noon
After about two hours of this one-sided joke , as I rode over a little hill , I looked out of the corner of my eye back at my escort , still about a quarter of a mile behind me . One of them noticed me and raised his gun , but I instantly changed my view , and the moment the hill hid me , put spurs to my horse , so that when they reached the brow of the hill , I was half a mile in the lead , burning the earth like a canned dog . They threw lead close around me , but my horse lengthened the distance between us for the next five miles , when they dropped entirely out of sight . By noon I came into the old stage road , and by the middle of the afternoon reached home after over sixty miles in the saddle without a halt . '' Just at the conclusion of Bull 's story , Flood rode in from the herd , and after picketing his horse , joined the circle . In reply to an inquiry from one of the boys as to how the cattle were resting , he replied , -- `` This herd is breaking into trail life nicely . If we 'll just be careful with them now for the first month , and no bad storms strike us in the night , we may never have a run the entire trip .