词汇：matter

n. 物质；事件；原因

相关场景

“Oh, Woodrow Call is your pa, son,” Augustus said, as if it were a matter of casual knowledge.>>完整场景

The observation worried Jasper Fant so much that he lost his appetite and his ability to sleep. He lay awake in his blankets for three nights, clutching his gun—and when he couldn’t avoid night herding he felt such anxiety that he usually threw up whatever he ate. He would have quit the outfit, but that would only mean crossing hundreds of miles of bear-infested prairie alone, a prospect he couldn’t face. He decided if he ever got to a town where there was a railroad, he would take a train, no matter where it was going.Pea Eye, too, found the prospect of bears disturbing. “If we strike any more, let’s all shoot at once,” he suggested to the men repeatedly. “I guess if enough of us hit one it’d fall,” he always added. But no one seemed convinced, and no one bothered to reply.WHEN SALLY AND BETSEY asked her questions about her past, Lorena was perplexed. They were just girls—she couldn’t tell them the truth. They both idolized her and made much of her adventure in crossing the prairies. Betsey had a lively curiosity and could ask about a hundred questions an hour. Sally was more reserved and often chided her sister for prying into Lorena’s affairs.>>完整场景

Call drew his rifle and tried to urge the Hell Bitch a little closer, but had no luck. She moved, but she moved sideways, always keeping her eyes fixed on the bear, though it was a good hundred and fifty yards away. No matter how he spurred her, the mare sidestepped, as if there were an invisible line on the prairie that she would not cross.>>完整场景

At other times the question would have excited him, but under the circumstances he felt too dull to care much. Set beside the fact that Deets was gone, it didn’t seem to matter greatly.>>完整场景

Augustus didn’t answer. He was resting for a moment, wondering if he could get the lance out or if he should just break it off or what. If he pulled it out he might bring half of Deets out with it. Of course Deets was dead—in a way, it didn’t matter. Yet it did—if there was one thing he didn’t want to do, it was tear Deets up.>>完整场景

“Hell, whores make a sight more than cowboys,” Ben kept saying—it seemed to trouble him a good deal. “We don’t make but thirty dollars a month and them two made thirty dollars off us in about three minutes. It would have been forty if Pete hadn’t backed out.” To Newt such an argument seemed wide of the point. What the whores sold was unique. The fact that it exceeded top- hand wages didn’t matter. He decided he would probably be as big a whore as Jake and Mr. Gus when he grew up and had money to spend.>>完整场景

“Me and Mary,” Buf said. “I get the ones that like ’em fat, and she gets the one’s that like ’em skinny. And if it’s a feller who likes ’em either way it’s just a matter of who ain’t busy at the time.” She was still lying naked on the bed.>>完整场景

Newt decided it wouldn’t do. He stood up and found that he didn’t float off—though when he tried to walk he found it no simple matter to put his feet down one after the other. It irritated him a bit, for he had never experienced any trouble in walking before and felt a resentment against his feet for behaving so peculiarly.>>完整场景

“Was it me?” Newt asked, feeling that maybe he should have managed things better. “Was it just that he was quirting me?” “That was part of it,” Augustus said. “Call don’t know himself what the rest of it was.”“Why, he’d have killed that man, if you hadn’t roped him,” Dish said. “He would have killed anybody. Anybody!” Augustus, eating his candy, did not dispute it.IT WAS BECAUSE of the fight that the boys ended up amid the whores. Dish saddled and left, and Augustus finished loading the wagon and started out of town. When he turned the wagon around, Newt and the Raineys were talking to Pea Eye, who had been up the street getting barbered and had missed the fight. Pea Eye had so much toilet water on that Augustus could smell him from ten feet away. He and the boys were standing around the bloody anvil and the boys were explaining the matter to him. Pea didn’t seem particularly surprised.>>完整场景

“Why, Lorie, what’s the matter?” he asked.>>完整场景

“Yes, she’ll know you’re a human being,” Augustus said. “You don’t have to duck your head to nobody. Half the women in this country probably started out like you did, working in saloons.” “She didn’t,” Lorena said. “I bet she was always a lady. That’s why you wanted to marry her.” Augustus chuckled. “A lady can slice your jugular as quick as a Comanche,” he said. “Clara’s got a sharp tongue. She’s tomahawked me many a time in the past.” “I’ll be afraid to meet her, then,” Lorena said. “I’ll be afraid of what she’ll say.” “Oh, she’ll be polite to you,” Augustus assured her. “I’m the one that will have to watch my step.” But no matter what he said, he couldn’t soothe the girl’s agitation. She felt she would lose him, and that was that. She offered her body—it was all she knew to do. Something in the manner of the offer saddened him, though he accepted it.>>完整场景

“If you want to talk to me you’ll have to come a little closer,” Augustus said. “I ain’t walking that far barefooted.” Call dismounted and walked over to him. “I don’t know what’s the matter with Deets,” he said.>>完整场景

“No, I guess it wouldn’t,” Augustus said. “You’re so sure you’re right it doesn’t matter to you whether people talk to you at all. I’m glad I’ve been wrong enough to keep in practice.” “Why would you want to keep in practice being wrong?” Call asked. “I’d think it would be something you’d try to avoid.” “You can’t avoid it, you’ve got to learn to handle it,” Augustus said. “If you only come face to face with your own mistakes once or twice in your life it’s bound to be extra painful. I face mine every day—that way they ain’t usually much worse than a dry shave.” “Anyway, I hope you leave her,” Call said. “We might get in the Indians before we get to Montana.” “I’ll have to see,” Augustus said. “We’ve grown attached. I won’t leave her unless I’m sure she’s in good hands.” “Are you aiming to marry?” “I could do worse,” Augustus said. “I’ve done worse twice, in fact. However, matrimony’s a big step and we ain’t discussed it.” “Of course, you ain’t seen the other one yet,” Call said.>>完整场景

