词汇：age

n. 年龄；时代；阶段；寿命，使用年限

相关场景

More beautiful with age.>>完整场景

GRANDFATHER: That's right. When I was your age, television was called books.>>完整场景

Call thought often of Newt. He watched him with increasing pride all winter. The boy was the only one left in the crew whom he enjoyed being with. The boy’s skill and persistence with horses pleased him. He knew it would be chancy to leave a seventeen-year-old boy in charge of a group of grown men—yet he himself had led men at that age, and that had been in rougher times. He liked the way the boy went about his work without complaint. He had filled out physically during the year and could work all day energetically and accomplish more than most of the men.>>完整场景

Still, a fact was a fact: the horses were gone. Call took Pea, Newt, Needle Nelson, and Old Hugh, and went in pursuit. He soon ruled out Indians, for the thieves were traveling too slow, and had even stopped to camp not thirty miles from their headquarters, which Indians with stolen horses would never have been foolish enough to do. It was soon plain that they were only chasing two men. They crossed into Canada on the second day and caught the thieves on the third, surprising them at breakfast. They were a shaky old man with a dirty gray beard and a strapping boy about Newt’s age. The old man had a single-shot buffalo gun, and the boy a cap-and-ball pistol. The boy was cooking venison and the old man propped against his saddle muttering over a Bible when Call walked in with his pistol drawn. The boy, though big as an ox, began to tremble when he saw the five men with guns.>>完整场景

He’s the only son you’ll ever have—I’d bet my wad on that—though I guess it’s possible you’ll take to women in your old age.” “No, I won’t,” Call said. “They don’t like me. I never recall mistreating that boy.” “Not naming him is mistreatment,” Augustus said. “Give him your name, and you’ll have a son you can be proud of. And Newt will know you’re his pa.” “I don’t know that myself,” Call said.>>完整场景

“Imagine getting killed by an arrow in this day and age,” Augustus said. “It’s ridiculous, especially since they shot at us fifty times with modern weapons and did no harm.” “You always was careless,” Call said. “Pea said you rode over a hill and right into them. I’ve warned you about that very thing a thousand times. There’s better ways to approach a hill.” “Yes, but I like being free on the earth,” Augustus said. “I’ll cross the hills where I please.” He paused a minute. “I hope you won’t mistreat Newt,” he said.>>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

“Yes, I’m right,” Clara said. “You ain’t answered my question.” “His mother was a woman named Maggie,” he said. “She was a whore. She died when Newt was six.” “I like that boy,” Clara said. “I’d keep him too, if I got the chance. He’s about the age my Jimmy would be, if Jimmy had lived.” “Newt’s a fine boy,” Augustus said.>>完整场景

“I notice you’ve taken a fancy to young Mr. Johnson,” Augustus said. “I expect if I did stay around he’d beat me out.” “He’s nearly as dull as Woodrow Call, but he’s nicer,” Clara said. “He’ll do what he’s told, mostly, and I’ve come to appreciate that quality in a man. I could never count on you to do what you’re told.” “So do you aim to marry him?” “No, that’s one of the things I’m through with,” Clara said. “Of course I ain’t quite—poor Bob ain’t dead. But if he passes away, I’m through with it.” Clara smiled. Augustus chuckled. “I hope you ain’t contemplating an irregular situation,” he said.Clara smiled. “What’s irregular about having a boarder?” she asked. “Lots of widows take boarders. Anyway, he likes my girls better than he likes me. He might be ready to marry again by the time Sally’s of age.” At that moment Sally was chattering away to young Newt, who was getting his first taste of conversation with a sprightly young lady.>>完整场景

“I like her,” Clara said, ignoring him. “I expect you’ll marry her and I’ll have to watch you have five or six babies in your old age. I guess I’d be annoyed, but I could live with it. Don’t take her up to Montana. She’ll either die or get killed, or else she’ll age before her time, like I have.” “I can’t tell that you’ve aged much,” Augustus said.>>完整场景

“No, you’d just spend it on barbers,” Augustus said. “These boys will put it to better use. They deserve a frolic before we set out to the far north.” He popped the team with the reins and rode out of town, thinking how young the boys were. Age had never mattered to him much. He felt that, if anything, he himself had gained in ability as the years went by. Yet he became a little wistful, thinking of the boys. However he might best them, he could never stand again where they stood, ready to go into a whorehouse for the first time. The world of women was about to open to them. Of course, if a whorehouse in Ogallala was the door they had to go through, some would be scared back to the safety of the wagon and the cowboys. But some wouldn’t.>>完整场景

