Stoneheart by Gustave Aimard — Read

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. The rays of the sun, falling more and more obliquely, were gradually lengthening the shadows of the trees; the birds were flying to their roosts, and nestling as they could under the foliage, with deafening cries and pipings. A few bands of prairie wolves were showing themselves here and there, snuffing the breeze, and preparing for their nocturnal chase among the tall grasses. At intervals, the lofty antlers of elks and antelopes were suddenly rising from amidst the herbage, the animals quickly throwing back their heads, and commencing a giddy flight into the distance. The sun, close on the verge of the horizon, looked like a globe of red fire behind the trunks of the stately trees. Everything announced the rapid approach of night.

In the virgin forest, about two hundred miles from the _presidio_ of San Lucar, where the last terrible episodes of our story occurred, and in the centre of a vast clearing, two men, habited like the Mexican _gambucinos_, were sitting on buffalo skulls, beside a clear fire which gave forth no smoke. They were Don Estevan Diaz the _mayor domo_, and Luciano Pedralva the _capataz_. They held their rifles across their knees, ready for an emergency, and smoked their maize _pajillos_ in silence. Several _peones_ and _arrieros_ were lying about a few paces off, and baggage mules were greedily munching the rations of Indian corn laid on mats before them. Eight or ten horses were tethered, to prevent their straying, close to a _jacal_ (hut) of branches, the entrance to which was closed with a _zarape_. A _peon_, standing motionless with cocked rifle on the borders of a little brook which meandered round the extremity of the clearing, watched over the common safety.