Campfire in the Wild West

Three men sit around a fire on open ground, and the whole Milky Way stands over the plain behind them. The man on the right is talking. The other two sit with their hands folded and let him.

On the cattle drives out of Texas after the Civil War, the evening fire was where an outfit came back together. Charles Goodnight put together the first chuck wagon in 1866, on a drive with Oliver Loving, and from then on the cook's fire set the hours.

The cook ran that camp, and his rules were law: nobody rode up on the windward side of the wagon and dusted the food, and nobody ate before he called. Trail lore says that at night he pointed the wagon tongue at the North Star, so that in the dark before breakfast the boss knew which way the herd was headed. The sky in this picture is the one they steered by.

The fire is laid in hot orange strokes, sparks lifting into the dark, and its light reaches only the near side of each man: hat brims, sleeves, folded hands. Everything else is the deep blue of open country at night, with low hills along the horizon and a sky thick with stars.