词汇：situation[ˌsɪtʃuˈeɪʃn]
n. 位置；形势；情况；处境
相关场景
- 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.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- “What’s that?” Roscoe said, thinking that if he spoke up the old man might let be. But it didn’t work. The scuffling continued and the girl kept whimpering. Then it seemed they fell against the cabin, not a foot from Roscoe’s head. “If you don’t lay still I’ll whup you tomorrow till you’ll wisht you had,” the old man said. He sounded out of breath. Roscoe tried to think of what July would do in such a situation. July had always cautioned him about interfering in family disputes—the most dangerous form of law work, July claimed. July had once tried to stop a woman who was going after her husband with a pitchfork and had been wounded in the leg as a result.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- “Well, what’s the Indian situation in Texas then?” Roscoe asked. The soldiers seemed completely uninformed on the subject. They were from Missouri. All they knew about Indians was that they liked to do bad things to white captives. One mentioned that a soldier he knew had been shot with an arrow at such close range that the arrow went in one ear and the point came out the other side of the soldier’s head.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- “Well, it’s hard to calculate the odds in this kind of a situation,” Augustus said. “We may not have another bad injury the whole way. On the other hand, half of us may get wiped out. If we have much bad luck I doubt I’ll make it myself.” “Why?” Newt asked, startled to hear him say such a thing.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- “Roscoe, you’ve went to waste long enough,” she said. “Let’s give it a tryout.” “Well, I wouldn’t know how to try,” Roscoe said. “I’ve been a bachelor all my life.” Louisa straightened up. “Men are about as worthless a race of people as I’ve ever encountered,” she said. “Look at the situation a minute. You’re running off to catch a sheriff you probably can’t find, who’s in the most dangerous state in the union, and if you do find him he’ll just go off and try to find a wife that don’t want to live with him anyway. You’ll probably get scalped before it’s all over, or hung, or a Mexican will get you with a pigsticker. And it’ll all be to try and mend something that won’t mend anyway. Now I own a section of land here and I’m a healthy woman. I’m willing to take you, although you’ve got no experience either at farming or matrimony. You’d be useful to me, whereas you won’t be a bit of use to that sheriff or that town you work for either. I’ll teach you how to handle an ax and a mule team, and guarantee you all the corn bread you can eat. We might even have some peas to go with it later in the year. I can cook peas. Plus I’ve got one of the few feather mattresses in this part of the country, so it’d be easy sleeping. And now you’re scared to try. If that ain’t cowardice, I don’t know what is.” Roscoe had never expected to hear such a speech, and he had no idea how to reply to it. Louisa’s approach to marriage didn’t seem to resemble any that he had observed, though it was true he had not spent much time studying the approaches to matrimony. Still, he had only ridden into Louisa’s field an hour before sundown, and it was not yet much more than an hour after dark. Her proposal seemed hasty to him by any standards.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- “Well, I know my letters,” Dish said. “I can read some words. Of course there’s plenty I ain’t had no practice with.” A few hundred yards away they could see Call and Deets riding along the riverbank, studying the situation.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- “I doubt she’ll miss you, Jake,” Augustus said. “You got your charms but then I got my charms too. I’ll come and make camp with her if you decide you’ve had enough of her sass. I ain’t violent like you, neither.” “I didn’t hurt her,” Jake said. He felt a little guilty about the slap—it had upset him to ride in and see her sitting there with Gus, and then she bucked him. Gus always managed to aggravate whatever situation he was in with a woman.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- At the head of the main bunch of cattle, Call surveyed the situation without too much apprehension. Unless there was a lightning victim somewhere, they had come through the storm well. The cattle had walked themselves out and were docile for the time being. Deets had been to look, and Soupy, Jasper and Needle had the rest of the herd a mile or two east. The wagon was stuck in a gully, but when the hands gathered they soon had enough ropes on it to pull it out. Bol refused to budge from the wagon seat while the pullout took place. Lippy had got out to help push and consequently was covered in mud practically up to his lip.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- Often, in a tight situation, his mind would seem to grow tired from so much hard thinking. He would sink for a time into a blankness, only to come out of it in the midst of an action he had not planned. He was never conscious of the trigger that set him back in motion, but something always pulled it, and he would find himself moving before he was conscious that it was time to move.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- Even worse, he would have to sit there for a month or two worrying about July’s reaction when he finally got back. Or it could be three months or six months—July had been known to be slow. Roscoe knew he couldn’t take six months of anxiety. Of course it just proved that July had been foolish to marry, but that didn’t make the situation any easier to live with.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- “Well, he is,” Call said, not anxious to have to explain the situation.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- “You think Lippy will tell on us?” she asked. To her surprise, she felt no guilt at all about operating behind Jake’s back. So far as she was concerned she was still his sweetheart. It had happened only because Gus had been too quick for her in a card game—it didn’t affect the situation one way or another.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- “You can pay him if you want but I ain’t going,” she said. “Jake’s my sweetheart.” “I ain’t trying to cut him out,” Augustus said. “I just want a poke.” Lorena felt her silence coming back. It was the only way to deal with such a situation. She sat for a few minutes, not talking, hoping he would go away. But it didn’t work. He just sat and drank, perfectly friendly and in no hurry. Once she thought about it, the sum grew on her a little. It was something, to be offered fifty dollars. She would have thought it crazy in anyone except Gus, but Gus was clearly not crazy! In a way it was a big compliment that he would offer fifty dollars just for that.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- “He kilt that bandit,” Lippy said. “Hit him right in the Adam’s apple, I’ve heard.” “The truth of that is, the bandit rode into the bullet,” Augustus said. “He was unlucky, like the dentist.” Lorena just sat. The situation was so unexpected that she could not think about it clearly. Of course she had no intention of going upstairs with Gus, but he couldn’t just be scared off with a look like some cowboy. Gus was not afraid of looks—or of Jake either, it seemed.