noon
As it grew nearer and nearer , it grew grayer , a changing mass of white and black that fused , in the obscurity , into a shadow color ; a dense array of men and horses flitting noiselessly like spirits , and as though guided alone by one rein and moved alone by one breath and one will ; not a bit champed , not a linen-fold loosened , not a shiver of steel was heard ; as silently as the winds of the desert sweep up northward over the plains , so they rode now , host upon host of the warriors of the soil . The outlying vedettes , the advancing sentinels , had scrutinized so long through the night every wavering shade of cloud and moving form of buffalo in the dim distance , that their sleepless eyes , strained and aching , failed to distinguish this moving mass that was so like the brown plains and starless sky that it could scarce be told from them . The night , too , was bitter ; northern cold cut hardly chillier than this that parted the blaze of one hot day from the blaze of another . The sea-winds were blowing cruelly keen , and men who at noon gladly stripped to their shirts , shivered now where they lay under canvas . Awake while his comrades slept around him , Cecil was stretched , half unharnessed . The foraging duty of the past twenty-four hours had been work harassing and heavy , inglorious and full of fatigue . The country round was bare as a table-rock ; the water-courses poor , choked with dust and stones , unfed as yet by the rains or snows of the approaching winter .