Explore "The Trail-Hunter" by Gustave Aimard on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
About half a league to the west of Santa Fe three men and a woman were seated behind a dense clump of trees, which sheltered while rendering them unseen, over a _bois-de-vache_ fire, supping with good appetite, and chatting together. The three men were Red Cedar's sons; the female was Ellen. The maiden was pale and sad: her dreamy eye wandered around with a distraught expression. She listened hardly to what her brothers said, and would certainly have been greatly embarrassed to describe the conversation, for her mind was elsewhere.
"Hum! " Sutter said, "what the deuce can keep the old one so long? He told us he should be back by four o'clock at the latest; but the sun is just disappearing on the horizon, and he has not come yet."