词汇：plain

adj. 平的；朴素的；简单的；清晰的

相关场景

All the men were annoyed with Captain Call because he told of Gus’s dying brusquely, got himself a little food and rode away to be alone, as he always did in the evening. His account was pregnant with mysteries, and the men spent all night discussing them. Why had Gus refused to have the other leg amputated, in the face of plain warnings?

>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

The cattle were spread for three miles over the great plain, grazing peacefully along. No sooner had the hands spotted him than Dish and Needle Nelson came racing over. Both looked scared.

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“Woodrow, I wish you’d relax,” Augustus said. “You can’t save me, and it would be a pity if we fought at this stage. I might kill you accidentally and them boys would sit out on the plains and freeze.” Call didn’t answer. He felt tired and old and sad. He had pressed the mare all day and all night, had easily found the river where the battle took place, recovered Pea Eye’s rifle and even his boots and shirt, found Gus’s saddle, and raced for Miles City. He had risked ruining the Hell Bitch—he hadn’t, though she was tired—and still he had arrived too late. Gus would die, and all he could do was keep a death watch.

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“I understand your attachment to your own appendages,” he said, opening the bandage. He winced when he looked at the wound, but kept working. “I don’t want to cut your other leg off bad enough to get shot in the process. However, you’ll die if you don’t reconsider. That’s a plain fact.” “Go buy me some more whiskey,” Augustus said. “There’s money in my pants. Is that girl playing the piano a whore?” “Yes, her name is Dora,” the doctor said. “Consumptive, I’m afraid. She’ll never see Philadelphia again.” He began to wrap the leg in a clean bandage.

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“That girl plays beautifully,” the doctor said. “They say she studied music in Philadelphia when she was younger.” “How old is she now?” Augustus asked. “Maybe I’ll send her a bouquet.” The doctor smiled. “It’s plain you’re a man of spirit,” he said. “That’s good. I’m afraid you’ve a few fractuosities yet to endure.” “A few what?” Augustus asked. “You better introduce yourself before you start talking Latin.” “Dr. Mobley,” the man said. “Joseph C. Mobley, to be precise. The C stands for Cincinnatus.” “More Latin, I guess,” Augustus said. “Explain that first bunch of Latin you talked.” “I mean we’ve got to take off that other leg,” Dr. Mobley said. “I should have done it while you were out, but frankly, getting the left leg off exhausted me.” “It’s a good thing,” Augustus said. “If you’d hacked off my right leg, you’d be the one who was out. I need that right leg.” His gun belt was hanging over a chair nearby, and he reached out and took his pistol from the holster.

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He hobbled over the plain through the long afternoon and twilight, finally collapsing sometime in the night. His hand slipped off the crutch and he felt it falling from him. In stooping to reach for it, he fell face down, unconscious before he hit the ground. In his dreams he was with Lorena, in the tent on the hot Kansas plains. He longed for her to cool him somehow, touch him with her cool hand, but though she smiled, she didn’t cool him. The world had become red, as though the sun had swollen and absorbed it. He felt as if he were lying on the surface of the red sun as it looked at sunset when it sank into the plain.

>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

He edged cautiously out of the riverbed, but saw no Indians. The broad plain was empty for miles. The Indians had left.

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“Just move the stock on north,” he said. “Be alert. I’m going to get Gus.” The thought of him leaving sent a ripple of apprehension through the camp. Though independent to a man in some respects, the outfit was happier in all respects when Captain Call was around. Or if not the Captain, then Gus. Only a few hours earlier, they had felt cocky enough to take on an army. After all, they were the conquerors of the Yellowstone. But now, watching the Captain catch a horse for Gus to ride back on, they all felt daunted. The vast plain was beautiful, but it had reduced Pea Eye to a scarred wreck. And the Indians had Gus holed up somewhere. They might kill him and the Captain too. All men were mortal, and they felt particularly so. A thousand Indians might come by nightfall. The Indians might fall on them as they had fallen on Custer.

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The third morning he could barely make himself move. His feet were worse than ever, the plains ahead still endless and empty. His eyes ached from looking so hard for the line of the Yellowstone, but he still couldn’t see it.

