nine o'clock in the evening
Mrs. Kronborg had been looking forward to this excursion for a long while , but as Ray never knew at what hour his freight would leave Moonstone , it was difficult to arrange . The call-boy was as likely to summon him to start on his run at twelve o'clock midnight as at twelve o'clock noon . The first week in June started out with all the scheduled trains running on time , and a light freight business . Tuesday evening Ray , after consulting with the dispatcher , stopped at the Kronborgs ' front gate to tell Mrs. Kronborg -- who was helping Tillie water the flowers -- that if she and Thea could be at the depot at eight o'clock the next morning , he thought he could promise them a pleasant ride and get them into Denver before nine o'clock in the evening . Mrs. Kronborg told him cheerfully , across the fence , that she would `` take him up on it , '' and Ray hurried back to the yards to scrub out his car . The one complaint Ray 's brakemen had to make of him was that he was too fussy about his caboose . His former brakeman had asked to be transferred because , he said , `` Kennedy was as fussy about his car as an old maid about her bird-cage . ''