“The Buffalo”

(from Green Hills of Africa)

We stood now in the shade of trees with great smooth trunks, circled at their base with the line of roots that showed in rounded ridges up the trunks like arteries; the trunks the yellow green of a French forest on a day in winter after rain. But these trees had a great spread of branches and were in leaf and below them, in the stream bed in the sun, reeds like papyrus grass grew thick as wheat and twelve feet tall. There was a game trail through the grass along the stream and Droopy was bent down looking at it. M’Cola went over and looked and they both followed it a little way, stooped close over it, then came back to us.

“Nyati,” M’Cola whispered. “Buffalo.” Droopy whispered to Pop and then Pop said, softly in his throaty, whiskey whisper, “They’re buff gone down the river. Droop says there are some big bulls. They haven’t come back.”

“Let’s follow them,” I said. “I’d rather get another buff than rhino.”

“It’s as good a chance as any for rhino, too,” Pop said.

“By God, isn’t it a great looking country?” I said.

“Splendid,” Pop said. “Who would have imagined it?”

“The trees are like André’s pictures,” P. O. M. said. “It’s simply beautiful. Look at that green. It’s Masson. Why can’t a good painter see this country?”

“How are your boots?”

“Fine.”

As we trailed the buffalo we went very slowly and quietly. There was no wind and we knew that when the breeze came up it would be from the east and blow up the canyon toward us. We followed the game trail down the river-bed and as we went the grass was much higher. Twice we had to get down to crawl and the reeds were so thick you could not see two feet into them. Droop found a fresh rhino track, too, in the mud. I began to think about what would happen if a rhino came barging along this tunnel and who would do what. It was exciting but I did not like it. It was too much like being in a trap and there was P. O. M. to think about. Then as the stream made a bend and we came out of the high grass to the bank I smelled game very distinctly. I do not smoke, and hunting at home I have several times smelled elk in the rutting season before I have seen them and I can smell clearly where an old bull has lain in the forest. The bull elk has a strong musky smell. It is a strong but pleasant odor and I know it well, but this smell I did not know.

“I can smell them,” I whispered to Pop. He believed me.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know but it’s plenty strong. Can’t you?”

“No.”

“Ask Droop.”

Droopy nodded and grinned.

“They take snuff,” Pop said. “I don’t know whether they can scent or not.”

We went on into another bed of reeds that were high over our heads, putting each foot down silently before lifting the other, walking as quietly as in a dream or a slow motion picture. I could smell whatever it was clearly now, all of the time, sometimes stronger than at others. I did not like it at all. We were close to the bank now, and, ahead the game trail went straight out into a long slough of higher reeds than any we had come through.

“I can smell them close as hell,” I whispered to Pop. “No kidding. Really.”

“I believe you,” Pop said. “Should we get up here onto the bank and skirt this bit? We’ll be above it.”

“Good.” Then, when we were up, I said, “That tall stuff had me spooked. I wouldn’t like to hunt in that.”

“How’d you like to hunt elephant in that?” Pop whispered.

“I wouldn’t do it.”

“Do you really hunt elephant in grass like that?” P. O. M. asked.

“Yes,” Pop said. “Get up on somebody’s shoulders to shoot.”

Better men than I am do it, I thought. I wouldn’t do it.

We went along the grassy right bank, on a sort of shelf, now in the open, skirting a slough of high dry reeds. Beyond on the opposite bank were the heavy trees and above them the steep bank of the canyon. You could not see the stream. Above us, on the right, were the hills, wooded in patches of orchard bush. Ahead, at the end of the slough of reeds the banks narrowed and the branches of the big trees almost covered the stream. Suddenly Droopy grabbed me and we both crouched down. He put the big gun in my hand and took the Springfield. He pointed and around a curve in the bank I saw the head of a rhino with a long, wonderful-looking horn. The head was swaying and I could see the ears forward and twitching, and see the little pig eyes. I slipped the safety catch and motioned Droopy down. Then I heard M’Cola saying, “Toto! Toto!” and he grabbed my arm. Droopy was whispering, “Manamouki! Manamouki! Manamouki!” very fast and he and M’Cola were frantic that I should not shoot. It was a cow rhino with a calf and as I lowered the gun, she gave a snort, crashed in the reeds, and was gone. I never saw the calf. We could see the reeds swaying where the two of them were moving and then it was all quiet.

