five o'clock
`` What did I tell you ? '' exclaimed Louise , `` a telegram ! Something has happened already . '' At five o'clock that evening , snow was falling at Medicine Bend , but Callahan , as he studied the weather bulletins , found consolation in the fact that it was not raining , and resting his heels on a table littered with train-sheets he forced the draft on a shabby brier and meditated . There were times when snow had been received with strong words at the Wickiup : but when summer fairly opened Callahan preferred snow to rain as strongly as he preferred genuine Lone Jack to the spurious compounds that flooded the Western market . The chief element of speculation in his evening reflections was as to what was going on west of the range , for Callahan knew through cloudy experience that what happens on one side of a mountain chain is no evidence as to what is doing on the other -- and by species of warm weather depravity that night something was happening west of the range . `` It is curious , '' mused Callahan , as Morrison , the head operator , handed him some McCloud messages -- `` curious , that we get nothing from Sleepy Cat . ''