词汇：probably

adv. 大概；或许；很可能

相关场景

The next day, since the weather continued pretty, he decided to go to Fort Benton himself. Major Court had indicated that the Army might frequently need beef if the winter got bad and the tribes fared poorly. After all, he had come to Montana in the hope of selling cattle. Once the news reached Texas that they had made the drive, others would soon follow, probably by next fall, and it was well to establish good connections with the Army, the only buyer in the Territory who might want beef.>>完整场景

Call had debated giving him the letters Gus had written to the women, but thought better of it. If Dish was lost, and probably he would be, the letters would be lost too, and they were Gus’s last words. Better to keep them and deliver them himself—though the thought didn’t cheer him.>>完整场景

“Yes, and them dern bears probably think a little man meat would come in handy,” Soupy observed.>>完整场景

That night, camping alone, he dreamed of Gus. Frequently he woke up to hear Gus’s voice, so real he looked around expecting to see him. Sometimes he would scarcely fall asleep before he dreamed of Gus, and it was even beginning to happen in the daytime if he rode along not paying much attention to his surroundings. Gus dead invaded his thoughts as readily as he had when he was alive. Usually he came to josh and tease, much as he had in life. “Just because you’ve got to the top of the country, you don’t have to stop,” he said, in one dream. “Turn east and keep going until you hit Chicago.” Call didn’t want to turn east, but neither did he particularly want to stop. Gus’s death, and the ones before it, had caused him to lose his sense of purpose to such an extent that he scarcely cared from one day to the next what he was doing. Hekept on going north because it had become a habit. But they had reached the Milk River and winter was coming, so he had to break the habit or else lose most of the men and probably the cattle too.>>完整场景

“That was the Musselshell River, where you holed up,” he said. “I met that old trapper and he told me. We may take him with us to scout, since he knows the country.” “I wish I had some better whiskey,” Augustus said. “This is a cheap product.” “Well, the saloon’s closed, probably,” Call said.>>完整场景

“Yes, me,” Call said. “Why not me?” “I take it back, Woodrow,” Augustus said. “I have no doubt you’ll miss me. You’ll probably die of boredom this winter and I’ll never get to Clara’s orchard.” “Why do you call it that?” “We had picnics there,” Augustus said. “I took to calling it that. It pleased Clara. I could please her oftener in those days.” “Well, but is that any reason to go so far to be buried?” Call said. “She’d allow you a grave in Nebraska, I’m sure.” “Yes, but we had our happiness in Texas,” Augustus said. “It was my best happiness, too. If you’re too lazy to take me to Texas, then just throw me out the window and be done with it.” He spoke with vehemence. “She’s got her family in Nebraska,” Augustus added, more quietly. “I don’t want to lie there with that dumb horse trader she married.” “This would make a story if there was anybody to tell it,” Call said. “You want me to carry your body three thousand miles because you used to go picnicking with a girl on the Guadalupe River?” “That, plus I want to see if you can do it,” Augustus said.>>完整场景

“I wouldn’t bother him now,” the doctor said. “It’s much too late. I suppose I’m to blame for not outwitting him. He was brought to me unconscious, or I might have figured out what a testy character he is.” Augustus smiled. “Would you bring Captain Call a glass, and some of that venison?” he said. “I imagine he’s hungry.” Call wasn’t ready to give up, although he felt it was probably hopeless. “You got those two women, back in Nebraska,” he pointed out. “Those women would race to take care of you.” “Clara’s got one invalid already, and she’s bored with him,” Augustus said. “Lorie would look after me but it would be a sorry life for her.” “Not as sorry as the one you rescued her from,” Call reminded him.>>完整场景

The doctor put his hands to his temple again. “It strikes my temples like a ten-pound hammer,” he said. “Though I’m sorry to complain. The truth is I don’t feel well myself.” “You probably drink too much,” Augustus said. “If you’ll hand me the bottle I’ll reduce your temptations.” The doctor did, but not before taking a swig. Augustus took several while the doctor shuffled around and stood looking out the window. Across the street the piano was still playing.>>完整场景

He was not used to the crutch and he made poor time. When occasionally he forgot and set his bad foot to the ground, the pain was almost enough to make him pass out. He was weak, and had to stop every hour or so to rest. In the hot sun, sweat poured out of him, though he felt cold and feared a chill. Two or three miles from where he started, he crossed the tracks of a sizable herd of buffalo—they were probably the reason the Indians had left. With winter coming, buffalo were more important to the warriors than two white men, though probably they meant to return and finish off the whites once the hunt was over.>>完整场景

After he had thought about it for a while, Pea was profoundly glad the night was so dark. He wished it could stay dark forever, or at least until he pulled in sight of the herd. When he thought of all the perils he was exposed to, it was all he could do to keep from running. He remembered vividly all the things Indians did to white men. In his rangering days he had helped bury several men who had had such things done to them, and memories of those charred and gouged corpses was with him in the darkness. With him too, and just as terrifying, was the memory of the great orange bear who had nearly ripped the Texas bull wide open. He remembered how fast the bear had gone when they tried to chase it on horseback. If such a bear spotted him he felt he would probably just lie down and give up.>>完整场景

“You can’t carry me to the herd, and I doubt I can walk it,” Augustus said. “I’m running such a fever I’m apt to go out of my head any time. You’ll probably have to trot back and bring some of the boys, or maybe the wagon. Then I can ride back in style.” The thought struck Pea Eye for the first time that Gus might die. He had no color, and he was shaking. It had never been suggested that Gus might die. Of course, he knew any man could die. Pea himself had seen many die. Yet it was a condition he had never associated with Gus McCrae, or with the Captain either. They were not normal men, as he understood normal, and he had never reckoned with the possibility that either of them might die. Now, when he looked at Gus and saw his pallor and his shakes, the thought came into his mind and wouldn’t leave. Gus might die. Pea knew at once that he had to do everything possible to prevent it. If he went back to the wagon and reported that Gus was dead, there was no telling what the Captain would say.>>完整场景

