词汇：herd

n. 兽群，畜群；放牧人

相关场景

“I’ve got to push this arrow on through,” Augustus said. “I may pass out, and if I do, I better do it now. When it gets dark we’ll both need to be watching.” He stopped talking and listened. He put his finger to his lips so Pea Eye would be quiet. Someone was on the bank above them—at least one Indian, maybe more. He motioned to Pea to have his pistol ready, in case the Indians tried to rush them. Augustus was hoping for a rush, confident that with the two of them shooting they could decimate the Indians to such an extent that the survivors might leave. If the Indians couldn’t be discouraged and driven off, then the situation was serious. They had no horses, the herd was more than a hundred miles away, and he was crippled. They could follow the creek down to the Yellowstone and perhaps strike Miles City, but it would be a slow trip for him to make crippled. Given his choice of gambles, he would prefer a fight. They might even be able to catch one of the Indian horses.>>完整场景

“Watch to the north, Pea,” he said. “I don’t think these boys want to stay around here till dark, either.” He quickly wiped the sweat from his forehead. Keeping a bush directly in front of him he edged very slowly to the bank, just high enough that he could see the tops of the weeds and underbrush. Then he waited. Once the dying horses finally stopped thrashing, it was very still. Augustus regretted that his preoccupation with the arrows had made him so lax that he had failed to protect the horses. It put them in a ticklish spot. It was over a hundred miles back to the Yellowstone and in all likelihood the herd hadn’t even got there yet.>>完整场景

Nonetheless, it was follow or be left, for Augustus had loped off after the buffalo, who had only run about a mile. He soon put them to flight again and raced along beside them, riding close to the herd. Pea Eye, caught by surprise, was left far behind in the race. He kept expecting to hear Gus’s big rifle, but he didn’t, and after a run of about two miles came upon Gus sitting peacefully on a little rise. The buffalo were still running, two or three miles ahead.>>完整场景

“He ain’t, that’s true,” Augustus said. “But he had a chance to be once. He turned his back on it, and now he ain’t about to admit that he made the wrong choice. He’d as soon kill himself. He’s got to keep trying to be the way he thinks he is, and he’s got to make out that he was always that way—it’s why he ain’t owned up to being your pa.” Soon they turned and headed back toward the herd.>>完整场景

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.>>完整场景

“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.>>完整场景

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.>>完整场景

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.>>完整场景

But he saw no buzzards, and a week after the fight the bull was in the herd again. No one had seen him return, but one morning he was there. He had only one horn and one eye, and Po Campo’s sewing job was somewhat uneven, the folds of skin having separated in two or three places—but the bull was ornery as ever, bellowing at the cowboys when they came too close. He resumed his habit of keeping well to the front of the herd. His wounds only made him more irascible; the hands gave him a wide berth.>>完整场景

Even then, it was all they could do to throw the bull, and it took Po Campo over two hours to sew the huge flap of skin back in place. When it was necessary to turn the bull from one side to another, it took virtually the whole crew, plus five horses and ropes, to keep him from getting up again. Then, when the bull did roll, he nearly rolled on Needle Nelson, who hated him anyway and didn’t approve of all the doctoring. When the bull nearly rolled on him Needle retreated to the wagon and refused to come near him again. “I was rooting for the bear,” he said. “A bull like that is going to get somebody sooner or later, and it might be me.” The next day the bull was so sore he could barely hobble, and Call feared the doctoring had been in vain. The bull fell so far behind the herd that they decided to leave him. He fell several miles behind in the course of the day. Call kept looking back, expecting to see buzzards in the sky—if the bull finally dropped, they would feast.>>完整场景

Then it stopped. Everyone expected to see the bull down—but the bull wasn’t down. Neither was the bear. They broke apart, circling one another in the dust. Everyone prepared to pour bullets into the bear if he should charge their way, but the bear didn’t charge. He snarled at the bull, the bull answering with a slobbery bellow. The bull turned back toward the herd, then stopped and faced the bear. The bear rose on his hind legs again, still snarling—one side was soaked with blood. To the men, the bear seemed to tower over them, although fifty yards away. In a minute he dropped back on all fours, roared once more at the bull, and disappeared into the brush along the creek.>>完整场景

