about midnight
`` I disremember all that Pickerell done tole me of the way the job was worked , '' continued Jackson , `` but , howsomever , the day the Chink died the one-lunged doctor was in town . Pickerell he 's been a tellin ' him about the mummies they occasionally found out in them cliff dwellers ' ruins in the cañon , and when the Doc meets Pick hangin ' about town that afternoon he suggests carryin ' off the Chink 's body and makin ' a mummy out of it . That hits Pick all right and he did n't let no grass grow under his feet gittin ' ready to do it . `` The night of the body snatchin ' , he gits up about midnight , slips uptown , finds the door of the joss house open and no one watchin ' it . Hurryin ' back to his cabin , he saddles up one mule and slaps a packsaddle on the other , an ' an hour later drifted out of town with a pack on his mule lookin ' for all the world like a long roll of bedding . By noon the next day he reached his den in the cañon , where he and the doctor went to work , and between 'em did a mighty good job of embalmin ' , endin ' it all up with a three months ' smokin ' of the body with green cedar wood . `` Pick ses that then come the tickledest part of the hull job , fer whilst he 's got a mummy all right , he 's got to git it sort of discovered like to make it of any scientific value , an ' he studies the matter aplenty .