词汇：saloon

n. 大厅；酒吧；展览场；公共大厅；大会客室

相关场景

He saw the girl come out of the tent when Gus dismounted. She was just a shape in the twilight. Gus said she wouldn’t talk much, not even to him. Call didn’t intend to try her. He loped a mile or two to the west and put the mare on her lead rope. The sky overhead was still light and there was a little fingernail moon.JAKE SPENT MOST of his days in a place called Bill’s Saloon, a little clapboard place on the Trinity River bluffs. It was a two- story building. The whores took the top story and the gamblers and cowboys used the bottom. From the top floor there were usually cattle in sight trailing north, small herds and large. Once in a while a foreman came in for liquor and met Jake. When they found out he had been north to Montana, some tried to hire him, but Jake just laughed at them. The week after he left, the Hat Creek herd had been a good week. He couldn’t draw a bad card, and by the time the week was over he had a stake enough to last him a month or two.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Now, in the saloon, he remembered Peach’s hints. Maybe Ellie had never liked him. Maybe she had married him for reasons she hadn’t wanted to mention. Thinking about it all made him feel very sad.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“A dern old man beat her and used her hard, and that’s why she run off,” Roscoe elaborated. “Can we go to a saloon? I’d sure fancy a beer.” July took him to a saloon and bought him a beer. Now that he had Roscoe alone he felt curiously reluctant to mention Elmira. Even hearing her name spoken would be painful.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Occasionally Gus would try to get him to claim the boy, but Call wouldn’t. He knew that he probably should, not out of certainty so much as decency, but he couldn’t. It meant an admission he couldn’t make—an admission that he had failed someone. It had never happened in battle, such failure. Yet it had happened in a little room over a saloon, because of a small woman who couldn’t keep her hair fixed. It was strange to him that such a failure could seem so terrible, and yet it did. It was such a torment when he thought of it that he eventually tried to avoid all situations in which women were mentioned—only that way could he keep the matter out of mind for a stretch of time.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Call got his rifle, out of the scabbard and cleaned it, though it was in perfect order. Sometimes the mere act of cleaning a gun, an act he had performed thousands of times, would empty his mind of jarring thoughts and memories—but this time it didn’t work. Gus had jarred him with mention of Maggie, the bitterest memory of his life. She had died in Lonesome Dove some twelve years before, but the memory had lost none of its salt and sting, for what had happened with her had been unnecessary and was now uncorrectable. He had made mistakes in battle and led men to their deaths, but his mind didn’t linger on those mistakes; at least the battles had been necessary, and the men soldiers. He could feel that he hadBut Maggie had not been a fighting man—just a needful young whore, who had for some reason fixed on him as the man who could save her from her own mistakes. Gus had known her first, and Jake, and many other men, whereas he had only visited her out of curiosity to find out what it was that he had heard men talk and scheme about for so long. It turned out not to be much, in his view—a brief, awkward experience, where the pleasure was soon drowned in embarrassment and a feeling of sadness. He ought not to have gone back twice, let alone a third time, yet something drew him back—not so much the need of his own flesh as the helplessness and need of the woman. She had such frightened eyes. He never met her in the saloon but came up the back stairs, usually after dark; she would be standing just inside the door waiting, her face anxious. Some weakness in him brought him back every few nights, for two months or more. He had never said much to her, but she said a lot to him. She had a small, quick voice, almost like a child’s. She would talk constantly, as if to cover his embarrassment at what they had met to do. Some nights he would sit for half an hour, for he came to like her talk, though he had long since forgotten what she had said. But when she talked, her face would relax for a while, her eyes lose their fright. She would clasp his hand while she talked—one night she buttoned his shirt. And when he was ready to leave—always a need to leave, to be away, would come over him—she would look at him with fright in her face again, as if she had one more thing to say but couldn’t say it.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“He’ll be along tomorrow,” Call said. “Why are you sending the boy off?” Newt heard the question and felt unhappy for a moment. Almost everybody called him Newt, but the Captain still called him “the boy.” “Lorie can’t be left by herself tonight,” Augustus said. “I don’t reckon you seen Jake.” “I never hit the right saloon,” Call said. “I was after a cook. He’s there, though. I heard his name mentioned several times.” “Hear anyone mention Blue Duck?” Augustus asked.