Also, there were still renegade bands of Kiowas and Comanches loose on the plains. The bands were supposedly scattered—at least that was the talk in south Texas—and the trade in captives virtually dead.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

When they had been riding about an hour, Roscoe got the scare of his life, for suddenly someone jumped on the horse behind him. For a terrifying second he thought Jim must have gotten loose and come to strangle him or stick a knife in him. Memphis was startled, too, and jumped sideways into Joe’s horse.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Well, we’ll sure have to kill this deputy now,” Hutto remarked. He wiggled a loose tooth with a bloody finger. “If he was to tell about this, our reputation as desperados would be ruint forever.” “Then why don’t you get up and help me rush her?” Jim said angrily.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“I guess we ought to ask them if they’ve seen Roscoe,” July said. “He could be south of us. Or they might have news of Jake.” They loped over to the wagon just as the wrangler turned loose the horse herd. The horses, fifty or sixty of them, were jumping and frisking, kicking up their heels and nickering at one another, glad to be moving. July and Joe waited until the wrangler had them headed north before trotting on toward the wagon. The cook wore an old black hat, and had a long, dirty beard.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“It’s Ermoke and three of his boys,” Blue Duck said. “I guess they’ve been off scalping.” Lorena felt a chill, just looking at the riders. Jake had said most of the Indians still running loose were renegades. He made light of them. He had dealt with renegades before, he said, and could do it again. Except that he was still in Austin, playing cards, and there were the renegades.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“He’s young and innocent,” Augustus said. “That’s why I picked him. He’ll just moon over her a little. If I’d sent one of the full-grown rowdies, Jake might have come back and shot him. I doubt he’d shoot Newt.” “I doubt he’ll even come back, myself,” Call said. “That girl ought to have stayed in Lonesome Dove.” “If you was a young girl, with life before you, would you want to settle in Lonesome Dove?” Augustus asked. “Maggie done it, and look how long she lasted.” “She might have died anyplace,” Call said. “I’ll die someplace, and so will you—it might not be no better place than Lonesome Dove.” “It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living,” Augustus said. “I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live.” Call got up and went to catch his night horse. Without thinking, he caught the Hell Bitch again, though he had just turned her loose. One of the Spettle boys looked at him curiously and said nothing. Call saddled the Hell Bitch anyway and rode around the herd to see that all was in place. The cattle were calm, most of them already bedded down. Needle Nelson, perennially sleepy, dozed in his saddle.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Call turned the Hell Bitch loose in the remuda and came back to the cook wagon. Augustus was eating a beefsteak and abig plate of beans.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

At times, waiting, she had almost decided just to take the horse and the mule and try to find her way back to Lonesome Dove. Xavier had said he would marry her and take her anywhere she wanted to go. She remembered the day he had come into the room—his wild eyes, his threat to kill Jake. When she had nothing to do but sit around and think about it, her capacity for mistakes discouraged her so that she considered drowning herself in the little pool. But it was a sunny, pretty morning, and when she went into the pool a little later, it was only to wash her hair in the cool water. For a moment she put her head under and opened her eyes, but it felt silly—to die in such an element was only ridiculous. She began to wonder if perhaps she was touched—if that was why she made mistakes. Her mother had been touched. She often babbled of people no one knew. She talked to dead relatives, dead babies, speaking to them as if they were still alive. Lorena wondered if it was mistakes that had made her mother do that. Perhaps, after so many mistakes, your mind finally broke loose and wandered back and forth between past and present.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Well, your little plan failed,” he said to the mare. He knew that with a little better luck she would have been loose and gone. She didn’t fight at all when he remounted, and she showed no sign of wanting to buck anymore. Call kept her in a trot for a mile or two before letting her go back to the lope. He didn’t expect her to try it again. She was too intelligent to waste her energies at a time when she knew he would be set for trouble. Somehow she had sensed that he had his mind on other things when she exploded. In a way it pleased him—he had never cared for totally docile horses. He liked an animal that was as alert as he was—or, in the mare’s case, even more alert. She had been aware of his preoccupations, whereas he had had no inkling of her intentions.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Well, I hope you get back to the herd tonight, in case I’m late,” he said. “There should be somebody with some experience around.” “Oh, I don’t know,” Augustus said. “It’s time that outfit got a little practice in doing without us. They probably think the sun won’t come up unless you’re there to allow it.” Rather than re-argue yet another old argument, Call turned the Hell Bitch. Even experienced men were apt to flounder badly in crises if they lacked leadership. He had seen highly competent men stand as if paralyzed in a crisis, though once someone took command and told them what to do they might perform splendidly. A loose group like the Hat Creek outfit wouldn’t even know how to decide who was to decide, if both he and Gus were gone.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Roscoe was half asleep in the saddle when a bad thing happened. Memphis brushed against a tree limb that had a wasp’s nest on it. The nest broke loose from the limb and fell right in Roscoe’s lap. It soon rolled off the saddle, but not before twenty or thirty wasps buzzed up. When Roscoe awoke, all he could see was wasps. He was stung twice on the neck, twice on the face, and once on the hand as he was battling them.
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“What became of Bol?” Pea asked. “Wasn’t he driving the wagon?” Lippy was sitting up, wiping mud off his head. He ran one finger under his loose lip as if he expected to find a tadpole or a small fish, but all he found was mud. About that time the Spettle boys rode up, and crossed the horse herd.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

