When he unsaddled the mare, one of Augustus’s pigs grunted at him. Both of them were lying under the wagon, sharing the shade with Lippy, who was sound asleep. The shoat was a large pig now, but travel had kept him thin. Call felt it was slightly absurd having pigs along on a cattle drive, but they had proven good foragers as well as good swimmers. They got across the rivers without any help.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Lorena sat at the kitchen table with the girls, playing draughts. July watched, but could not be persuaded to take part in the game. Even Betsey, his favorite, couldn’t persuade him, and Betsey could usually get July to do anything she wanted him to do. Lorena’s presence made him shy. He enjoyed sitting and looking at her in the lamplight, though. It seemed to him he had never seen anyone so beautiful. He had only seen her before on that dreadful morning on the plains when he had had to bury Roscoe, Joe and Janey, and had been too stricken to notice her. Then she had been bruised and thin from her treatment by Blue Duck and the Kiowas. Now she was neither bruised nor thin.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

When Clara kissed him, Lorena looked down, nothing but despair in her heart. There the woman was, Gus loved her, and she herself was lost. She should have stayed in the tent and not come to see it—yet she had wanted to come. Now that she had, she would have given anything to be somewhere else, but of course it was too late. When she looked up again she saw that Clara had stepped back a bit and was looking at Gus, her face shining with happiness. She had thin arms and large hands, Lorena noticed. Two men were walking up from the lots, having seen the crowd.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“This is Mary and I’m Buf,” the large woman said. Her ample bosom seemed to Newt to be about to burst out of the gown she wore. In the light it was clear that she was not very old herself—but she was large. The other girl, by comparison, seemed thin as a rail.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

He went into one that had a huge rack of elk horns over the door and a clientele consisting mostly of mule skinners who hauled freight for the Army. None of the Hat Creek outfit was there, though he had seen a couple of their horses tied outside. They had probably gone straight to the whorehouse next door, he concluded. He ordered a bottle and a glass, but the boisterous mule skinners made so much racket he couldn’t enjoy his drinking. A middle-aged gambler with a thin mustache and a greasy cravat soon spotted him and came over.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Don’t like it,” Deets said. “The light’s too thin.” Deets had a faraway look in his eye. It puzzled Call. The man had been cheerful through far harder times. Now Call would often see him sitting on his horse, looking south, across the long miles they had come. At breakfast, sometimes, Call would catch him staring into the fire the way old animals stared before they died—as if looking across into the other place. The look in Deets’s eyes unsettled Call so much that he mentioned it to Augustus. He rode over to the tent oneevening. Gus was sitting on a saddle blanket, barefoot, trimming his corns with a sharp pocketknife. The woman was not in sight, but Call stopped a good distance from the tent so as not to disturb her.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Come help me shuck this corn,” Clara said. “The roasting ears are about gone. I get so hungry for them during the winter, I could eat a dozen.”She went on toward the house, carrying her heavy garden basket. When she didn’t hear his footsteps, she looked back at him. July wiped his face and followed her to the house.THE NEXT MORNING, when he managed to get up, July came into the kitchen to find Cholo sharpening a thin-bladed knife. The baby lay on the table, kicking his bare feet, and Clara, wearing a man’s hat, was giving the two girls instructions.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

When he stood up, he saw Clara. She had been on her way back from the garden with a basket of vegetables. It was hot, and she had rolled the sleeves up on her dress. Her arms were thin and yet strong, as if they were all bone.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“I couldn’t even get the man to go away and eat,” the doctor told her. “I live on tea, myself, but he’s a big man. Tea won’t keep him going. I guess he asked me a thousand times if you were going to live.” The doctor sat in a little thin frame chair by her bed and gave her medicine by the spoonful. “It’s to build you up,” he said.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Clara looked more closely at the man standing in her kitchen. He was very thin and in a kind of daze—probably couldn’t quite believe that he was still alive after such a journey. She had felt that way herself upon arriving in Ogallala after her trip over the plains with Bob, and she hadn’t been snakebit or had any particular adventures.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Well, is it the first one you’ve ever seen?” the woman asked. “You’ll have more to worry about than grasshoppers if you wake this baby again.” The woman was rather thin, but anger put color in her cheeks. The girls finally were subdued and the woman looked up and saw him, lifting her chin with a bit of belligerence, as though she might have to tie into him too. Then she saw his discolored leg, and her look changed. She had gray eyes and she turned them on him with sudden gravity.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Ellie didn’t know what was wrong. He could see it was her, and yet he hardly looked at her. He seemed scared, and his hair had little pieces of cotton ticking in it from a tear in the thin mattress he slept on. The scruffy growth of whiskers made him seem a lot older than she had remembered him.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Thin milk, Clara thought—and no wonder, for the woman probably hadn’t eaten a decent meal in months. She refused to look at the baby, even when it took her breast. Clara had to hold it and encourage it, rubbing its little lips with milk.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