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Think about it a minute,” Augustus said. “Suppose it all worked the other way, and men were the whores. You just walk into a saloon and jingle your money and buy anyone you wanted. And he’d have to take his clothes off and do what you said to.” “I never seen one I wanted,” Lorena said. “’Cept Jake, and that didn’t last any time.” “I know it’s hard to think about,” Augustus said. “You been the one wanted all this time. Just suppose it was the opposite and you could buy what you wanted in the way of a man.” Lorena decided Gus was the craziest man she had ever known. He didn’t look crazy, but his notions were wild.“Suppose I was a whore,” he said. “I’ve always figured I’d make a good one. If you win this hand I’ll give you a free poke and all you’ll have to figure out is how to enjoy it.” “I wouldn’t enjoy it,” Lorena said. She had never enjoyed it, and it would take more than Gus’s talk to change her opinion.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Well, the Texas Rangers is back in town,” he said. “Hello, Gus. Next time I see a circus I’ll ask them if they need a trick shot.” “Why, Ned, is that you?” Augustus said. “My old eyes are failing. If I’d recognized you I’d have shot your hat off and saved a glass. Where do you keep your extra aces these days?” Before Ned Tym could answer, a man in a black coat came running down the stairs at the back of the saloon. He wasn’t much older than the bartender.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Besides the liquor, I think we’ll require a little respect,” he said. “I’m Captain McCrae and this is Captain Call. If you care to turn around, you can see our pictures when we was younger. Among the things we don’t put up with is dawdlingservice. I’m surprised Willie would hire a surly young idler like you.” The cardplayers were watching the proceedings with interest, but the young bartender was too surprised at having suddenly had his nose broken to say anything at all. He held his towel to his nose, which was still pouring blood. Augustus calmly walked around the bar and got the picture he had referred to, which was propped up by the mirror with three or four others of the same vintage. He laid the picture on the bar, took the glass the young bartender had just polished, slinging it lazily into the air back in the general direction of the cardplayers, and then the roar of the big Colt filled the saloon.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
He was wiping out glasses with a little white towel and setting each one carefully on a shelf. The saloon was mostly empty, just a few cardplayers at a table in the back.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“I guess Willie will be so glad to see us he’ll offer us a free dinner, at least,” Augustus said, as they trotted over to the saloon. “Maybe a free whore, too, if he’s prospering.” But when they strode in, there was no sign of Willie or anyone they recognized. A young bartender with slick hair and a string tie gave them a look when they stepped to the bar, but seemed as if he could scarcely be troubled to serve them.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Why, this place’ll catch New Orleans if it don’t stop growing,” he said. “If we’d put in a barbershop ten years ago we’d be rich now.” There was a big saloon on the main street that they’d frequented a lot in their rangering days. It was called the Buckhorn, because of the owner’s penchant for using deer horns for coat and hat racks. His name was Willie Montgomery, and he had been a big crony of Augustus’s at one time. Call suspected him of being a card sharp, but if so he was a careful card sharp.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“He’s a mudhead, ain’t he,” Pea said, carefully wiping his knife on his pants leg. “Now I guess he’ll be mad at me for ten years because I ruined his coat.” Lippy was limp as a rag and hadn’t moved a muscle. Newt felt sick to his stomach. Once more, on a perfectly nice day with everything going well, death had struck and taken another of his friends. Lippy had been part of his life since he could remember. When he was a child, Lippy had occasionally taken him into the saloon and let him bang on the piano. Now they would have to bury him as they had buried Sean.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“No,” Roscoe admitted. “I generally eat at the saloon or else go home with July.” “I can’t neither,” Louisa said. “Never interested me. What I like is farming. I’d farm day and night if it didn’t take so much coal oil.” That seemed curious. Roscoe had never heard of a woman farmer, though plenty of black women picked cotton during the season. They came to a good-sized clearing without a stump in it. There was a large cabin and a rail corral. Louisa unharnessed the mules and put them in the pen.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Once the night got late, the woods were as noisy as a saloon, only Roscoe didn’t know what most of the noises meant. To him they meant threats. He sat with his back to a tree all night, his pistol in his hand and his rifle across his lap. Finally, about the time it grew light, he got too tired to care if bears or pigs ate him, and he stretched out for a little while.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Why, Lorie,” he said, “I guess traveling agrees with you. You look pretty as the morning.” Lorena smiled. It was funny. Out in the open she felt more at ease with Gus than she had in the saloon.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