“You’ve got a name,” Augustus said. “Don’t it matter to you, whether people use it?” “Not much,” Call said.>>完整场景

When they sighted the Republican River Gus was with him. From a distance it didn’t seem like much of a river. “That’s the one that got the Pumphrey boy, ain’t it?” Augustus said. “Hope it don’t get none of us, we’re a skinny outfit as it is.” “We wouldn’t be if you did any work,” Call said. “Are you going to leave her in Ogallala or what?” “Are you talking about Lorie or this mare I’m riding?” Augustus asked. “If it’s Lorie, it wouldn’t kill you to use her name.” “I don’t see that it matters,” Call said, though even as he said it he remembered that it had seemed to matter to Maggie—she had wanted to hear him say her name.>>完整场景

“I don’t know why we don’t cut him,” Dish said. “It’s only a matter of time before he kills one of us.” “If he kills me he’ll die with me,” Needle said grimly.>>完整场景

There was no shade on the bluff. He covered his face with his hat and lay back against his saddle, sweating, and ashamed of his own carelessness. He grew delirious and in his delirium would have long talks with Roscoe. He could see Roscoe’s face as plain as day. Roscoe didn’t seem to blame him for the fact that he was dead. If he himself was soon going to be dead, too, it might not matter so much. July didn’t die. His leg felt terrible, though. In the night came a rainstorm and he could do nothing but huddle under his saddle blanket. His teeth began to chatter and he couldn’t stop them. He almost wished he could go on and die, it was so uncomfortable. But in the morning the sun was hot, he soon dried out. He felt weak, but he didn’t feel as if he were dying. Mainly he had to avoid looking at his leg. It looked so bad he didn’t know what to think. If a doctor saw it he could probably just cut it off and be done with it. When he tried to bend it even a little, a terrible pain shot through him—yet he had to get down to the river or else die of thirst, even though it had just rained.>>完整场景

“Get her to the Doc,” Dee said. “Leon knows where he lives.” Dee began to yell for the deputy and soon Leon came running around the jail. Elmira didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay and talk to Dee, assure him that it would be all right, they would get him out. She would never let them hang Dee Boot. She looked in at him, but she couldn’t talk anymore. She couldn’t say the things she wanted to say. She tried, but no words came out. Her eyes wanted to close, and no matter how hard she tried to keep them open and look at Dee, they kept trying to close. She tried to see Dee again, as Zwey was carrying her away, but Dee’s face was lost in a patch of sunlight. The sun shone brightly against the wall of the jail and Dee’s face was lost in the light. Then, despite herself, her head fell back against Zwey’s arm and all she could see was the sky.>>完整场景

Fortunately it didn’t matter. The deputy had gone back in and he woke Dee Boot himself.>>完整场景

“What’s the matter with you, Zwey?” Luke said. “You and Ellie ain’t really married. You ain’t married to somebody just because she comes on a trip with you.” Zwey began to feel very sad—it might be true, what Luke said. Yet he liked to think that he and Ellie were married.>>完整场景

They came when you didn’t want them and had needs you didn’t always want to meet. Worst of all, they died no matter how much you loved them—the death of her own had frozen the hope inside her harder than the wintry ground. Her hopes had frozen hard and she vowed to keep it that way, and yet she hadn’t: the hopes thawed. She had hopes for her girls, and might even come to have them for the baby at her bosom, child of another mother. Weak as it was, and slim though its chances, she liked holding the child to her. I stole you, she thought. I got you and I didn’t even have to go through the pain. Your mother’s a fool not to want you, but she’s smart to realize you wouldn’t have much of a chance with her and those buffalo hunters.>>完整场景

“What’s the matter?” Clara asked.>>完整场景

Elmira didn’t want to stop, even when told that it was still over half a day to Ogallala, but Zwey had already dismounted and unhitched the horses. I wish I could get to Dee, she thought—but then decided one more day wouldn’t matter. She got slowly down from the wagon seat.>>完整场景

She longed, sometimes, to talk to a person who actually wrote stories and had them printed in magazines. It interested her to speculate how it was done: whether they used people they knew, or just made people up. Once she had even ordered some big writing tablets, thinking she might try it anyway, even if she didn’t know how, but that was in the hopeful years before her boys died. With all the work that had to be done she never actually sat down and tried to write anything—and then the boys died and her feeling changed. Once the sight of the writing tablets had made her hopeful, but after those deaths it ceased to matter. The tablets were just another reproach to her, something willful she had wanted. She burned the tablets one day, trembling with anger and pain, as if the paper and not the weather had been somehow responsible for the deaths of her boys. And, for a time, she stopped reading the magazines. The stories in them seemed hateful to her: how could people talk that way and spend their time going to balls and parties, when children died and had to be buried?>>完整场景

They had few quarrels, most of them about money. Clara was a good wife and worked hard; she never did anything untoward or unrespectable, and yet the fact that she had that Texas money made Bob uneasy. She wouldn’t give it up or let him use it, no matter how poor they were. Not that she spent it on herself—Clara spent nothing on herself, except for the books she ordered or the magazines she took. She kept the money for her children, she said—but Bob could never be sure she wasn’t keeping it so she could leave if she took a notion. He knew it was foolish—Clara would leave, money or no money, if she decided to go—but he couldn’t get the idea out of his mind. She wouldn’t even use the money on the house, although she had wanted the house, and they had had to haul the timber two hundred miles. Of course, he had prospered in the horse business, mainly because of the Army trade; he could afford to build her a house. But he still resented her money. She told him it was only for the girls’ education—and yet she did things with it that he didn’t expect.>>完整场景