词汇：point

n. 要点；尖端；得分；标点

相关场景

“Why, I’m a minister of the Lord,” he said. “Don’t point your dern guns at me, we’re just having breakfast. This is my boy, Tom.” Call disarmed the two, which only took a second. The fifteen horses were grazing in plain sight not a hundred yards from the camp.>>完整场景

When the Captain returned a week later with an order for three hundred beeves to be delivered to Fort Benton by Christmas, Newt was in the little sapling corral they had built, working with a hammer-headed bay. He looked nervously at the Captain, expecting to be reprimanded for changing jobs, but Call merely sat on the Hell Bitch and watched. Newt tried to ignore the fact that he was there—he didn’t want to get nervous and upset the bay. He had discovered that if he talked a lot and was soothing in what he said it had a good effect on the horse he was working with. He murmured to the bay while the Captain watched. Finally Call dismounted and unsaddled. It pleased him to see the quiet way the boy worked. He had never been one for talk when there was work to be done—it was his big point of difference with Gus, who could do nothing without talking. He was glad the boy was inclined to his way. When they drove the beeves to Fort Benton he took Newt and two other men with him.>>完整场景

But in this case he lacked the interest. When it came time to summon the force, he hadn’t. He admired Dish Boggett, who indeed had held a true point for three thousand miles; he had also often proved himself the best man to break a stampede. But Call had let him go, and didn’t really care. He knew that he wouldn’t care if they all went, excepting Pea and the boy. He had no impulse to lead the men another step.>>完整场景

Dish Boggett felt angry. He hadn’t hired on to carpenter either. His first work for the Hat Creek outfit had been well- digging, and his last would be swinging an ax, it appeared. Neither was work fit for a cowhand, and he was on the verge of demanding his wages and standing up for his rights as a free man—but the Captain’s look dissuaded him, and the next morning, when they started the herd east along the Milk, he took the point for the last time. With Old Dog dead, the Texas bull was frequently in the forefront of the drive. He looked ugly, for his wound had been sewn up unevenly, and being one-eyed and one-horned had made him even more irascible. He would often turn and attack anyone who approached him on his blind side. Several men had narrowly escaped disaster, and only the fact that Captain Call favored the bull had kept them from shooting him.>>完整场景

Though Old Hugh was the scout, it was Call who rode on ahead. Once in a while Old Hugh might point out a landmark, but he was shy about offering advice. Call made it clear that he didn’t want advice.>>完整场景

“Them’s beaver,” Old Hugh kept saying. “You trap beaver, you don’t shoot ’em. A bullet will ruin the pelt and the pelt’s the whole point.” “Well, I hate the little toothy sons of bitches,” Jasper said. “The pelts be damned.” Call kept riding northwest until even Old Hugh began to be worried. The great line of the Rockies was clear to the west.>>完整场景

“You don’t get the point, Woodrow,” Augustus said. “I’ve walked the earth in my pride all these years. If that’s lost, then let the rest be lost with it. There’s certain things my vanity won’t abide.” “That’s all it is, too,” Call said bitterly. “Your goddamn vanity.” He had expected to find Gus wounded, but not to find him dying. The sight affected him so much that he felt weak, of a sudden. When the doctor left the room, he sat down in a chair and took off his hat. He looked at Gus for a long time, trying to think of some argument he might use, but Gus was Gus, and he knew no argument would be of any use. None ever had been. He could either fight him and take off the leg if he won, or else sit and watch him die. The doctor seemed convinced he would die now in any case, though doctors could be wrong in such matters.>>完整场景

“Pea, you ain’t got your grip on the point,” Augustus said. “I just wanted to chase a buffalo once more. I won’t have the chance much longer, and nobody else will either, because there won’t be no buffalo to chase. It’s a grand sport too.” “Them bulls can hook you,” Pea Eye reminded him. “Remember old Barlow? A buffalo bull hooked his horse and the horse fell on Barlow and broke his hip.” “Barlow was a slow thinker,” Augustus observed. “He just loped along and got hooked.” “A slow walker, too, once his hip got broke,” Pea Eye said. “I wonder what happened to Barlow.” “I think he migrated to Seguin, or somewhere over in there,” Augustus said. “Married a fat widow and had a passel of offspring. You ought to have done the same, but here you are in Montana.” “Well, I’d hate not to be a bachelor,” Pea Eye said.>>完整场景

“I didn’t want to either,” Allen O’Brien admitted. “If we had gone in the trees we might not have come out.” The mules had run three miles before stopping, but because the plain was fairly smooth, the wagon was undamaged. The same could not be said for Lippy, who had bounced so hard at one point that he had bitten his tongue nearly in two. The tongue bled for hours, little streams of blood spilling over his long lip. The remuda was eventually rounded up, as well as the cattle.>>完整场景

Occasionally the strange remark Mr. Gus had made came back to him. He didn’t know what to make of it—the clear meaning had been that Captain Call was his father. It didn’t make sense to Newt. If the Captain had been his father, surely he would have mentioned it at some point in the last seventeen years.>>完整场景

The other hands were somber. Soupy Jones and Bert Borum, who didn’t feel it appropriate for white men to talk much to niggers, exchanged the view that nevertheless this one had been uncommonly decent. Needle Nelson offered to help dig the grave, for Deets had been the man who finally turned the Texas bull the day the bull got after him. Dish Boggett hadn’t said much to Deets, either, but he had often been cheered, from his position on the point, to see Deets come riding back through the heat waves. It meant he was on course, and that water was somewhere near. Dish wished he had said more to the man at some point.>>完整场景

