midnight
Straight on through the moonlight rode the two men , the one trying to make real the words that marched with ceaseless tramp across his brain : `` Doctors hold out no hope of recovery . '' They seemed like words of fire written across the prairie . The other , riding a little behind , except where the trail grew difficult or indistinct , silent but alert for opportunity to offer aid or show sympathy , governing carefully the pace so that the best possible speed could be got out of the superb animals that with their swinging lope covered the long slopes up and down . The memory of that ride to Shock in after years was like that of a ghastly nightmare , a strange intermingling of moonlight and shadow ; the murmur of the night wind about his ears ; the steady beat of the hoofs upon the beaten trail ; the pause at midnight by the upper ford of the Black Dog to feed and rest their horses ; and then the steady onward push through the night till the grey and gold of the eastern sky told that the morning had come . He could never forget how the first beams of the rising sun smote his eyes like the cut of a whip till he was almost forced to cry out in his pain . He remembered how it seemed to him as if he were in the grip of some mysterious force impelling him onward in that unending , relentless lope . Another pause at sunrise to give the horses breath , and then on again they rode through that terrible red light of the rising sun , till at length in the still early forenoon the manse of Big River was reached .