“Damn shame,” Pop whispered. “She had a beautiful horn.”

“I was all set to bust her,” I said. “I couldn’t tell she was a cow.”

“M’Cola saw the calf.”

M’Cola was whispering to Pop and nodding his head emphatically.

“He says there’s another rhino in there,” Pop said. “That he heard him snort.”

“Let’s get higher, where we can see them if they break, and throw something in,” I said.

“Good idea,” Pop agreed. “Maybe the bull’s there.”

We went a little higher up the bank where we could look out over the lake of high reeds and, with Pop holding his big gun ready and I with the safety off mine, M’Cola threw a club into the reeds where he had heard the snort. There was a wooshing snort and no movement, not a stir in the reeds. Then there was a crashing further away and we could see the reeds swaying with the rush of something through them toward the opposite bank, but could not see what was making the movement. Then I saw the black back, the wide-swept, point-lifted horns and then the quick-moving, climbing rush of a buffalo up the other bank. He went up, his neck up and out, his head horn-heavy, his withers rounded like a fighting bull, in fast strong-legged climb. I was holding on the point where his neck joined his shoulder when Pop stopped me.

“He’s not a big one,” he said softly. “I wouldn’t take him unless you want him for meat.”

He looked big to me and now he stood, his head up, broadside, his head swung toward us.

“I’ve got three more on the license and we’re leaving their country,” I said.

“It’s awfully good meat,” Pop whispered. “Go ahead then. Bust him. But be ready for the rhino after you shoot.”

I sat down, the big gun feeling heavy and unfamiliar, held on the buff’s shoulder, squeezed off and flinched without firing. Instead of the sweet clean pull of the Springfield with the smooth, unhesitant release at the end, this trigger came to what, in a squeeze, seemed metal stuck against metal. It was like when you shoot in a nightmare. I couldn’t squeeze it and I corrected from my flinch, held my breath, and pulled the trigger. It pulled off with a jerk and the big gun made a rocking explosion out of which I came, seeing the buffalo still on his feet, and going out of sight to the left in a climbing run, to let off the second barrel and throw a burst of rock dust and dirt over his hind quarters. He was out of shot before I could reload the double-barrelled .470 and we had all heard the snorting and the crashing of another rhino that had gone out of the lower end of the reeds and on under the heavy trees on our side without showing more than a glimpse of his bulk in the reeds.

“It was the bull,” Pop said. “He’s gone down the stream.”

“N’Dio. Doumi! Doumi!” Droopy insisted it was a bull.

“I hit the damned buff,” I said. “God knows where. To hell with those heavy guns. The trigger pull put me off.”

“You’d have killed him with the Springfield,” Pop said.

“I’d know where I hit him anyway. I thought with the four-seventy I’d kill him or miss him,” I said. “Instead, now we’ve got him wounded.”

“He’ll keep,” Pop said. “We want to give him plenty of time.”

“I’m afraid I gut-shot him.”

“You can’t tell. Going off fast like that he might be dead in a hundred yards.”

“The hell with that four-seventy,” I said. “I can’t shoot it. The trigger’s like the last turn of the key opening a sardine can.”

“Come on,” Pop said. “We’ve got God knows how many rhino scattered about here.”

“What about the buff?”

“Plenty of time for him later. We must let him stiffen up. Let him get sick.”

“Suppose we’d been down in there with all that stuff coming out.”

“Yes,” said Pop.

All this in whispers. I looked at P. O. M. She was like some one enjoying a good musical show.

“Did you see where it hit him?”

“I couldn’t tell,” she whispered. “Do you suppose there are any more in there?”

“Thousands,” I said. “What do we do, Pop?”

“That bull may be just around the bend,” Pop said. “Come on.”

We went along the bank, our nerves cocked, and as we came to the narrow end of the reeds there was another rush of something heavy through the tall stalks. I had the gun up waiting for whatever it was to show. But there was only the waving of the reeds. M’Cola signalled with his hand not to shoot.

“The goddamned calf,” Pop said. “Must have been two of them. Where’s the bloody bull?”

“How the hell do you see them?”

“Tell by the size.”

Then we were standing looking down into the stream bed, into the shadows under the branches of the big trees, and off ahead down the stream when M’Cola pointed up the hill on our right.