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- He wished the Captain would shoot again; he had never been in a situation in which he felt so uncertain about everything.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- “I swear,” he said. “Jake’s just like he used to be.” An hour later they found the main horse herd in a narrow valley several miles to the north. Call estimated it to be over a hundred horses strong. The situation had its difficulty, the main one being that the horses were barely a mile from the Flores headquarters, and on the wrong side of it at that. It would be necessary to bring them back past the hacienda, or else take them north to the river, a considerably longer route. If Pedro Flores and his men chose to pursue, they would have a fine chance of catching them out in the open, in broad daylight, several miles from help. It would be himself and Pea and the boy against a small army of vaqueros.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- “Gus, that leaves you the Irishmen,” he said. “If they can ride, you ought to catch up with these horses somewhere this side of the river. Just don’t stop to play no poker with them.” Augustus considered the situation for a minute.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- “On their way to Galveston,” Newt said, thinking it might help clarify the situation.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- They sounded Irish—but why were Irishmen having a singing party in one of Pedro Flores’ old cow camps? It was an odd situation to have stumbled onto. He had never heard of an Irish vaquero. The whole business was perplexing, but he couldn’t just stand around and wonder about it. The horse herd would soon be on the move.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- Dish Boggett had ridden off the worst of his drunk, though there were moments when he still felt queasy. Dish had spent most of his life on a horse and could ride in any condition short of paralysis; he had no trouble keeping his place in the group. In time his head quit throbbing and he felt well enough to take an interest in the proceedings at hand. He was not troubled by any sense of being lost, or any apprehension about Mexican bandits. He was confident of his mount and prepared to outrun any trouble that couldn’t be otherwise handled. His main trouble was that he was riding just behind Jake Spoon and thus was reminded of what had happened in the saloon every time he looked up. He knew he had become a poor second in Lorena’s affections to the man just in front of him, and the knowledge rankled. The one consoling thought was that there might be gunplay before the night was over—Dish had never been in a gun battle but he reasoned that if bullets flew thick and fast Jake might stop one of them, which could change the whole situation. It wasn’t exactly that Dish hoped he’d be killed outright—maybe just wounded enough that they’d have to leave him someplace downriver where there might be a doctor.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- Pea Eye, who liked to take life one simple step at a time, had not appreciated the subtleties of the situation.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- “I don’t,” Call said. “Not from you.” “Call, you ain’t never learned,” Augustus said. “There’s plenty of gentle horses in this world. Why would a man with your responsibilities want to waste time with a filly that’s got to be hobbled and blindfolded before you can even keep a saddle on her?” Call ignored him. In a moment the mare tentatively lifted the near hind foot with the thought of kicking whatever might be in range. When she did he caught the foot with the rawhide rope and took a hitch around the snubbing post. It left the mare standing on three legs, so she could not kick again without throwing herself. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, trembling a little with indignation, but she accepted the saddle.“Why don’t you trade her to Jake?” Augustus said. “If they don’t hang him, maybe he could teach her to pace.” Call left the mare saddled, snubbed, and on three legs, and came to the fence to have a smoke and let the mare have a moment to consider the situation.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- Of course, he had thought it just girlish talk, the kind of thing all women said when they were trying to hold a fellow. Jake had heard such talk all the way up the trail, in San Antonio and Fort Worth, Abilene and Dodge, in Ogallala and Miles City—the talk of whores pretending to be in love for one. But Maggie had actually died, when he had only supposed she would just move on to another town. It was a sad memory to come home to, though from what he knew of the situation, Call had done her even worse than he had.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- He himself had a linen tablecloth which he brought out once a year, on the anniversary of the death of his wife. His wife had been a bully and he didn’t miss her, but it was the only occasion sufficient to provide an excuse for the use of a tablecloth in Lonesome Dove. His wife, whose name had been Therese, had bullied horses, too, which is why his team had run off and flung themselves and the buggy into a gully, the buggy landing right on top of Therese. At the annual dinner in her honor Xavier proved that he was still a restaurateur of discipline by getting drunk without spilling a drop on the fine tablecloth. Augustus was the only one invited to the dinners, but he only came every three or four years, out of politeness; not only were the occasions mournful and silly—everyone in Lonesome Dove had been glad to see the last of Therese—they were mildly dangerous. Augustus was neither as disciplined a drinker as Xavier nor as particular about tablecloths, either, and he knew that if he spilled liquor on the precious linen the situation would end badly. He would not likely have to shoot Xavier, but it might be necessary to whack him on the head, and Augustus hated to hit such a small head with such a large pistol.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
- Even though he still came to the river every night, it was obvious to Call that Lonesome Dove had long since ceased to need guarding. The talk about Bolivar calling up bandits was just another of Augustus’s overworked jokes. He came to the river because he liked to be alone for an hour, and not always be crowded. It seemed to him he was pressed from dawn till dark, but for no good reason. As a Ranger captain he was naturally pressed to make decisions—and decisions that might mean life or death to the men under him. That had been a natural pressure—one that went with the job. Men looked to him, and kept looking, wanting to know he was still there, able to bring them through whatever scrape they might be in. Augustus was just as capable, beneath all his rant, and would have got them through the same scrapes if it had been necessary, but Augustus wouldn’t bother rising to an occasion until it became absolutely necessary. He left the worrying to Call—so the men looked to Call for orders, and got drunk with Augustus. It never ceased to gripe him that Augustus could not be made to act like a Ranger except in emergencies. His refusal was so consistent that at times both Call and the men would almost hope for an emergency so that Gus would let up talking and arguing and treat the situation with a little respect.>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