词汇：grave

adj. 严肃的；重大的；黯淡的

相关场景

They put the coffin in the front room, and July carried the frail corpse downstairs and put him in the coffin. Then, on Clara’s instructions, he rode off to inform the few neighbors and to find a preacher. Clara and Lorena and the girls sat with the body all night, while Cholo dug a grave on the ridge above the barn where the boys were buried. Betsey slept most of the night in Lorena’s arms—Clara thought it nice that she had taken to the young woman so.>>完整场景

So she walked into the room. Betsey had just won a hand. She whooped, for she loved to beat her sister. She was a beautiful child, with curls that would drive men mad some day. “I won the pot, Ma,” she said, and then saw by the grave set of Clara’s face that something was wrong.>>完整场景

Call had one too. The medal had a green ribbon on it, but the color had mostly faded out. Augustus made a loop of the ribbon and put the loop over the grave board and tied it tightly. Captain Call had walked away to put up the hammer.>>完整场景

They walked down to the grave. Call had finished his hammering and stood resting. Two or three of the cowboys trailed back to the grave, a little tentative, not sure they were invited.>>完整场景

“It was Josh.” “Well, I swear,” Jasper said. “That’s a fine name. Starts with a J, like mine. We could have been calling him that all the time, if we’d known.” Then they heard the sound of the hammer—it was the big hammer that they used for straightening the rims of the wagon wheels. Captain Call was hammering the long board deep into the dirt by the grave.>>完整场景

They expected to start the herd that day, as Captain Call had never been known to linger. But this time he did. He came back from the grave, got a big hammer and knocked a board loose from the side of the wagon. He didn’t explain what he was doing to anyone, and the look on his face discouraged anyone from asking. He took the board and carried it down to the grave. The rest of the day he sat alone by Deets’s grave, carving something into it with his knife. The sun flashed on his knife, and the cowhands watched in puzzlement. They just didn’t know what it could be that would take the Captain so long.>>完整场景

Po Campo led the team down to the grave and Deets was put in and quickly covered. The Irishman, unasked, began tosing a song of mourning so sad that all the cowboys at once began to cry, even the Spettle boy, who had not shed a tear when his own brother was buried.>>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

Finally Po Campo gave up. “Better to bury him with it,” he said. “I would have liked to see that boy. The lance went all the way to his collarbone. It went through the heart.” Newt sat in his blankets, feeling alone. No one noticed him or spoke to him. No one explained Deets’s death. Newt began to cry, but no one noticed that either. The sun had risen, and everyone was busy with what they were doing, Mr. Gus eating, the Captain and Lippy digging the grave. Soupy Jones was repairing a stirrup and talking in subdued tones to Bert Borum. Newt sat and cried, wondering if Deets knew anything about what was going on. The Irishman and Needle and the Rainey boys held the herd. It was a beautiful morning, too—mountains seemed closer. Newt wondered if Deets knew about any of it. He didn’t look at the corpse again, but he wondered if Deets had kept on knowing, somehow. He felt he did. He felt that if anyone was taking any notice of him, it was probably Deets, who had always been his friend. It was only the thought that Deets was still knowing him, somehow, that kept him from feeling totally alone.>>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

“That wagon won’t be here for an hour,” Clara said. “Go see about your pa. His fever comes up in the afternoon. Wet a rag and wipe his face.” Both girls stood looking at her silently. They hated to go into the sickroom. Both of them had bright-blue eyes, their legacy from Bob, but their hair was like hers and they were built like her, even to the knobby knees. Bob had been kicked in the head by a mustang he was determined to break, against Clara’s advice. She had seen it happen—he had the mare snubbed to a post with a heavy rope and only turned his back on her for a second. But the mare struck with her front feet, quick as a snake. Bob had bent over to pick up another rope and the kick had caught him right back of the ear. The crack had sounded like a shot. The mare pawed him three or four times before Clara could reach him and drag him out of the way, but those blows had been minor. The kick behind the ear had almost killed him. They had been so sure he would die that they even dug the grave, up on the knoll east of the house where their three boys were buried: Jim and Jeff and Johnny, the three deaths Clara felt had turned her heart to stone: she hoped for stone, anyway, for stone wouldn’t suffer from such losses.>>完整场景

“Sobriety, if you guzzle enough of it,” Augustus said. “I expect it’s just whiskey and syrup.” The wagon itself was in such poor repair that they decided to leave it sit. Call broke up the tailgate and made a little marker for Jake’s grave, scratching his name on it with a pocketknife by the light of the old man’s lantern. He hammered the marker into the loose-packed dirt with the blunt side of a hatchet they had found in the wagon. Augustus trotted over, bringing Call his mare.>>完整场景

