词汇：herd

n. 兽群，畜群；放牧人

相关场景

All day he persevered, dragging himself along. He stopped less frequently, because he found it hard to get started once he stopped. Rest was seductive, made more so by his tendency to improve the situation through imagination. Maybe the herd had moved north faster than he calculated. Maybe Call would show up the next day and save him the painful business of dragging along with his crutch.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
The crew, which had been in high spirits and drunk on their own celebrity—for weren’t they the first men to bring a Texas herd across the Yellowstone?—sobered up immediately when they saw the condition Pea Eye was in.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Two hours after sunup the next day, Dish Boggett, who had been sent off to do a little scouting, thought he saw a figure, far to the north. At first he couldn’t tell if it was a man or an antelope. If it was a man, it was an Indian, he imagined, and he raced back to the herd and got the Captain, who had been shoeing the mare—always an arduous task. She hated anyone to handle her feet and had to be securely snubbed before she would submit to it.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Then it grew dark, and he wanted to cry with disappointment. He had walked long enough—surely it was time the boys showed up. Once it was full dark, he stopped and listened. He felt the herd might be close, and if he listened maybe he would hear the Irishman singing. He heard no singing, but when he got up and tried to stumble on, he felt the presence of his guide again. This time he knew it was Deets. He couldn’t see him because it was dark, and of course Deets was dark, but he lost the floating feeling and walked easier, though he was a little scared. He didn’t know what the rules were with people who were dead. He would have liked to say something but felt he shouldn’t. Deets might go away and leave him to stumble along in the dark if he said anything. Maybe travel was no trouble for the dead—Pea didn’t know. It was a considerable trouble for him. He walked slow, for he didn’t like to fall, but he walked on all night.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Dern you, walk straight,” he said. The sound of his own cracked voice startled him out of his fury.Then he felt embarrassed. A man who would cuss his own legs just because they were weak was peculiar, he knew. He got the floating feeling again, so strong that he felt frightened. He felt he might be going to float right out of his own body. He wondered if he was dying, if that was how it felt. He had never heard of anyone dying while they were just walking along, but then dying was something he knew little about. He would take a few steps and then feel himself begin to rise out of his own body, which frightened him so that he stumbled and fell. He didn’t want to stand up again, and he began to crawl, looking up now and then to see if the herd was in sight. He felt he couldn’t live another night so alone and hungry. He would die in the grass like some beaten animal.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
He stumbled on, feeling that the sun would burn off what skin he had left. Several times during the afternoon he fell. He grew lightheaded and felt as if he were floating. Then his swollen feet would refuse to work, and instead of floating he would fall. Once he came to lying flat on his back in the grass, the sun burning into his eyes. He scrambled up and looked around, feeling that the herd might have walked right past him when he slept. He tried very hard to walk a straight line south, but his legs were so weak that he kept wobbling off course.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
It was the emptiness that discouraged him most. He had almost stopped worrying about Indians and bears. What he worried about was being lost. He knew by the stars he was still going south, but south where? Maybe he had veered east of the herd, or west of it, so that no one would spot him. Maybe he had already passed them, in which case there was little hope. The snows would just come and freeze him, or else he would starve.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“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.
“往北看，豌豆，”他说。“我想这些男孩也不想在这里待到天黑。”他赶紧擦去额头上的汗水。他把一丛灌木放在正前方，慢慢地向岸边走去，刚好够高，可以看到杂草和灌木丛的顶部。然后他等待着。一旦垂死的马终于停止了挣扎，它就非常安静了。奥古斯都后悔自己过于专注于箭，以至于没有保护好马。这让他们陷入了一个棘手的境地。距离黄石公园有一百多英里，很可能牛群还没到那里。
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