midnight before
What the deuce has Colonel Becker 's wife got to do with you -- even if she has golden hair and uses cream-tinted paper soaked in hyacinth ? Confound it -- there ! '' and he released the shining hair from his fingers so that the air currents sent it floating back into the deeper gloom of the cabin . It was midnight before he went to bed . He was up with the first cold gray of dawn . All that day he strode steadily eastward on snowshoes , over the company 's trail to the bay . Two hours before dusk he put up his light tent , gathered balsam for a bed , and built a fire of dry spruce against the face of a huge rock in front of his shelter .