five o'clock
Ralph 's face grew very pale . `` Father is right in the midst of them , with only fifty men ! '' It was a lovely June morning when the Fifth Cavalry started on its march . Camp was struck at daybreak , and soon after five o'clock , while the sun was still low in the east and the dew-drops were sparkling on the buffalo grass , the long column was winding up the bare , rolling `` divide '' which lay between the valleys of Crow and Lodge Pole Creeks . In plain view , only thirty miles away to the west , were the summits of the Rocky Mountains , but such is the altitude of this upland prairie , sloping away eastward between the two forks of the Platte River , that these summits appear to be nothing more than a low range of hills shutting off the western horizon . Looking southward from the Laramie road , all the year round one can see the great peaks of the range -- Long 's and Hahn 's and Pike 's -- glistening in their mantles of snow , and down there near them , in Colorado , the mountains slope abruptly into the Valley of the South Platte . Up here in Wyoming the Rockies go rolling and billowing far out to the east , and the entire stretch of country , from what are called the `` Black Hills of Wyoming , '' in contradistinction to the Black Hills of Dakota , far east as the junction of the forks of the Platte , is one vast inclined plane .