four o'clock in the morning
While he was railroading he would wear a jumper , thank you ! The wreck that `` caught '' Ray was a very commonplace one ; nothing thrilling about it , and it got only six lines in the Denver papers . It happened about daybreak one morning , only thirty-two miles from home . At four o'clock in the morning Ray 's train had stopped to take water at Saxony , having just rounded the long curve which lies south of that station . It was Joe Giddy 's business to walk back along the curve about three hundred yards and put out torpedoes to warn any train which might be coming up from behind -- a freight crew is not notified of trains following , and the brakeman is supposed to protect his train . Ray was so fussy about the punctilious observance of orders that almost any brakeman would take a chance once in a while , from natural perversity . When the train stopped for water that morning , Ray was at the desk in his caboose , making out his report .