The town abounded in saloons, of course, but at first the boys were too spooked to go in one. Probably they would be looked at, because of their age, and anyway they didn’t have funds for drinking. What little they had must be saved for whores—at least that was their intention. But the fourth or fifth time they passed the big general store their intentions wavered, and they all slipped in for a look at the merchandise. They stared at the guns: buffalo rifles and pistols with long blue barrels, and far beyond their means. All they came out with was a sack of horehound candy. Since it was the first candy any of them had had in months, it tasted wonderful. They sat down in the shade and promptly ate the whole sack.>>完整场景

“Bad men would have a better team,” Clara said. “Find any colts?” Cholo shook his head. His hair was white—Clara had never been able to get his age out of him, but she imagined he was seventy-five at least, perhaps eighty. At night by the fire, with the work done, Cholo wove horsehair lariats. Clara loved to watch the way his fingers worked. When a horse died or had to be killed, Cholo always saved its mane and tail for his ropes. He could weave them of rawhide too, and once had made one for her of buckskin, although she didn’t rope. Bob had been puzzled by the gift—“Clara couldn’t rope a post,” he said—but Clara was not puzzled at all. She had been very pleased. It was a beautiful gift; Cholo had the finest manners. She knew he appreciated her as she appreciated him. That was the year she bought him the coat. Sometimes, reading her magazines, she would look up and see Cholo weaving a rope and imagine that if she ever did try to write a story she would write it about him. It would be very different from any of the stories she read in the English magazines.>>完整场景

And yet he loved the girls in his unspeaking way. His love mostly came out in awkwardness, for their delicacy frightened him. He was continually warning them about their health and trying to keep them wrapped up. Their recklessness almost stopped his heart at times—they were the kind of girls who would run out in the snow barefoot if they chose. He feared for them, and also feared the effect on his wife if one of them should die. Impervious to weather himself, he came to dread the winters for fear winter would take the rest of his family. Yet the girls proved as strong as their mother, whereas the boys had all been weak. It made no sense to Bob, and he was hoping if they could only have another boy, he would turn into the helper he needed.The only hand they had was an old Mexican cowboy named Cholo. The old man was wiry and strong, despite his age, and stayed mainly because of his devotion to Clara. It was Cholo, and not her husband, who taught her to love horses and to understand them. Cholo had pointed out to her at once that her husband would never break the mustang mare; he had urged her to persuade Bob to sell the mare unbroken, or else let her go. Though Bob had been a horse trader all his adult life, he had no real skill with horses. If they disobeyed him, he beat them—Clara had often turned her back in disgust from the sight of her husband beating a horse, for she knew it was his incompetence, not the horse’s, that was to blame for whatever incident had provoked the beating. Bob could not contain his violence when angered by a horse.>>完整场景

“I bet Newt got a good look,” Soupy said. “Newt’s getting to an age to have an eye for the damsels.” Newt kept silent, embarrassed. He would have liked to brag a little about his visit, perhaps even repeat one of the remarks Lorena had made, but he was aware that he couldn’t do so without causing Dish Boggett to feel bad that it wasn’t him who had got the visit.>>完整场景

“He can afford them big horses,” Roy pointed out. “Maybe he’s got money.’” Dan had been about to ride past, and Jake hoped he would. He still hoped they’d hit Dodge before the Suggs boys did any regulating. He might get free of them in Dodge. Two accidents wouldn’t necessarily brand him for life, but if he traveled much farther with a gun outfit like the Suggses, he couldn’t expect a peaceful old age—or any old age, probably.>>完整场景

“I guess you’re getting mellow in your old age,” he said. “Now you’re feeding Indians.” “They were just Wichitas,” Call said, “and they were hungry. That steer couldn’t have kept up anyway. Besides, I knew the old man,” he added. “Remember old Bacon Rind?—or that’s what we called him, anyway.” “Yes, he was never a fighter,” Augustus said. “I’m surprised he’s still alive.” “He fed us buffalo once,” Call said. “It was only fair he should have a beef.” They were fifty yards from the tent, so Call drew rein. He couldn’t see the girl, but he took care not to come too close.>>完整场景