But she wasn’t there. At the saloon he asked Renfro, the barkeep, if he knew of a whore who had left town lately, but there were only two whores in town, and Renfro said they were both upstairs asleep.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Life in Fort Smith was different, too—so dull that she found little reason to raise herself from her quilts, most days. The women of the town, though they had no reason to suspect her, suspected her anyway and let her alone. Often she was tempted just to walk into a saloon where there was a girl or two she might have talked to, but instead she had given way to apathy, spending whole days sitting on the edge of her sleeping loft, doing nothing.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Well, if you was earning it, the man wouldn’t have got away in the first place,” Peach continued. “You could have shot him down, which would have been no more than he deserved.” Roscoe was uneasily aware that he was held culpable in some quarters for Jake’s escape. The truth was, the killing had confused him, for he had been a good deal fonder of Jake than of Ben. Also it was a shock and a surprise to find Ben lying in the street with a big hole in him. Everyone else had been surprised too—Peach herself had fainted. Half the people in the saloon seemed to think the mule skinner had shot Ben, and by the time Roscoe got their stories sorted out Jake was long gone. Of course it had been mostly an accident, but Peach didn’t see it that way. She wanted nothing less than to see Jake hang, and probably would have if Jake had not had the good sense to leave.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
As they rode out of town the widow Cole was hanging out her washing. Hot as the sun was, it seemed to Augustus it would be dry before she got it on the line. She kept a few goats, one of which was nibbling on the rope handle of her laundry basket. She was an imposing woman, and he felt a pang of regret that he and she had not got on better, but the truth was they fell straight into argument even if they only happened to meet in the street. Probably her husband, Joe Cole, had bored her for twenty years, leaving her with a taste for argument. He himself enjoyed argument, but not with a woman who had been bored all her life. It could lead to a strenuous existence.As they passed out of town, Lippy suddenly turned sentimental. Under the blazing sun the town looked white—the only things active in it were the widow and her goats. There were only about ten buildings, hardly enough to make a town, but Lippy got sentimental anyway. He remembered when there had been another saloon, one that kept five Mexican whores.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“I ain’t surprised,” Augustus said gently. It was one thing to make light of a young man’s sorrows in love, but another to do it when the sorrower was Xavier’s age. There were men who didn’t get over women. He himself, fortunately, was not one of them, though he had felt fairly black for a year after Clara married. It was curious, for Xavier had had stuff enough to survive a hellion like Therese, but was devastated by the departure of Lorena, who could hardly, with reason, have been expected to stay in one room over a saloon all her life.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
He drove down to the saloon for a last word with Xavier. At first he thought the saloon was empty, but then he saw Xavier sitting at a little table near the shadowy end of the bar. He had not bothered to shave for two days, a sign of profound demoralization.“Dern, Wanz, you look poorly,” Augustus said. “I see the morning rush ain’t started yet.” “It will never start,” Xavier said in a desperate voice.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“It does seem a pity you’re so independent, Jake,” Augustus said. “If you come in with us you could be a cattle baron yet.” “Nope, I’d rather be pore than chew the dust,” Jake said, standing up. Lorie stood up too. She felt her silence coming back. It was men watching her while trying to pretend they weren’t watching her that brought it on. Few of them were bold enough just to look straight at her. They had to be sneaky about it. Being among them in the camp was worse than the saloon, where at least she had her room. In the camp there was nothing she could do but sit and listen to the talk pass her by.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
While Jake had been fixing the pack horse Lippy had come out on the steps of the saloon and waved his lip at her one more time.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
But when he raised up on one elbow to look at her in the fresh light, the urge to discourage her went away. It was a weakness, but he could not bear to disappoint women, even if it was ultimately for their own good. At least he couldn’t disappoint them to their faces. Leaving them was his only out, and he knew he wasn’t ready to leave Lorie. Her beauty blew the sleep right out of his brain, and all she was doing was looking out a window, her long golden hair spilling over her shoulders. She wore an old threadbare cotton shift that should have been thrown away long ago. She didn’t own a decent dress, and had nothing to show her beauty to advantage, yet most of the men on the border would ride thirty miles just to sit in a saloon and look at her. She had the quality of not yet having really started her life—her face had a freshness unusual in a woman who had been sporting for a while. The thought struck him that the two of them might do well in San Francisco, if they could just get there. There were men of wealth there, and Lorie’s beauty would soon attract them.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