The baby looked dead, and Elmira looked as if she were dying—but in fact both lived. Cholo held the little boy close to his face and blew on it, until finally the child moved and began to cry, a thin sound not much stronger than the squeak of a mouse. Elmira had passed out, but she was breathing.Clara went downstairs to heat some water and saw that the girls had taken breakfast to the two men. They were standing around while the men ate, not to be denied the novelty of conversation, even if only with two buffalo hunters, one of whom wouldn’t talk. It made her want to cry, suddenly, that her children were so devoid of playmates that they would hang around two sullen men just for the excitement of company. She heated the water and let the girls be. Probably the men would go on soon, though Luke seemed to be talking to the girls happily. Maybe he was as lonesome as they were.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

He decided, though, that politeness required him to at least say goodbye to Jennie. As he stepped back in the door, a cowboy came out of her room, looking cheerful, and went clumping down the stairs. A moment later Jennie came out too. She didn’t notice July standing there. To his astonishment she stopped and lifted her skirts, so that he saw her thin legs, and more. There was a smear of something on one thigh and she hastily wet her fingers with a little spit and wiped it off. Just then she noticed July, who wished he had not bothered to come through the door. He had never seen a woman do such an intimate thing and the shock was so strong he thought his stomach might float up again.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Jennie had huge brown eyes, too large for her thin face. She was looking at him impatiently.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“You can write it right here at the window,” the clerk said. “We’re not doing much business today.” July started, and then, to his embarrassment, began to cry again. His memories were too sad, his hopes too thin. To have to say things on paper seemed a terrible task, for it stirred the memories.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Them punkin’ rollers,” Dan Suggs said contemptuously. “If they was to follow we’d thin them out in a hurry.” Jake fell into a gloom—it seemed he could do nothing right. He hardly asked for more in life than a clean saloon to gamble in and a pretty whore to sleep with, that and a little whiskey to drink. He had no desire to be shooting people—evenduring his years in the Rangers he seldom actually drew aim at anyone, although he cheerfully threw off shots in the direction of the enemy. He certainly didn’t consider himself a killer: in battle, Call and Gus were capable of killing ten to his one.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

The closer he got to the girl, the better he liked her looks. She had fine features, and her thin, worn-out dress concealed a swelling young bosom. She realized Jake was coming her way, which agitated her a little. She looked off, pretending not to notice him.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

By the time it registered that they were really Indians, they had already cut off the steer and were driving it away, as the Captain sat and watched. Newt was almost afraid to look at them, but when he did he was surprised at how thin and poor they looked. The old man who was their leader was just skin and bones. He rode near enough for Newt to see that one of his eyes was milky white. The other Indians were young. Their ponies were as thin as they were. They had no saddles, just saddle blankets, and only one had a gun, an old carbine. The Indians boxed the steer out of the herd as skillfully as any cowboys and soon had him headed across the empty plain. The old man raised his hand to the Captain as they left, and the Captain returned the gesture.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Sally Skull had bad teeth and a thin body with no particular beauties. Her long legs were skinny as a bird’s, and she had nothing that could match Lorena’s fine bosom. If anyone said a wrong word to her they got a tongue-lashing that would make the coarsest man blush. If one of her girls got too sweet on a cowboy, which could always happen in her profession, Sal promptly got rid of her, shoving her out the back door of the saloon into the dusty street. “Don’t get in love around me,” she would say. “Go do it in the alley if you want to give it away.” Once she fired three girls in one day for lazing around with the boys. For the next week she serviced most of the customers herself.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“What do you care if she talks?” Dog Face said. “I wouldn’t talk to you either, you goddamn old runt.” “She can talk, goddamn her,” Monkey John said. “Duck said she talked to him.” “It’s her business if she don’t want to talk,” Dog Face insisted. He was a thin scarecrow of a man, but he had crazy eyes, and Monkey John never pushed him too far.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

One morning there was great excitement. Just as the morning mists began to thin, the man on guard claimed to have seen six Indians on a ridge. He was a young men, very nervous. If there were Indians, they did not reappear. During the day the men surprised three buffalo and killed one of them. That night Fowler brought Elmira samples of the liver and the tongue—the best parts, he said.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

They rode all night, and when the plains got gray they were no more than five miles from Fort Worth. He glanced back at the prisoners and was startled to see the girl, riding behind Roscoe. She looked very young. Her bare legs were as thin as a bird’s. Roscoe was slumped over the horn, asleep, and the girl held the reins. She was also watching the two prisoners, both of whom were plenty wide-awake. July got down and checked Hutto’s knots, which indeed were slipping.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

By the time the sun was beginning to thin out the mists, they had had their coffee and a bite of bacon and were horseback. The herd was in sight, spread out over the plain for three or four miles, thousands of cattle in it. Neither July nor Joe had ever seen a herd so large, and they paused for a moment to look at it. The morning plains were still dewy.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