“Faro,” he whispered and reached me the glasses.

There on the hillside, head-on, wide, black, looking straight toward us, ears twitching and head lifted, swaying as the nose searched for the wind, was another rhino. He looked huge in the glasses. Pop was studying him with his binoculars.

“He’s no better than what you have,” he said softly.

“I can bust him right in the sticking place,” I whispered.

“You only have one more,” Pop whispered. “You want a good one.”

I offered the glasses to P. O. M.

“I can see him without,” she said. “He’s huge.”

“He may charge,” Pop said. “Then you’ll have to take him.”

Then, as we watched, another rhino came into sight from behind a wide feathery-topped tree. He was quite a bit smaller.

“By God, it’s a calf,” Pop said. “That one’s a cow. Good thing you didn’t shoot her. She bloody well may charge too.”

“Is it the same cow?” I whispered.

“No. That other one had a hell of a horn.”

We all had the nervous exhilaration, like a laughing drunk, that a sudden over-abundance, idiotic abundance of game makes. It is a feeling that can come from any sort of game or fish that is ordinarily rare and that, suddenly, you find in a ridiculously unbelievable abundance.

“Look at her. She knows there’s something wrong. But she can’t see us or smell us.”

“She heard the shots.”

“She knows we’re here. But she can’t make it out.”

The rhino looked so huge, so ridiculous, and so fine to see, and I sighted on her chest.

“It’s a nice shot.”

“Perfect,” Pop said.

“What are we going to do?” P. O. M. said. She was practical.

“We’ll work around her,” Pop said.

“If we keep low I don’t believe our scent will carry up there once we’re past.”

“You can’t tell,” Pop said. “We don’t want her to charge.”

She did not charge, but dropped her head, finally, and worked up the hill followed by the nearly full-grown calf.

“Now,” said Pop, “we’ll let Droop go ahead and see if he can find the bull’s tracks. We might as well sit down.”

We sat in the shade and Droopy went up one side of the stream and the local guide the other. They came back and said the bull had gone on down.

“Did any one ever see what sort of horn he had?” I asked.

“Droop said he was good.”

M’Cola had gone up the hill a little way. Now he crouched and beckoned.

“Nyati,” he said with his hand up to his face.

“Where?” Pop asked him. He pointed, crouched down, and as we crawled up to him he handed me the glasses. They were a long way away on the jutting ridge of one of the steep hillsides on the far side of the canyon, well down the stream. We could see six, then eight, buffalo, black, heavy necked, the horns shining, standing on the point of a ridge. Some were grazing and others stood, their heads up, watching.

“That one’s a bull,” Pop said, looking through the glasses.

“Which one?”

“Second from the right.”

“They all look like bulls to me.”

“They’re a long way away. That one’s a good bull. Now we’ve got to cross the stream and work down toward them and try to get above them.”

“Will they stay there?”

“No. Probably they’ll work down into this stream bed as soon as it’s hot.”

“Let’s go.”

We crossed the stream on a log and then another log and on the other side, half way up the hillside, there was a deeply worn game trail that graded along the bank under the heavily leafed branches of the trees. We went along quite fast, but walking carefully, and below us, now, the stream bed was covered solidly with foliage. It was still early in the morning but the breeze was rising and the leaves stirred over our heads. We crossed one ravine that came down to the stream, going into the thick bush to be out of sight and stooping as we crossed behind trees in the small open place, then, using the shoulder of the ravine as protection, we climbed so that we might get high up the hillside above the buffalo and work down to them. We stopped in the shelter of the ridge, me sweating heavily and fixing a handkerchief inside the sweatband of my Stetson, and sent Droop ahead to look. He came back to say they were gone. From above we could see nothing of them, so we cut across the ravine and the hillside thinking we might intercept them on their way down into the river bed. The next hillside had been burned and at the bottom of the hill there was a burned area of bush. In the ash dust were the tracks of the buffalo as they came down and into the thick jungle of the stream bed. Here it was too overgrown and there were too many vines to follow them. There were no tracks going down the stream so we knew they were down in that part of the stream bed we had looked down on from the game trail. Pop said there was nothing to do about them in there. It was so thick that if we jumped them we could not get a shot. You could not tell one from another, he said. All you would see would be a rush of black. An old bull would be gray but a good herd bull might be as black as a cow. It wasn’t any good to jump them like that.