The old man soon got done with the girl, but she whimpered for a long time—an unconscious whimpering, such as a dog makes when it is having a bad dream. It disturbed Roscoe’s mind. She seemed too young a girl to have gotten herself into such a rough situation, though he knew that in the hungry years after the war many poor people with large families had given children to practically anyone who would take them, once they got of an age to do useful work.>>完整场景

“It’s me that done it,” Allen said, tears on his round face. “I never should have brought the boy. I knew he was too young.” Call said nothing more. The boy’s age had had nothing to do with what had happened, of course; even an experiencedman, riding into such a mess of snakes, wouldn’t have survived. He himself might not have, and he had never worried about snakes. It only went to show what he already knew, which was that there were more dangers in life than even the sharpest training could anticipate. Allen O’Brien should waste no time on guilt, for a boy could die in Ireland as readily as elsewhere, however safe it might appear.>>完整场景

His deputy, Roscoe Brown—forty-eight years of age to July’s twenty-four—assured him cheerfully that the increase in trouble was something he had better get used to.>>完整场景

“I ain’t surprised,” Augustus said gently. It was one thing to make light of a young man’s sorrows in love, but another to do it when the sorrower was Xavier’s age. There were men who didn’t get over women. He himself, fortunately, was not one of them, though he had felt fairly black for a year after Clara married. It was curious, for Xavier had had stuff enough to survive a hellion like Therese, but was devastated by the departure of Lorena, who could hardly, with reason, have been expected to stay in one room over a saloon all her life.>>完整场景

The widow Spettle had a brood of eight children, Bill and Pete being the oldest. Ned Spettle, the father of them all, had died of drink two years before. It looked to Call as if the family was about to starve out. They had a little creek-bottom farm not far north of Pickles Gap, but the soil was poor and the family had little to eat but sowbelly and beans. The widow Spettle, however, was eager for him to take the boys, and would hear no protest from Call. She was a thin woman with bitter eyes. Call had heard from someone that she had been raised rich, in the East, with servants to comb her hair and help her into her shoes when she got up. It might just have been a story—it was hard for him to imagine a grownup who would need to be helped into their own shoes—but if even part of it was true she had come a long way down. Ned Spettle had never got around to putting a floor in the shack of a house he built. His wife was rearing eight children on the bare dirt. He had heard it said that Ned had never got over the war, which might have explained it. Plenty hadn’t. It accounted for the shortage of grown men of a certain age, that war. Call himself felt a kind of guilt at having missed it, though the work he and Gus had done on the border had been just as dangerous, and just as necessary.>>完整场景

“Probably all Texas horses anyway,” Augustus said. “Probably had enough of Mexico.” “I’ve had enough of it and I just got here,” Jake said, lighting his smoke. “I never liked it down here with these chili- bellies.” “Why, Jake, you should stay and make your home here,” Augustus said. “That sheriff can’t follow you here. Besides, think of the women.” “I got a woman,” Jake said. “That one back in Lonesome Dove will do me for a while.” “She’ll do you, all right,” Augustus said. “That girl’s got more spunk than you have.” “What would you know about it, Gus?” Jake asked. “I don’t suppose you’ve spent time with her, a man your age.” “The older the violin, the sweeter the music,” Augustus said. “You never knowed much about women.” Jake didn’t answer. He had forgotten how much Gus liked argument.>>完整场景

“I guess they’re professors,” Dish said. “They sure like to read.” Finally the men trotted on around to the barn. One was a stocky red-faced man of about the age of the Captain; the other was a tiny feist of a fellow with a pocked face and a big pistol strapped to his leg. The red-faced man was obviously the boss. His black horse was no doubt the envy of many a man. The little man rode a grulla that was practically swaybacked.>>完整场景

“He found that cap in the fifties, to the best of my recollection,” Augustus said. “You know Deets is like me—he’s not one to quit on a garment just because it’s got a little age. We can’t all be fine dressers like you, Jake.” Jake turned his coffee eyes on Augustus and broke out another slow grin. “What’d it take to get you to whip up another batch of them biscuits?” he said. “I’ve come all the way from Arkansas without tasting a good bite of bread.” “From the looks of that pony it’s been fast traveling,” Call said, which was as close to prying as he intended to get. He had run with Jake Spoon off and on for twenty years, and liked him well; but the man had always worried him a little, underneath. There was no more likable man in the west, and no better rider, either; but riding wasn’t everything, and neither was likableness. Something in Jake didn’t quite stick. Something wasn’t quite consistent. He could be the coolest man in the company in one fight, and in the next be practically worthless.>>完整场景