midnight
Twenty times that day I climbed the windmill tower and looked one way for the outlaws and the other for the train , but got no sight of either . The track was mostly bare as far as I could see , but I knew that even if the chinook had reached so far east many cuts around where Lone Tree had been and west even as far as the last siding , No. 15 , would still be half full of snow and ice which would need a vast deal of shoveling and quarrying before any train could come through . It was growing colder , and after the sun went down it began to freeze . I thought I could easily sit up till midnight , and after it was dark began patrolling the sidewalk like a policeman . The Indian had gone to sleep in his cellar . There was an east wind which felt as if it might bring snow . I was getting so tired that I could scarce drag my feet and was having another fit of the shivers thinking about the outlaws , when suddenly , as I stood in front of Taggart 's , something popped into my head which I had not thought of for almost three months .