It was ten o’clock now and very hot in the open, the sun pegged and the breeze lifted the ashes of the burned-over ground as we walked. Everything would be in the thick cover now. We decided to find a shady place and lie down and read in the cool; to have lunch and kill the hot part of the day.

*   *   *

When they woke up we had lunch of cold sliced tenderloin, bread, and mustard, and a can of plums, and drank the third, and last, bottle of beer. Then we read again and all went to sleep. I woke thirsty and was unscrewing the top from a water bottle when I heard a rhino snort and crash in the brush of the river bed. Pop was awake and heard it too and we took our guns, without speaking, and started toward where the noise had come from. M’Cola found the tracks. The rhino had come up the stream, evidently he had winded us when he was only about thirty yards away, and had gone on up. We could not follow the tracks the way the wind was blowing so we circled away from the stream and back to the edge of the burned place to get above him and then hunted very carefully against the wind along the stream through very thick bush, but we did not find him. Finally Droopy found where he had gone up the other side and on into the hills. From the tracks it did not seem a particularly large one.

We were a long way from camp, at least four hours as we had come, and much of it up-hill going back, certainly there would be that long climb out of the canyon; we had a wounded buffalo to deal with, and when we came out on the edge of the burned country again, we agreed that we should get P. O. M. and get started. It was still hot, but the sun was on its way down and for a good way we would be on the heavily shaded game trail on the high bank above the stream. When we found P. O. M. she pretended to be indignant at our going off and leaving her alone but she was only teasing us.

We started off, Droop and his spearsman in the lead, walking along the shadow of the trail that was broken by the sun through the leaves. Instead of the cool early morning smell of the forest there was a nasty stink like the mess cats make.

“What makes the stink?” I whispered to Pop.

“Baboons,” he said.

A whole tribe of them had gone on just ahead of us and their droppings were everywhere. We came up to the place where the rhinos and the buff had come out of the reeds and I located where I thought the buff had been when I shot. M’Cola and Droopy were casting about like hounds and I thought they were at least fifty yards too high up the bank when Droop held up a leaf.

“He’s got blood,” Pop said. We went up to them. There was a great quantity of blood, black now on the grass, and the trail was easy to follow. Droop and M’Cola trailed one on each side, leaving the trail between them, pointing to each blood spot formally with a long stem of grass. I always thought it would be better for one to trail slowly and the other cast ahead but this was the way they trailed, stooped heads, pointing each dried splash with their grass stems and occasionally, when they picked up the tracks after losing them, stooping to pluck a grass blade or a leaf that had the black stain on it. I followed them with the Springfield, then came Pop, with P. O. M. behind him. Droop carried my big gun and Pop had his. M’Cola had P. O. M.’s Mannlicher slung over his shoulder. None of us spoke and every one seemed to regard it as a pretty serious business. In some high grass we found blood, at a pretty good height on the grass leaves on both sides of the trail where the buff had gone through the grass. That meant he was shot clean through. You could not tell the original color of the blood now, but I had a moment of hoping he might be shot through the lungs. But further on we came on some droppings in the rocks with blood in them and then for a while he had dropped dung wherever he climbed and all of it was blood-spotted. It looked, now, like a gut shot or one through the paunch. I was more ashamed of it all the time.

“If he comes don’t worry about Droopy or the others,” Pop whispered. “They’ll get out of his way. Stop him.”

“Right up the nose,” I said.

“Don’t try anything fancy,” Pop said. The trail climbed steadily, then twice looped back on itself and for a time seemed to wander, without plan, among some rocks. Once it led down to the stream, crossed a rivulet of it and then came back up on the same bank, grading up through the trees.

“I think we’ll find him dead,” I whispered to Pop. That aimless turn had made me see him, slow and hard hit, getting ready to go down.

“I hope so,” Pop said.

But the trail went on, where there was little grass now, and trailing was much slower and more difficult. There were no tracks now that I could see, only the probable line he would take, verified by a shiny dark splatter of dried blood on a stone. Several times we lost it entirely and, the three of us making casts, one would find it, point and whisper “Damu,” and we would go on again. Finally it led down from a rocky hillside with the last of the sun on it, down into the stream bed where there was a long, wide patch of the highest dead reeds that we had seen. These were higher and thicker even than the slough the buff had come out of in the morning and there were several game trails that went into them.

