词汇：case

n. 情况；实例；箱

相关场景

Almost daily, from then on, Call saw Indian sign, but no Indians. It bothered him a little. He had fought Indians long enough not to underrate them, but neither did he exaggerate their capacities. Talk of Indians was never accurate, in his view. It always made them seem worse or better than they were. He preferred to judge the northern Indians with his own eyes, but in this case the Indians didn’t oblige him.>>完整场景

“I will in a minute, Call,” Augustus said. “Just let him be dead for a minute.” “Is he dead already?” Call asked. Though he knew from long experience that such things happened quickly, he could not accept it in Deets’s case. “I guess it went to the heart,” he added pointlessly.>>完整场景

“Didn’t get no count,” Deets said. “Not many. Couldn’t be many and live out here.” “I say we wait for night and steal the nags back,” Augustus said. “It’s too hot to fight. Steal ’em back and let the red man chase the white for a while.” “If we wait for night we might lose half the horses,” Call said. “They’ll probably post a better guard than we had.” “I don’t want to argue with you in this heat,” Augustus said. “If you want to go now, okay. We’ll just ride in and massacre them.” “Didn’t see many men,” Deets said. “Mostly women and children. They’re real poor, Captain.” “What do you mean, real poor?” “Means they’re starving,” Deets said. “They done cut up one horse.” “My God,” Augustus said. “You mean they stole them horses for meat?” That proved to be the case. They carefully approached the draw where the camp was and saw the whole little tribe gathered around the dead horse. There were only some twenty Indians, mostly women, children and old men. Call saw only two braves who looked to be of fighting age, and they were no more than boys. The Indians had pulled the dead horse’s guts out and were hacking them into slices and eating them. Usually there were dogs around an Indian camp, but there were no dogs around this time.>>完整场景

“That was bold,” Call said. “But they ain’t on foot now.” He decided to take only Augustus and Deets, though that left the camp without a really competent Indian fighter, in case the raid was a feint. On the other hand, whoever took the horses might have a good deal of help nearby. If it became necessary to take on an Indian camp, three men were about the minimum that could expect to succeed.>>完整场景

All day he rode west, and the country around him grew more bleak. Not fit for sheep, Call thought. Not hardly fit for lizards—in fact, a small gray lizard was the only life he saw all day. That night he made a dry camp in sandy country where the dirt was light-colored, almost white. He supposed he had come some sixty miles and could not imagine that the herd would make it that far, although the Hell Bitch seemed unaffected. He slept for a few hours and went on, arriving just after sunup on the banks of Salt Creek. It was not running, but there was adequate water in scattered shallow pools. The water was not good, but it was water. The trouble was, the herd was nearly eighty miles back—a four-day drive under normal conditions; and in this case the miles were entirely waterless, which wouldn’t make for normal conditions.>>完整场景

It was bright moonlight and they could see no Indians, but both drew their pistols anyway, just in case, and crouched down together as they listened to the depressing sound of their horses running away.>>完整场景

To his surprise, he didn’t enjoy the visit to Ogallala very much. He hit the dry-goods store just as the owner was closing and persuaded him to reopen long enough for him to buy Lorie a mass of clothes. He bought everything from petticoats to dresses, a hat, and also a warm coat, for they were sure to strike cool weather in Montana. He even bought himself a black frock coat worthy of a preacher, and a silk string tie. The merchant soon was in no mood to close; he offered Augustus muffs and gloves and felt-lined boots and other oddities. In the end he had such a purchase that he couldn’t even consider carrying it—they would have to come in tomorrow and pick it up in the wagon, though he did wrap up a few things in case Lorie wanted to wear them to Clara’s. He bought her combs and brushes and a mirror—women liked to see themselves, he knew, and Lorena hadn’t had the opportunity since Fort Worth.>>完整场景

Or she might have become merely a worked-out, worn-down pioneer woman, her beauty gone and her spirit tamed. He might look at her and not feel a thing—in which case he would lose something he treasured. On the other hand, he might look at her and feel all that he had felt in their younger days—in which case riding off and leaving her wouldn’t be very easy.>>完整场景

“Why would I want a whore, when I’ve got you?” he asked. “You womenfolk have got strange minds. What I’d mainly like to do is sit in a chair and drink whiskey. I wouldn’t mind a hand or two of cards either.” “You want that other woman, and you’ve got me,” Lorena said. “You could want us both and a whore too, I guess. Go get one if you want—I don’t care.” She almost hoped he would. It would strengthen her case against the other woman.>>完整场景

“I think it’s time you took a look at him,” she said. “He’s your boy. He might come to like you, in which case he’ll bring you more happiness than that woman ever will. He needs you a sight more than she does, too.” July felt scared he would do something wrong with the baby. He also was a little scared of Clara.>>完整场景

“I need to ask you a favor,” she said. “Could you help me turn my husband, or are you feeling too poorly?” He would help her, of course. Several times he had helped her with her husband. The man had lost so much weight that July could simply lift him while Clara changed the bedding. The first time it bothered him a good deal, for the man never closed his eyes. That night he worried about what the man might think—another man coming in with his wife. Clara was businesslike about it, telling him what to do when he was slow. July wondered if the man was listening, and what he was thinking, in case he was.>>完整场景