It came at an inopportune moment too, for the bull and the bear, twisting like cats, had left the creek bank and were moving in the direction of the herd, although the dust the battle raised was so thick no one could see who had the advantage. It seemed to Call, when he looked, that the bull was being ripped to pieces by the bear’s teeth and claws, but at least once the bull knocked the bear backward and got a horn into him again.>>完整场景

Instead of fleeing, most of the cattle turned and looked at the bear. The Texas bull stood all by himself in front of the herd.>>完整场景

For the next few days everyone was tense, expecting Indian attack. Several men took alarm at the sight of what turned out to be sagebrush or low bushes. No one could sleep at night, and even those hands who were not on guard spent much of the night checking and rechecking their ammunition. The Irishman was afraid to sing on night duty for fear of leading the Indians straight to them. In fact, night herding became highly unpopular with everyone, and instead of gambling for money men began to gamble over who took what watch. The midnight watch was the most unpopular. No one wanted to leave the campfire: the men who came in from the watches did so with profound relief, and the men who went out assumed they were going to their deaths. Some almost cried. Needle Nelson trembled so that he could barely get his foot in his stirrup. Jasper Fant sometimes even got off and walked when he was on the far side of the herd, reasoning that the Indians would be less likely to spot him if he was on foot.>>完整场景

Anyway, if Newt had wanted to question the Captain about it, he would have had a hard time catching him. The Captain took Deets’s job and spent his days ranging far ahead. Usually he only rode back to the herd about dark, to guide them to a bed-ground. Once during the day he had come back in a high lope to report that he had crossed the tracks of about forty Indians. The Indians had been heading northwest, the same direction they were heading.>>完整场景

Newt had always been interested in snow, and looked at the mountains often, but in the weeks following Deets’s death he found it difficult to care much about anything, even snow. He didn’t pay much attention to the talk of storms, and didn’t really care if they all froze, herd and hands together.>>完整场景

“I do wish I’d just stayed in Lonesome Dove,” he said, when he stopped crying.THEY TRAILED THE HERD up the Powder River, whose water none of the cowboys liked. A few complained of stomach cramps and others said the water affected their bowel movements. Jasper Fant in particular had taken to watching his own droppings closely. They were coming out almost white, when any came out at all. It seemed an ominous sign.>>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

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

“Let’s take him on,” Call said. “The men will want to pay their respects. I imagine we can catch them tonight.” They caught the herd not long before dawn. Dish Boggett was the night herder who saw them coming. He was very relieved, for with both of them gone, the herd had been his responsibility. Since he didn’t know the country, it was a heavy responsibility, and he had been hoping the bosses would get back soon. When he saw them he felt a little proud of himself, for he had kept the cattle on grass and had moved them along nicely.>>完整场景

They came back the second night to where the herd had been, only to find it gone. Josh Deets had begun to smell.>>完整场景

They rested only a little while at night, and by midmorning of the next day were a hundred miles from the herd, with no results in sight.>>完整场景

“If they got the dern horses they might decide to come back and get us,” Jasper Fant pointed out. “They got Custer, didn’t they? And he fought Indians his whole life.” Call was more worried about the grass situation. It was too sparse to support the herd for long.>>完整场景

“Well, you boys was singing opry loud enough to wake the deaf,” Augustus remarked. “I guess it was just their charity that they didn’t take the whole herd. Nobody would have noticed.” Call was vexed. He had been awake almost all night and had had no suspicion of Indians. All his years of trying to stay prepared hadn’t helped. “They must have been good with horses,” he said.>>完整场景

Augustus loped up, seemingly fresh. “We better get everybody to the front,” he said. “We’ll need to try and spread them when they hit the water. Otherwise they’ll all pile into the first mudhole and tromple themselves.” Most of the cattle were too weak to run, but they broke into a trot. Call finally shook the sleep off and helped Dish and Deets and Augustus split the herd. They were only partially successful. The cattle were moving like a blind army, the scent of water in their nostrils. Fortunately they hit the river above where Call had hit it, and there was more water. The cattle spread of their own accord.>>完整场景