest as vehemently as he could against the sending of any money or any small detachment up to the Big Horn , and protested he had strenuously . Two days before , Burleigh said it was as bad as murder to order a paymaster or disbursing officer to the Hills with anything less than a battalion to escort him , and yet within four hours after he was put in possession of nearly all the paper currency in the local bank a secret order was issued sending Lieutenant Dean with ten picked men to slip through the passes to the Platte , away from the beaten road , and up to ten P.M. Dean himself was kept in ignorance of his further destination or the purpose of his going . Not until half-past ten was a sealed package placed in his hands by the post quartermaster , who had himself received it from Major Burleigh and then and there the young officer was bidden by Colonel Stevens , as the medium of the department commander , to ride with all haste commensurate with caution , to ford the Sweetwater above its junction with the Platte , to travel by night if need be and hide by day if he could , to let no man or woman know the purpose of his going or the destination of his journey , but to land that package safe at Warrior Gap before the moon should wane . And all this Burleigh must have known when he , John Folsom , shook his hand at parting after tea that evening , and had then gone hopefully to drive his girls to Emory to see his soldier boy , and found him busy with the sudden orders , received not ten minutes before their coming . Something in Burleigh 's almost tremulous anxiety to get that money in the morning , his ill-disguised chagrin at Folsom 's refusal , something in the eagerness with which , despite the furious denunciation of the moment before , he jumped at Folsom 's offer to put up the needed money if he would withhold the threatened charges -- all came back to the veteran now and had continued to keep him thinking during the night .