“She ought to have loved him,” Sally said.“Ought don’t count for as much as a gnat, when you’re talking about love,” Clara said. “She didn’t. You seen her. She didn’t even care for Martin. We’ve already given July and Martin more love than that poor woman ever gave them. I don’t say that to condemn her. I know she had her troubles, and I doubt she was often in her right mind. I’m sorry she had no more control of herself to run off from her husband and child and get killed.” She stopped, to let the girls work on the various questions a little. It interested her which they would pick as the main point.>>完整场景

“I told you I like him,” Clara said. “I know people ain’t smart and often love those who don’t care for them. Up to a point, I’m tolerant of that. Then past a point, I’m not tolerant of it. I think it’s a sickness to grieve too much for those who never cared a fig for you.” Both of the girls were silent for a time.>>完整场景

Allen O’Brien kindly bought the boys each a beer. Though it was well after dark, people were still milling in the streets of Ogallala. At one point they heard gunshots, but no one cared to go investigate.>>完整场景

“Hell, whores make a sight more than cowboys,” Ben kept saying—it seemed to trouble him a good deal. “We don’t make but thirty dollars a month and them two made thirty dollars off us in about three minutes. It would have been forty if Pete hadn’t backed out.” To Newt such an argument seemed wide of the point. What the whores sold was unique. The fact that it exceeded top- hand wages didn’t matter. He decided he would probably be as big a whore as Jake and Mr. Gus when he grew up and had money to spend.>>完整场景

“Oh, go along, Shaw,” the girl said. “There ain’t but two of you. What kind of game would that be?” “I made that point myself,” Augustus said.>>完整场景

“Let’s go,” Call said. “This is pointless talk.” He saw that the little Captain was keyed up to the point where it wouldn’t take much to provoke him into an explosion.>>完整场景

“If your wife don’t want Martin, do you have a mother or sisters that would want to raise him?” Clara asked. “The point is, I don’t want to keep him a year or two and then give him up. If I have to give him up I’d rather do it soon.” “No, Ma’s dead,” July said. “I just had brothers.” “I’ve lost three boys,” Clara said. “I don’t want to lose another to a woman who keeps changing her mind.” “I’ll ask her,” July said. “I’ll go back in a day or two. Maybe she’ll be feeling better.” But he found he couldn’t stand it to wait—he had to see her again, even if she wouldn’t look at him. At least he could look at her and know he had found her after all. Maybe, if he was patient, she would change.>>完整场景

Newt didn’t know it, but Call, too, lived almost constantly with the thought of Jake Spoon. He felt half sick from thinking about it. He couldn’t concentrate on the work at hand, and often if spoken to he wouldn’t respond. He wanted somehow to move time backwards to a point where Jake could have been saved. Many times, in his thoughts, he managed to save Jake, usually by having made him stay with the herd. As the herd approached the Republican, Call’s thoughts were back on the Brazos, where Jake had been allowed to go astray.>>完整场景

Dish finally leaped at Bert, but instead of boxing, the two men grappled and were soon rolling on the ground, neither gaining much of an advantage. Call had seen the men square off, and he loped over. When he got there they were rolling on the ground, both red in the face but doing one another no harm. He rode the Hell Bitch right up to them, and when they saw him they both stopped. He had it in his mind to dress them down, but the fact that the other hands were laughing at their ineffectual combat was probably all that was needed. Anyway, the men were natural rivals in ability and could be expected to puff up at some point. He turned and rode back out of camp without saying a word to them.>>完整场景

Not only had no one talked at the hanging, no one had talked since, either. Captain Call kept well to himself, riding far from the herd all day and sleeping apart at night. Mr. Gus stayed back with Lorena, only showing up at mealtimes. Deets was very quiet when he was around, and he wasn’t around much—he spent his days scouting far ahead of the herd, which was traveling easily. The Texas bull had assumed the lead position, passing Old Dog almost every day and only giving up the lead to go snort around the tails of whatever cows interested him. He had lost none of his belligerence. Dish, who rode the point, had come to hate him even more than Needle Nelson did.>>完整场景

As he approached the house he suddenly heard shrieks of laughter, and a little girl flew around the corner of the house, another slightly older girl in hot pursuit. The girl in the lead ran on to one of the sheds between the house and the corral and tried to hide in it, but her sister caught her before she could get inside, and they tussled and shrieked. The older girl was trying to put something down the younger girl’s neck, and she finally succeeded, at which point the younger girl began to hop up and down while the older one ran off, laughing.>>完整场景

At some point she heard the baby whimpering but she was too tired to rise. In the back of her mind she knew that she had to get up and feed Bob but the desire to sleep was too heavy—she couldn’t make herself move.>>完整场景

Clara looked at Elmira for a moment and held her peace. It was not a great surprise for her that the woman didn’t want the baby. She hadn’t wanted Sally, out of fear that she would die. The woman must have her own fears—after all, she had traveled for months across the plains with two buffalo hunters. Perhaps she was fleeing a man, perhaps looking for a man, perhaps just running—there was no point in pressing questions, for the woman might not know herself why she ran.>>完整场景

Then the next winter both boys had died of pneumonia within a month of one another. It was a terrible winter, the ground frozen so deep there was no way to dig a grave. They had had to put the boys in the little kindling shed, wrapped tightly in wagon sheets, until winter let up enough that they could be buried. Many days Bob would come home from delivering horses to the Army—his main customer—to find Clara sitting in the icy shed by the two small bodies, tears frozen on her cheeks so hard that he would have to heat water and bathe the ice from her face. He tried to point out to her that she mustn’t do it—the weather was below zero, and the wind swept endlessly along the Platte. She could freeze to death, sitting in the kindling shed. If only I would, Clara thought—I’d be with my boys.>>完整场景