“Not good enough to take the little Memsahib in there,” Pop said.

“Let her stay here with M’Cola,” I said.

“It’s not good enough for the little Memsahib,” Pop repeated. “I don’t know why we let her come.”

“She can wait here. Droop wants to go on.”

“Right you are. We’ll have a look.”

“You wait here with M’Cola,” I whispered over my shoulder.

We followed Droopy into the thick, tall grass that was five feet above our heads, walking carefully on the game trail, stooping forward, trying to make no noise breathing. I was thinking of the buff the way I had seen them when we had gotten the three that time, how the old bull had come out of the bush, groggy as he was, and I could see the horns, the boss coming far down, the muzzle out, the little eyes, the roll of fat and muscle on his thin-haired, gray, scaly-hided neck, the heavy power and the rage in him, and I admired him and respected him, but he was slow, and all the while we shot I felt that it was fixed and that we had him. This was different, this was no rapid fire, no pouring it on him as he comes groggy into the open, if he comes now I must be quiet inside and put it down his nose as he comes with the head out. He will have to put the head down to hook, like any bull, and that will uncover the old place the boys wet their knuckles on and I will get one in there and then must go sideways into the grass and he would be Pop’s from then on unless I could keep the rifle when I jumped. I was sure I could get that one in and jump if I could wait and watch his head come down. I knew I could do that and that the shot would kill him but how long would it take? That was the whole thing. How long would it take? Now, going forward, sure he was in here, I felt the elation, the best elation of all, of certain action to come, action in which you had something to do, in which you can kill and come out of it, doing something you are ignorant about and so not scared, no one to worry about and no responsibility except to perform something you feel sure you can perform, and I was walking softly ahead watching Droopy’s back and remembering to keep the sweat out of my glasses when I heard a noise behind us and turned my head. It was P. O. M. with M’Cola coming on our tracks.

“For God’s sake,” Pop said. He was furious.

We got her back out of the grass and up onto the bank and made her realize that she must stay there. She had not understood that she was to stay behind. She had heard me whisper something but thought it was for her to come behind M’Cola.

“That spooked me,” I said to Pop.

“She’s like a little terrier,” he said. “But it’s not good enough.”

We were looking out over that grass.

“Droop wants to go still,” I said. “I’ll go as far as he will. When he says no that lets us out. After all, I gut-shot the son of a bitch.”

“Mustn’t do anything silly, though.”

“I can kill the son of a bitch if I get a shot at him. If he comes he’s got to give me a shot.”

The fright P. O. M. had given us about herself had made me noisy.

“Come on,” said Pop. We followed Droopy back in and it got worse and worse and I do not know about Pop but about half way I changed to the big gun and kept the safety off and my hand over the trigger guard and I was plenty nervous by the time Droopy stopped and shook his head and whispered “Hapana.” It had gotten so you could not see a foot ahead and it was all turns and twists. It was really bad and the sun was only on the hillside now. We both felt good because we had made Droopy do the calling off and I was relieved as well. What we had followed him into had made my fancy shooting plans seem very silly and I knew all we had in there was Pop to blast him over with the four-fifty number two after I’d maybe miss him with that lousy four-seventy. I had no confidence in anything but its noise any more.

We were back trailing when we heard the porters on the hillside shout and we ran crashing through the grass to try to get to a high enough place to see to shoot. They waved their arms and shouted that the buffalo had come out of the reeds and gone past them and then M’Cola and Droopy were pointing and Pop had me by the sleeve trying to pull me to where I could see them and then, in the sunlight, high up on the hillside against the rocks I saw two buffalo. They shone very black in the sun and one was much bigger than the other and I remember thinking this was our bull and that he had picked up a cow and she had made the pace and kept him going. Droop had handed me the Springfield and I slipped my arm through the sling and sighting, the buff now all seen through the aperture, I froze myself inside and held the bead on the top of his shoulder and as I started to squeeze he started running and I swung ahead of him and loosed off. I saw him lower his head and jump like a bucking horse as he comes out of the chutes and as I threw the shell, slammed the bolt forward and shot again, behind him as he went out of sight, I knew I had him. Droopy and I started to run and as we were running I heard a low bellow. I stopped and yelled at Pop, “Hear him? I’ve got him, I tell you!”

“You hit him,” said Pop. “Yes.”