“I swear,” Pea Eye said. “He didn’t wait for you, Gus.” “Nope, he died fine,” Augustus said. “Go dig him a grave, will you, Pea?” They buried Jake Spoon by moonlight on the slope above the creek and, after some discussion, cut down Roy Suggs and little Eddie, plus the old man Dan Suggs had killed, a drummer named Collins with a wagonful of patent medicines. There was a good lantern in the wagon, which, besides the medicines, contained four white rabbits in a cage. The old man had run a medicine show, evidently, and did a little magic. The wagon contained a lot of cheaply printed circulars which advertised the show.>>完整场景

“Those boys are bad ones, whoever they are,” Augustus said. “Hung those poor bastards and burned them too.” Call had ridden in for a closer look. “No,” he said. “Shot ’em, then hung ’em, then burned them.” They cut the men down and buried them in one grave.>>完整场景

“You like to eat, see how you like being eaten,” he said to the dead buzzards. “There’s that bad black man. Wilbarger did get him.” The smell suddenly got to Newt—he dismounted and was sick. Pea Eye dug a shallow grave with a little shovel they had brought. They rolled the remains in the grave and covered them, while the buzzards watched. Many stood on the prairie, like a black army, while others circled in the sky. Deets went off to study the thieves’ tracks. Newt had vomited so hard that he felt lightheaded, but even so, he noticed that Deets didn’t look happy when he returned.>>完整场景

“You’ve been on too many burying parties,” Augustus said. “Old Wilbarger had a sense of humor. He’d laugh right out loud if he knew he had the skull of a buffalo cow for a grave marker. Probably the only man who ever went to Yale College who was buried under a buffalo skull.” How he died hadn’t been funny, Newt thought.>>完整场景

“I know something,” Deets said, and to everyone’s surprise mounted and loped off. A few minutes later he came loping back, with the skull of a cow buffalo. “I seen the bones,” he said.“It’s better than nothing,” Augustus said as he sat the skull on the grave. Of course, it wasn’t much better than nothing—a coyote would probably just come along and drag the skull off, and Wilbarger too.>>完整场景

“Let’s go, then,” Call said, standing up. “We won’t have to backtrack him, we can just look for the buzzards.” Augustus was troubled by the fact that he could find nothing with which to mark Wilbarger’s grave—the plains and the riverbank were bare. He gave up and came to the grave just as Pea Eye and Deets were covering the man with dirt.>>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

Jake laughed. “The consequences of that would be that somebody would have to dig your grave,” he said. “If Call didn’t shoot you, Gus would. They ain’t used to taking orders from you regulators.” “By God, then they’ll learn,” Roy Suggs said.>>完整场景

“They say it turned him black,” Dish remarked. “I didn’t see it.” Newt was never to see where Bill Spettle was buried. When they rejoined the main herd it was on the move, the grave somewhere behind on the muddy plain. No one knew quite what to say to Pete Spettle, who had somehow held the remuda together all night. He was holding it together still, though he looked weary and stunned.>>完整场景

“They say it turned him black,” Dish remarked. “I didn’t see it.” Newt was never to see where Bill Spettle was buried. When they rejoined the main herd it was on the move, the grave somewhere behind on the muddy plain. No one knew quite what to say to Pete Spettle, who had somehow held the remuda together all night. He was holding it together still, though he looked weary and stunned.>>完整场景

“I like to walk slow,” Po Campo said. “If I walk too fast I might miss something.” “There ain’t much to miss around here,” Newt said. “Just grass.” “But grass is interesting,” the old man said. “It’s like my serape, only it’s the earth it covers. It covers everything and oneday it will cover me.” Though the old man spoke cheerfully, the words made Newt sad. He remembered Sean O’Brien. He wondered if the grass had covered Sean yet. He hoped it had—he had not been able to rid himself of the memory of the muddy grave they had put Sean in, back by the Nueces.>>完整场景

Augustus waited for Allen O’Brien, who was the last to mount. He was so weak from shock, it seemed he might not be able to, but he finally got on his horse and rode off, looking back until the grave was hidden by the tall gray grass. “It seems too quick,” he said. “It seems very quick, just to ride off and leave the boy. He was the babe of our family,” he added.>>完整场景

“Well, I’ll say a word,” Augustus said. “This was a good, brave boy, for we all saw that he conquered his fear of riding. He had a fine tenor voice, and we’ll all miss that. But he wasn’t used to this part of the world. There’s accidents in life and he met with a bad one. We may all do the same if we ain’t careful.” He turned and mounted old Malaria. “Dust to dust,” he said. “Lets the rest of us go on to Montana.” He’s right, Call thought. The best thing to do with a death was to move on from it. One by one the cowboys mounted and went off to the herd, many of them taking a quick last look at the muddy grave under the tree.>>完整场景