The nearby noise of water attracted a lot of different midges to this area, annoying and pretty boring over the long evenings. Two beautiful horses, left not far from the broken bivouac, seemed to be already sleeping peacefully, twitching their ears in a sweet half-sleep and periodically snorting when especially annoying flies tried to get right into their noses.

Miles, having finished unpacking the things he needed for the night, settled down near the fire, leaning his back on an overturned log that served as a bench for them, and gradually taking out all sorts of things from his pockets, fishing lines, boxes of cartridges, scraps of paper and wooden spools of thread for emergency repairs to clothes, coins and other and other junk that for some reason he carried with him, patted himself on the pockets of his jacket in search of an old, but good lighter to start a fire.

A little further away, the sound of a tin bucket hitting the stone surface of the coast was heard — Paz went down to the river to collect water.