I pulled on my clothes hastily, buckled in my buckskin shirt, and
dove for the fire. A dozen others were before me. It was
bitterly cold. In the east the sky had paled the least bit in
the world, but the moon and stars shone on bravely and
undiminished. A band of coyotes was shrieking desperate
blasphemies against the new day, and the stray herd, awakening,
was beginning to bawl and bellow.
Two crater-like dutch ovens, filled with pieces of fried beef,
stood near the fire; two galvanised water buckets, brimming
with soda biscuits, flanked them; two tremendous coffee pots
stood guard at either end. We picked us each a tin cup and a tin
plate from the box at the rear of the chuck wagon; helped
ourselves from a dutch oven, a pail, and a coffee pot, and
squatted on our heels as close to the fire as possible. Men who
came too late borrowed the shovel, scooped up some coals, and so
started little fires of their own about which new groups formed.
While we ate, the eastern sky lightened. The mountains under the
dawn looked like silhouettes cut from slate-coloured paper; those
in the west showed faintly luminous. Objects about us became
dimly visible. We could make out the windmill, and the adobe of
the ranch houses, and the corrals.
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