When the wagon tilted, Newt saw Lippy’s legs. He and the Raineys waded in and tried to get him loose, but the coat was still pinched in the seat. All they could do was get his head above water, though his head was so covered with mud that it was difficult at first to know if he was dead or alive. Fortunately Pea soon rode up and cut the coat loose with his bowie knife.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

The woman looked disgusted. “If I had a piece of rawhide I’d tie it to your hand,” she said. “Then the two of you could flop around all you wanted to. What town hired you to be deputy sheriff anyway?” “Why, Fort Smith,” Roscoe said. “July Johnson’s the sheriff.” “I wish he’d been the one that showed up,” the woman said. “Maybe he’d know how to chop a root.” Then she began to pop the mules again and Roscoe continued to whack at the roots, squeezing the ax tightly so it wouldn’t slip loose again. In no time he was sweating worse than the woman, sweat dripping into his eyes and off his nose. It had been years since he had sweated much, and he didn’t enjoy the sensation.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Dern, I never meant to let it get loose from me,” Roscoe said.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

The stump edged out of the ground a little farther, but it didn’t come loose. Roscoe hadn’t handled an ax much in the last few years and was awkward with it. Cutting roots was not like cutting firewood. The roots were so tough the ax tended to bounce unless the hit was perfect. Once he hit a root too close to the stump and the ax bounced out of his hand and nearly hit the woman on the foot.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Make your fire and do your cooking now,” he said. “Then blow out the fire. It’s gonna come a bad wind. If the fire gets loose you might have trouble.”He glanced south, at the sky.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

When he took the reins Lorena felt a deeper fright than she had ever known. She gripped the horse’s mane so tightly the horsehairs cut into her hands. Then she shut her eyes—she couldn’t bear to see the water coming over her. The mare took a leap, and there was a different feeling. They were swimming. She heard the black man’s voice talking soothingly to the mare. The water lapped at her waist, but it came no higher; after a moment she opened her eyes. They were nearly across the river. The black man was looking back watchfully, lifting her reins a bit so as to keep the horse’s head out of the water. Then there was the suck of the water against her legs as they started to climb out of the river. With a smile, the black man handed her back her wet reins. She was gripping the mane so tightly it took an act of will to turn her hands loose.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Despite his politeness and constant kindness, Elmira felt a bitterness toward him. The thing he didn’t know was that she was with child. He wouldn’t know it, either, if she could help it. She had just married out of fright—she didn’t want him or the child either. And yet she was scared to try and stop the child—in Abilene she had known a girl who bled to death from trying to stop a baby. She had died on the stairs outside Elmira’s room on a bitter cold night; blood had run all the way down the stairs and frozen in the night into red ice. The girl, whose name was Jenny, had stuck to the stairs. They had had to heat water in order to get her loose.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

As usual, though, life moved faster than he had intended it to. Call would come back with a lot of cowboys and he would practically have to marry Lorie in order to get out of going up the trail. Then, if he did set his foot down and stay in Lonesome Dove, who knew but what some lawman from Fort Smith would show up and drag him off to hang? Just as he had been in the mood to slow down, his own loose mouth had gotten him in trouble.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Get down, boys,” he said to the Irishmen. “You’re safe now, as long as you don’t eat the cooking. This is what we callhome.” Allen O’Brien had both hands around the big Mexican saddle horn. He had been holding it so tightly for the last two hours that he was not sure he could turn it loose. He looked down with apprehension.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Augustus jerked the saddle off his tired horse and turned him loose to graze.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

It was Pea’s one close exposure to an aspect of womankind that Gus was always talking about—their penchant for flyingdirectly in the face of reason. Mary was as wet on the top as on the bottom, and the flapping sheet had knocked one of the combs out of her hair, causing it to come loose. The wash was as wet as it had been before she hung it up in the first place, and yet she wasn’t quitting. She was taking clothes off the line that would just have to be hung back on in fifteen minutes, and Pea was helping her do it as if it all made some sense. While he was steadying the clothesline he happened to notice something that gave him almost as hard a jolt as the bolt of lightning that killed Josh Cole: the clothes he had rescued were undergarments—white bloomers of the sort that it was obvious Mary was wearing beneath the skirt that was so wet against her legs. Pea was so shocked that he almost dropped the underpants back in the mud. She was bound to think it bold that he would pick up her undergarments like that—yet she was determined to have the sheets off the line and all he could do was stand there numb with embarrassment. It was a blessing that rain soon began to pour off his hat brim in streams right in front of his face, making a little waterfall for him to hide behind until the ordeal ended. With the water running off his hat he only caught blurred glimpses of what was going on—he could not judge to what extent Mary had been shocked by his helpful but thoughtless act.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“His wranglers stay in it. I doubt there’s more than one or two of them, but we don’t want one to get loose to warn the big house. We best sneak in and catch them. Me and Deets can do it.” “Them vaqueros are probably drunk by now,” Augustus said. “Drunk and asleep both.”“We’ll split,” Call said. “You and Jake and Pea and Dish go get the horses. We’ll catch the wranglers.” Only after he said it did he remember the boy. He had forgotten he was along. Of course it would have been safer for the boy to go after the horse herd, but the order had been given and he never liked to change his plan once one was struck.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“That’s because they’re God-fearing boys,” Augustus said. “You wouldn’t catch them boys with no Jezebel.” “Is that her name?” Chick asked. “It ain’t the name I heard.” “He’s never learned to curb his passions,” Wilbarger said. “I hope you’ll excuse him.” “A loose tongue is never welcome,” Augustus said mildly.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