ten o'clock
A door in the high board fence at the rear of his house shot open just as he was darting through the lane that led to the stable . A woman 's form appeared in the gap -- the last thing that he saw for a dozen hours , for the horse shied violently , hurling the rider headlong to the ground . At three o'clock in the morning , while the stars were still bright in the eastern sky , the little party of troopers , Dean at the irhead , had ridden away from the twinkling lights of camp , and long before sunrise had crossed the first divide to the north , and alternating trot , lope and walk had put miles between them and Fort Emory before the drums of the infantry beat the call for guard mounting . At ten o'clock the party halted under some spreading willows , deep in a cleft of the bold , high hills that rolled away toward the Sweetwater valley . Horses were unsaddled and picketed out to graze . A little cook fire was started close to the spring that fed the tiny brook , trickling away down the narrow ravine , and in a few moments the aroma of coffee and of appetizing slices of bacon greeted the welcoming nostrils of the hungry men . The sun that had risen clear and dazzling was now obscured by heavy masses of clouds , and time and again Dean cast anxious eyes aloft , for a storm seemed sweeping eastward from the distant Wahsatch range , and long before the little command had dived downward from the heights into the depths of this wild , romantic and contracted valley , all the rolling upland toward Green River , far to the west , lay under the pall of heavy and forbidding banks of hurrying vapor .