>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

When he looked ahead he felt very discouraged, for the country seemed endless. It seemed to him he could see almost a hundred miles—just empty country, and he had to walk it. He had never been an advocate of walking, and coming up thetrail horseback had given him even less affection for it. He had never bargained for doing so much walking, especially barefoot. Before he had gone more than a few miles his feet were cut and sore. The plains looked grassy and smooth, but there were rocks scattered here and there, and he stepped on a goodly number of them.

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The darkness didn’t last. The only blessing the light brought was that Pea Eye caught a glimpse of the north star as the clouds were breaking. He knew, at least, that he was going in the right direction. The sun soon came up, and he remembered Gus’s warning not to travel in the daytime. Pea Eye decided to ignore it. For one thing, he was on an absolutely open plain, where there was no good place to hide. He might as well be moving as sitting.

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Pea Eye at once started walking as fast as he could. Though it had stopped raining, it was still cloudy, and he could not see one star or the moon or, for that matter, anything either on heaven or earth. The awful thought struck him that, rolling around and around in the water, he might even have confused north and south and crawled up the wrong bank. He might be walking north, in which case he was as good as dead, but he couldn’t stop to worry about it. He had to move. He had lost his pack and his gun in the river, and as soon as the river sank to being a normal stream again, they would all be lying in the creek bed, in plain sight. If the Indians found them they would know he was gone, and that Gus was alone, which would make things hot for Gus. If they were in a tracking mood it would also make things hot for him. They had horses and could run him down in a matter of hours. The faster he traveled, the better chance he had.

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Augustus and Pea Eye passed him nearly a mile from camp. “Po, you’re a rambler,” Augustus said. “What do you expect to find on this old plain?” “Wild onions,” Po Campo said. “I’d like an onion.” “I’d like a jug of bourbon whiskey, myself,” Augustus said. “I wonder which one of us will get his wish.” “Adios,” Po Campo said.

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“But he never interested me, Dad,” he went on. “I lit out from that place when I was thirteen years old, and I ain’t stopped yet. I didn’t care one way or the other for Dad. I just seen that horses and hounds would get boring if you tried to make ’em a life. I ’spect I’d have wrecked every marriage in the county if I’d stayed in Tennessee. Or else have got killed in a duel.” Newt knew Mr. Gus was trying to be kind, but he wasn’t listening. Much of his life he had wondered who his father was and where he might be. He felt it would be a relief to know. But now he knew, and it wasn’t a relief. There was something in it that thrilled him—he was Captain Call’s son—but more that felt sad. He was glad when Mr. Gus put the horses in a lope—he didn’t have to think as much. They loped along over the grassy plains toward the cattle in the far distance. The cattle looked tiny as ants.THE MEN BEGAN TO TALK of the Yellowstone River as if it were the place where the world ended—or, at least, the place where the drive would end. In their thinking it had taken on a magical quality, partly because no one really knew anything about it. Jasper Fant had somehow picked up the rumor that the Yellowstone was the size of the Mississippi, and as deep.

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With Deets dead, Augustus and Call alternated the scouting duties. One day Augustus asked Newt to ride along with him, much to Newt’s surprise. In the morning they saw a grizzly, but the bear was far upwind and didn’t scent them. It was a beautiful day—no clouds in the sky. Augustus rode with his big rifle propped across the saddle—he was in the highest of spirits. They rode ahead of the herd some fifteen miles or more, and yet when they stopped to look back they could still see the cattle, tiny black dots in the middle of the plain, with the southern horizon still far behind them.

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The sun came out just then and shone so brightly on the white plains that some of the men had to shield their eyes. Newt finally got a place by the fire, but by then the Captain was anxious to move on and he didn’t get to dry his socks. He tried to pull his boots on but had no luck until Po Campo noticed his difficulty and came over with a little flour, which he sprinkled in the boots.“This will help,” he said, and he was right, though getting the boots on still wasn’t easy.