“Yes, but it was us forced it on them,” Augustus said. “They’d rather do battle on sunny days, which is only sensible.” “Here they’re probably gonna kill us, and you take up for them,” Pea Eye said. He had never understood Gus and never would, even if the Indians didn’t kill them.>>完整场景

“Montana mud,” he said. “I ain’t happy about this wound. Maybe this mud will cool it off.” He covered his wound with mud and offered Pea some. “It’s free mud,” he said. “Take some.” Then he felt behind him, trying to judge the wound in his back that Pea had drawn attention to. “It wasn’t a bullet,” he concluded. “I could feel a bullet. It was probably another arrow, only it jiggled out during that run.” The twilight was deepening, the creek bed in shadow, though the upper sky was still light.>>完整场景

“Just because it’s all you know don’t mean it’s all you’d enjoy,” Augustus said. “You had a chance at a fine widow right there in Lonesome Dove, as I recall.” Pea Eye was sorry the subject of widows had come up. He had nearly forgotten the Widow Cole and the day he had helped her take the washing off the line. He didn’t know why he hadn’t forgotten it completely—he surely had forgotten more important things. Yet there it was, and from time to time it shoved into his brain. If he had married some widow his brain would probably have been so full of such things that he would have no time to think, or even to keep his knife sharp.“Ever meet any of the mountain men?” Augustus asked. “They got up in here and took the beavers.” “Well, I met old Kit,” Pea Eye said. “You ought to remember. You was there.” “Yes, I remember,” Augustus said. “I never thought much of Kit Carson.” “Why, what was wrong with Kit Carson?” Pea Eye asked. “They say he could track anything.” “Kit was vain,” Augustus said. “I won’t tolerate vanity in a man, though I will in a woman. If I had gone north in my youth I might have got to be a mountain man, but I took to riverboating instead. The whores on them riverboats in my day barely wore enough clothes to pad a crutch.” As they rode north they saw more buffalo, mostly small bunches of twenty or thirty. The third day north of the Yellowstone they killed a crippled buffalo calf and dined on its liver. In the morning, when they left, there were a number of buzzards and two or three prairie wolves hanging around, waiting for them to leave the carcass.>>完整场景

Of course, they had begun to do just that—raise horses and children together. But the reality was far different from the daydream. They weren’t together. He could not go into her room at night and talk to her. He knew that if he could, he probably wouldn’t be able to think of much to say, or if he did and said something stupid, Clara would answer sharply.>>完整场景

And she was married. Her husband lay sick above their heads, which made his love seem all the more hopeless. But it didn’t stop the longing he felt for her. In his daydreams he fell to reinventing the past, imagining that he had married Clara instead of Elmira. He gave himself a very different marriage. Clara wouldn’t sit in the loft with her feet dangling all day. She wouldn’t have run off on a whiskey boat. Probably she wouldn’t have cared that Jake Spoon shot Benny. He imagined them raising horses and children together.>>完整场景

“Hell, if he was in the trees, you should have gone in and tapped him with your pistol butt,” Augustus said. “That would probably have tamed him.” “Well, the horses wouldn’t go in them trees,” Soupy explained.>>完整场景

“We’re driving three thousand cattle,” Call said. “They’re bound to notice us.” “They ain’t expecting cattle,” Augustus said. “There’s never been cattle here before. They’re probably just out hunting, trying to lay in enough meat to last them the winter.” “I guess we’ll meet soon enough,” Call said.>>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

When Dish moved, Newt saw Deets. He was in the process of yawning when he saw him. Instead of springing up, he lay back down and pulled his blanket tighter. He opened his eyes and looked, and then shut them tightly. He felt angry at the men for having talked so loud that they had awakened him. He wished they would all die, if that was the best they could do. He wanted to go back to sleep. He wanted it to be one of those dreams that you wake up from just as the dream gets bad. He felt that was probably what it was. When he opened his eyes again he wouldn’t see Deets’s body lying on the wagon sheet a few yards away.>>完整场景

Augustus gave up and sat down beside the dead man. “I can’t do this today, Deets,” he said. “Somebody else will have to do it if it gets done.” Call also knelt down by Deets’s body. He could not get over his surprise. Though he had seen hundreds of surprising things in battle, this was the most shocking. An Indian boy who probably hadn’t been fifteen years old had run up toDeets and killed him.>>完整场景

Call and Augustus thought too that the young man would probably stop once he saw that Deets meant no harm. If not, Deets could whop him—Deets was a good hand-to-hand fighter.>>完整场景

“Oh, let’s go,” Augustus said. “We don’t want to be shooting these people, although it would probably be a mercy. I don’t think they even have guns.” “I didn’t shoot nobody,” Call said. “But they’re our horses.” At the shot the whole tribe looked up, stunned. One of the young men grabbed an old single-shot rifle but didn’t fire. It seemed to be the only firearm the tribe possessed. Call fired in the air again, to scare them away from the horse, and succeeded better than he had expected to. Those who had been eating got to their feet, some with sections of gut still in their hands, and fled toward the four small ragged tepees that stood up the draw. The young man with the gun retreated too, helping one of the older women. She was bloody from the feast.>>完整场景

“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.>>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