“Goddamn it, I killed him. Didn’t you hear him bellow?”

“No.”

“Listen!” We stood listening and there it came, clear, a long, moaning, unmistakable bellow.

“By God,” Pop said. It was a very sad noise.

M’Cola grabbed my hand and Droopy slapped my back and all laughing we started on a running scramble, sweating, rushing, up the ridge through the trees and over rocks. I had to stop for breath, my heart pounding, and wiped the sweat off my face and cleaned my glasses.

“Kufa!” M’Cola said, making the word for dead almost explosive in its force. “N’Dio! Kufa!”

“Kufa!” Droopy said grinning.

“Kufa!” M’Cola repeated and we shook hands again before we went on climbing. Then, ahead of us, we saw him, on his back, throat stretched out to the full, his weight on his horns, wedged against a tree. M’Cola put his finger in the bullet hole in the center of the shoulder and shook his head happily.

Pop and P. O. M. came up, followed by the porters.

“By God, he’s a better bull than we thought,” I said.

“He’s not the same bull. This is a real bull. That must have been our bull with him.”

“I thought he was with a cow. It was so far away I couldn’t tell.”

“It must have been four hundred yards. By God, you can shoot that little pipsqueak.”

“When I saw him put his head down between his legs and buck I knew we had him. The light was wonderful on him.”

“I knew you had hit him, and I knew he wasn’t the same bull. So I thought we had two wounded buffalo to deal with. I didn’t hear the first bellow.”

“It was wonderful when we heard him bellow,” P. O. M. said. “It’s such a sad sound. It’s like hearing a horn in the woods.”

“It sounded awfully jolly to me,” Pop said. “By God, we deserve a drink on this. That was a shot. Why didn’t you ever tell us you could shoot?”

“Go to hell.”

“You know he’s a damned good tracker, too, and what kind of a bird shot?” he asked P. O. M.

“Isn’t he a beautiful bull?” P. O. M. asked. “He’s a fine one.

He’s not old but it’s a fine head.”

We tried to take pictures but there was only the little box camera and the shutter stuck and there was a bitter argument about the shutter while the light failed, and I was nervous now, irritable, righteous, pompous about the shutter and inclined to be abused because we could get no picture. You cannot live on a plane of the sort of elation I had felt in the reeds and having killed, even when it is only a buffalo, you feel a little quiet inside. Killing is not a feeling that you share and I took a drink of water and told P. O. M. I was sorry I was such a bastard about the camera. She said it was all right and we were all right again looking at the buff with M’Cola making the cuts for the headskin and we standing close together and feeling fond of each other and understanding everything, camera and all. I took a drink of the whiskey and it had no taste and I felt no kick from it.

“Let me have another,” I said. The second one was all right.

We were going on ahead to camp with the chased-by-a-rhino spearsman as guide and Droop was going to skin out the head and they were going to butcher and cache the meat in trees so the hyenas would not get it. They were afraid to travel in the dark and I told Droopy he could keep my big gun. He said he knew how to shoot so I took out the shells and put on the safety and handing it to him told him to shoot. He put it to his shoulder, shut the wrong eye, and pulled hard on the trigger, and again, and again. Then I showed him about the safety and had him put it on and off and snap the gun a couple of times. M’Cola became very superior during Droopy’s struggle to fire with the safety on and Droopy seemed to get much smaller. I left him the gun and two cartridges and they were all busy butchering in the dusk when we followed the spears-man and the tracks of the smaller buff, which had no blood on them, up to the top of the hill and on our way toward home. We climbed around the tops of valleys, went across gulches, up and down ravines and finally came onto the main ridge, it dark and cold in the evening, the moon not yet up, we plodded along, all tired. Once M’Cola, in the dark, loaded with Pop’s heavy gun and an assortment of water bottles, binoculars, and a musette bag of books, sung out a stream of what sounded like curses at the guide who was striding ahead.

“What’s he say?” I asked Pop.

“He’s telling him not to show off his speed. That there is an old man in the party.”

“Who does he mean, you or himself?”

“Both of us.”

We saw the moon come up, smoky red over the brown hills, and we came down through the chinky lights of the village, the mud houses all closed tight, and the smells of goats and sheep, and then across the stream and up the bare slope to where the fire was burning in front of our tents. It was a cold night with much wind.