eleven o'clock
Glover 's train pulled into Medicine Bend , in the rain , at half-past two o'clock . The face in the Lalla Rookh had put an end to thoughts of sleep , and he walked up to his office in the Wickiup to work until morning on his report . He lighted a lamp , opened his desk with a clang that echoed to the last dark corner of the zigzag hall , and , spreading out his papers , resumed the figuring he had begun at Wind River station . But the combinations which at eleven o'clock had gone fast refused now to work . The Lalla Rookh curtains intruded continually into his problems and his calculations dissolved helplessly into an idle stare at a jumble of figures . He got up at last , restless , walked through the trainmaster 's room , into the despatcher 's office , and stumbled on the tragedy of the night . It came about through an ambition in itself honorable -- the ambition of Bud Cawkins to become a train-despatcher .