Shot ’em, hung ’em, and then burned ’em.” “He must have been a hard case, that Dan,” Jasper said. “I seen him once. He had them little squint eyes.” “I’m glad he never squinted them at me, if that’s the way he behaves to white men,” Needle said. “What was Jake doing with an outfit like that?” “If you ask my opinion, that whore that Gus has got was Jake’s downfall,” Bert Borum volunteered.>>完整场景

Call took the rein of Dan Suggs’s horse, just in case Dan tried something—though there was little he could try. Augustus walked behind and Pea Eye led the other two horses. Deets went ahead to fix the nooses—he was good with knots.>>完整场景

The day passed, and there was no sign of Gus. Lorena rode close to the wagon. Every few minutes Lippy turned and looked back at her as if he had never seen her before. Almost every time he did, he tipped his hat, which was even filthier than it had been when he worked in the saloon. Lorena didn’t acknowledge him—she remembered how he had always tried to look up her skirts when she came downstairs. She just rode along, watching the horizon to see if she could spot Gus returning. The horizon shimmered so that it would have been hard to see Gus in any case.>>完整场景

“He’s bloody today,” Roy said, going over to the mules. “If we run into any more sodbusters, it’s too bad for them.” Jake’s happy mood was gone, though the day was as sunny as ever. It was clear to him that his only hope was to escape the Suggses as soon as possible. Dan Suggs could wake up feeling bloody any day, and the next time there might be no sodbusters around to absorb his fury, in which case things could turn really grim. He trotted along all day, well back from the horse herd, trying to forget the two blackened bodies, whose shoes had still been smoldering when they left.>>完整场景

“We could get going, even if you ain’t the right cowboy,” Jennie said. “If you can afford that much whiskey you can afford me. You could even buy me a drink if you felt polite.” July had never in his life bought a woman a drink, or even sat with a woman who liked to drink. Any other time such an invitation would have shocked him, but in this case it just made him feel that his manners weren’t all they should be.>>完整场景

Jake mounted, but he was reluctant to leave. It occurred to him that if he went back to the nesters he might bluff his way out of it. After all, it had been self-defense—even dirt farmers from Missouri could understand that. The nesters were looking their way, but none of them were offering to fight. If he turned and rode into the Territory, he would be carrying two killings against his name. In neither case had he meant to kill, or even known the man he killed. It was just more bad luck—noticing a pretty girl on a wagon seat was where it started in this case.>>完整场景

Besides that, killing could always work two ways. Gus was fond of saying that even the meanest bad man could always run into someone meaner and quicker. Dan Suggs could easily meet a violent end, in which case the others might not care who stayed or went.>>完整场景

Indeed, that proved the case, although they were rather smelly and a little too familiar to suit Newt. They smelled like the lard Bolivar had used on his hair. They crowded right around him, several of them talking to him in words he couldn’t understand. All of them were armed with old rifles. The rifles looked in bad repair, but they would have sufficed to kill him if that had been what the Indians wanted to do. Newt was sure they would want the cattle, for they were as skinny as the first bunch of Indians.>>完整场景

In this case it lasted for hours. Newt mainly hoped it wouldn’t go on all night. If he had to ride through grasshoppers all day and then all night, he felt he’d just give up. It was already fairly dark from the cloud they made, though it was only midday.>>完整场景

Luke kept climbing up on the wagon and putting his hands on her, but Elmira kept saying no. She dreamed of Dee occasionally, but other than that she had no interest in men. She thought about telling Zwey that Luke was bothering her, but Zwey was not an easy man to talk to. Anyway, it might start a fight, and Luke might win, in which case her goose would be cooked. Zwey was strong but slow, and Luke didn’t look like a man who would fight fair.>>完整场景

He had a longing to get them back in places they belonged: Fort Smith, in the case of Roscoe and Joe. He didn’t know where the girl had belonged, though it wasn’t in a grave on the Canadian.>>完整场景

But now July had left him on a river where there wasn’t even a bush. He would have to sleep flat out on the ground or else sit up all night. The sky was pale with moonlight, but it didn’t provide enough light to see well by. Soon Roscoe began to get very nervous. Everywhere he looked he began to see things that could have been Indians. He decided to cock his pistol, in case some of the things were Indians.>>完整场景

In any case, the man could use help, and it should be no great risk to leave Roscoe and the young ones in camp for a few hours. They all needed the rest.>>完整场景

The remaining Indians were discouraged. Five Indians were dead, and the battle not five minutes old. Augustus replaced his cartridges and killed a sixth as the Indians were retreating. He might have got one or two more, but decided against risking long shots when his situation was so chancy. There might be more Indians available nearby, though he considered it unlikely. Probably they had charged with all they had—in which case he had killed half of them.With no shooting to do for a little while, Augustus took stock of the situation and decided the worst part of it was that he had no one to talk to. He had been within a minute or two of death, which could not be said to be boring, exactly—but even desperate battle was lacking in something if there was no one to discuss it with. What had made battle interesting over the years was not his opponents but his’ colleagues. It was fascinating, at least to him, to see how the men he had fought with most often reacted to the stimulus of attack.>>完整场景