midnight
Sims cast a practiced eye over the sides of the swelling hills , where already two thousand animals , the second consignment , were feeding . It was now a week since he had met Bud Larkin after the stampede , and he was worried over the non-appearance of his chief . Here , in the hills of the southern hook of the Big Horn Mountains , he had fed the second flock up one valley and down the next , waiting for Larkin 's arrival or some word from him . Hurrying south after that midnight meeting , he had reached his destination just in time to check the advance of the second two thousand that had come the night before . Knowing the hard march north , but ignorant of the conditions now prevailing on the Bar T range , he had hesitated to expose more of Larkin 's animals to ruin . The arrival of this third flock complicated matters in the extreme , since the feeding-ground became constantly farther away from the original rendezvous . He looked in the direction indicated by the herder and saw the cloud of dust that betokened the advance of the new flock .