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“I guess I am now.” “No, you’re a fighter,” Augustus said. “We should have left these damn cows down in Texas. You used them as an excuse to come up here, when you ain’t interested in them and didn’t need an excuse anyway. I think we oughta just give them to the Indians when the Indians show up.” “Give the Indians three thousand cattle?” Call said, amazed at the notions his friend had. “Why do that?” “Because then we’d be shut of them,” Augustus said. “We could follow our noses, for a change, instead of following their asses. Ain’t you bored?” “I don’t think like you do,” Call said. “They’re ours. We got ’em. I don’t plan on giving them to anybody.” “I miss Texas and I miss whiskey,” Augustus said. “Now here we are in Montana and there’s no telling what will become of us.” “Miles City’s up here somewhere,” Call said. “You can buy whiskey.” “Yes, but I’ll have to drink it indoors,” Augustus complained. “It’s cool up here.” As if to confirm his remark, the very next day an early storm blew out of the Bighorns. An icy wind came up and snow fell in the night. The men on night herd wrapped blankets around themselves to keep warm. A thin snow covered the plains in the morning, to the amazement of everyone. The Spettle boy was so astonished to wake and see it that he refused to come out of his blankets at first, afraid of what might happen. He lay wide-eyed, looking at the whiteness. Only when he saw the other hands tramping in it without ill effect did he get up.

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Call had scarcely spoken since the death of Deets, but the beauty of the high prairies, the abundance of game, the coolness of the mornings finally raised his spirits. It was plain that Jake Spoon, who had been wrong about most things, had been right about Montana. It was a cattleman’s paradise, and they were the only cattlemen in it. The grassy plains seemed limitless, stretching north. It was strange that they had seen no Indians, though. Often he mentioned this to Augustus.

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The cowboys had lived for months under the great bowl of the sky, and yet the Montana skies seemed deeper than the skies of Texas or Nebraska. Their depth and blueness robbed even the sun of its harsh force—it seemed smaller, in the vastness, and the whole sky no longer turned white at noon as it had in the lower plains. Always, somewhere to the north, there was a swath of blueness, with white clouds floating in it like petals in a pond.

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The coolness of the air seemed to improve the men’s eyesight—they fell to speculating about how many miles they could see. The plains stretched north before them. They saw plenty of game, mainly deer and antelope. Once they saw a large herd of elk, and twice small groups of buffalo. They saw no more bears, but bears were seldom far from then-thoughts.

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AS THE HERD and the Hat Creek outfit slowly rode into Montana out of the barren Wyoming plain, it seemed to all of them that they were leaving behind not only heat and drought, but ugliness and danger too. Instead of being chalky and covered with tough sage, the rolling plains were covered with tall grass and a sprinkling of yellow flowers. The roll of the plains got longer; the heat shimmers they had looked through all summer gave way to cool air, crisp in the mornings and cold at night. They rode for days beside the Bighorn Mountains, whose peaks were sometimes hidden in cloud.

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“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.

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“Go after him on what?” Augustus asked. “Have you gone daft, Soupy? You want to chase a grizzly bear on foot, after what you’ve seen? You wouldn’t even make one good bite for that bear.” The bear had crossed the stream and was ambling along lazily across the open plain.Despite Augustus’s cautions, as soon as the men could catch their horses, five of them, including Dish Boggett, Soupy, Bert, the Irishman and Needle Nelson, raced after the bear, still visible though a mile or more away. They began to fire long before they were in range, and the bear loped toward the mountains. An hour later the men returned, their horses run down, but with no bear trophies.

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The discussions around the campfire began to focus mainly on storms. Many of the hands had experienced plains northers and the occasional ice storm, but they were south Texas cowhands and had seldom seen snow. A few talked of loping over to the mountains to examine the snow at close range and see what it was like.

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“I guess these ain’t the mighty plains Indians we’ve been hearing about,” Augustus said. The whole little tribe was almost silent, each person concentrating on eating. They were all thin. Two old women were cutting meat off the haunch, meaning to dry it, and two young men, probably the ones who had stolen the horses, had caught another and were preparing to cut its throat. To prevent this, Call drew his pistol and fired into the air.

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