about eleven o'clock
Then Cranston and the other troop leaders got to working down toward the agency and , during the rests , moving close up to the corral and watching the riding-school . It was capital work , said Cranston and his contemporaries , though some jealous youngsters used to say to their cynical selves that Parson probably `` put up a prayer-meeting as a stand-off . '' McPhail and his people began to come out and look on , and Mira to watch from the window , for she still trembled and shrank at sight of the savage painted faces and glittering eyes of the Indians , and equally shrank from meeting the Cranstons . But presently Mrs. Cranston and other women came driving over in their ambulances , the generic term by which army carriages were known in the days when a provident Congress first began curtailing the transportation facilities of the line where , _ sous entendu _ , all great reformatory experiments were tried , the staff being , of course , beyond even congressional suspicion , and so it resulted that about eleven o'clock every fine day the biggest gathering of the people , red and white , in all the broad valley of the Chasing Water , as far east as its confluence with the shadowy Niobrara and thence to the shores of the Big Muddy , was that to be found about the rectangular space where the Parson held forth to his faithful squad . Now , McPhail came back to his recaptured children with conciliation for his watchword , willing , eager to shake hands with one and all from Red Dog down , or up , according to the proper plane of that warrior on the scale of merit ; but as he noted the humility of bearing exhibited by all except a truculent few , and the evident awe with which even these looked upon the stern and taciturn commander of his guard , the agent began , like Mulvaney after his fifth drink , `` to think scornful av elephints , '' in other words , of the red wards of his bailiwick , and with McPhail to `` think scornful '' was to act . Just in proportion as he was meek and cringing before did he become arrogant and abusive now . There was no Boynton on hand to warn him with what he termed brutal bluntness that he was tempting Providence again .