four o'clock
The agency lay but twenty miles distant . The reservation lines came no nearer ; but the fame of the invader 's big maple tom-tom -LRB- we wore still the deep , resonant drum of Bunker Hill and Waterloo , of Jemappes , Saratoga , and Chapultepec , not the modern rattle pan borrowed from Prussia -RRB- , and the trill of his magical pipe had spread abroad throughout Apache land to the end that no higher reward for good behavior could be given by the agent to his swarthy charges than the begged-for _ papel _ permitting them , in lumps of twenty , to trudge through the evening shades to the outskirts of the soldier castle on the _ mesa _ , there to wait the long night through until the soft tinting of the eastward heavens and the twitter of the birdlings in the willows along the stream , gave them courage to begin their timid approach . And this breathless October morning was no exception . The sentry on the northward line , No. 4 , had recognized and passed the post surgeon soon after four o'clock , hastening to hospital in response to a summons from an anxious nurse . Mullins seemed far too feverish . No. 4 as well as No. 5 had noted how long the previous evening Shannon and his men kept raking and searching about the _ mesa _ where Mullins was stabbed in the early morning , and they were in no mood to allow strangers to near them unchallenged . The first shadowy forms to show at the edge had dropped back abashed at the harsh reception accorded them .