词汇：prairie

n. 大草原；牧场

相关场景

“Where on earth, I meant,” Call said, feeling weary. He wondered what had possessed a minister and a boy to run off their horses, each plainly branded. It struck him as a stupid and pointless crime, for they were driving the horses north, where there were no towns and no ranches. It was clear the two were poor, and the old man out of his head. Call could tell the hands were glum at the prospect of hanging such a pair, and he himself didn’t relish it, but they were horse- thieves and he felt he had no choice. His own distaste for the prospect caused him to make a mistake—he didn’t immediately tie the old man, who seemed so weak he could hardly stand. He was not too weak, though, to snatch up a hatchet and strike a blow at Needle that would have killed him had not Needle jerked back—as it was, the blade of the hatchet tore a bad cut in his arm. Call shot the old man before he could strike again. The boy took off running across the open prairie. He was easily caught, of course, but by the time he was tied and led back the old man was dead. The boy sat down in the thin snow and wept.>>完整场景

When the redness receded and he opened his eyes again, he heard a piano playing in the distance. He was in bed in a small hot room. Through the open window he could see the great Montana prairie. Looking around, he noticed a small fat man dozing in a chair nearby. The man wore a black frock coat sprinkled with dandruff. A bottle of whiskey and an old bowler hat nearly as disreputable as Lippy’s sat on a small bureau. The fat man was snoring peacefully.>>完整场景

Finally, though, he got up and stumbled on. The soldiers would only find his bones, if they found anything. It was a blazing day, so hot it made him feel annoyed at Montana weather. What kind of country was it where you could get frostbite one night and sunburn two days later? He saw a couple of prairie dogs and wasted an hour trying to get one with a rock. But the prairie dogs were smarter than prairie chickens, and he never came close.>>完整场景

His biggest piece of luck came late that day when he was able to knock over a big prairie chicken with a rock. He only broke the bird’s wing and had to chase it through the grass a long way, but the bird tired before he did, and he finally caught it, skinned it and ate it raw. He rested three hours and then hobbled on through another night.>>完整场景

“They didn’t introduce themselves, Pea,” Augustus said. “It might be written on these arrows. I’m going to be one-legged if we don’t get this other arrow out pretty soon.” No sooner had he said it than it began to rain arrows, all arching over the south bank of the creek. “Crawl in,” Augustus said. He and Pea scrunched back into the cave and stacked the saddlebags in front of them. Many of the arrows went over the creek bed entirely and into the prairie on the other side. A few stuck in the earthworks they had thrown up, and one or two fell in the water.>>完整场景

Then Pea heard the sound of a running horse and looked for Gus, supposing he had jumped another little bunch of buffalo. What he saw froze him instantly in place. Gus was racing down the little slope he had just gone up, with at least twenty mounted Indians hot on his heels. He must have ridden right into them. The Indians were shooting both guns and arrows. A bullet cut the grass ahead of Pea and he yanked out his rifle and popped a shot back at the Indians before whirling his horse and fleeing. Gus and he had crossed a good-sized creek less than an hour back, with some trees along it and some weeds and shrubbery in the creek bed. He assumed Gus must be racing for that, since it was the only shelter on the wide prairie. Even as he started, Pea saw five or six Indians veer toward him. He swerved over to. join Gus, who had two arrows in his leg. Gus was flailing his horse with his rifle barrel and the horse was running full out.>>完整场景

It was a beautiful morning, crisp for an hour or two and then sunny and warm. The country rolled on to the north, as it had for thousands of miles, brown in the distance, the prairie grass waving in the breeze.>>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

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

She led Newt into a small room with nothing much in it but an iron bedstead and a small washbasin on a tiny stand. A small unlit coal-oil lamp with no shade over the wick sat on a windowsill. The window was open and the rim of the prairie still red, as if a line of coals had been spread along it.>>完整场景

“Let’s sample the whiskey,” Ben Rainey suggested. The suggestion was immediately adopted. After the cool beer, the whiskey tasted like liquid fire, and its effects were just as immediate as fire. By the time he had three long swigs of thewhiskey Newt felt that the world had suddenly changed. The sun had been sinking rapidly as they drank, but a few swallows of whiskey seemed to stop everything. They sat down with their backs against the wall of the livery stable and watched the sun hang there, red and beautiful, over the brown prairie. Newt felt it might be hours before it disappeared.>>完整场景

The moon was full and the prairie shadowy. Pea Eye was attempting to sing to the cattle, but his voice was nothing to compare to the Irishman’s.>>完整场景

“Hired on with some traders,” he said. “Come all this way and then headed back.” “I guess your child didn’t live,” the doctor said one day. “I wouldn’t have expected it to, out on the prairie, with you having such a close call.” Elmira didn’t answer. She remembered her breasts hurting, that was all. She had forgotten the child, the woman with the two daughters, the big house. Maybe the baby was dead. Then she remembered July, and Arkansas, and a lot that she had forgotten. It was just as well forgotten: none of it mattered compared to Dee. It was all past, well past. Some day shewould have Zwey shoot her and she wouldn’t have to think about things anymore.>>完整场景

“But she put a grasshopper down my neck,” the younger girl said. “I hate her.” “I don’t care who hates who,” the woman said. “I was up with this baby all night—you know how colicky he is. You don’t have to scream right under my window—looks like there be room on this prairie for you to scream without doing it undermy window. All we got here is room.” “It was a grasshopper,” the little girl insisted.>>完整场景

About noon he saw a lone frame house standing a half mile south of the Platte. There were corrals and a few sheds near it, and a sizable horse herd grazing in sight of the house. July felt like crying—it meant he wasn’t lost anymore. No one would build a frame house unless there was a town somewhere near. Being alone on the prairie for so many weeks had made him realize how much he liked being in towns, though when he thought about all that he had been through, he didn’t feel he had much hope of finding Ellie there. How could a woman come across such distances?>>完整场景

But he kept on. Streams became a little more plentiful and he ceased to worry too much about water. Once he thought he saw riders, far in the distance, but when he went toward them they turned out to be two buffalo, standing on the prairie as if they were lost. July started to shoot one, but it was more meat than he needed, and if he killed one the other buffalo would be as alone as he was. He passed on and that night killed a big prairie chicken with a rock.>>完整场景

“Well then, save it, at least,” Clara said, feeling so downcast suddenly that she left the room. She got a water bucket and walked out of the house, meaning to get some water for Bob. It was a beautiful morning, light touching the farthest edges of the plains. Clara noticed the beauty and thought it strange that she could still respond to it, tired as she was and with two people dying in her house—perhaps three. But she loved the fine light of the prairie mornings; it had resurrected her spirits time after time though the years, when it seemed that dirt and cold and death would crush her. Just to see the light spreading like that, far on toward Wyoming, was her joy. It seemed to put energy into her, make her want to do things.>>完整场景

“I can’t just order men around,” Clara said. “Anyway, you’ve met buffalo hunters before. Smelled them too. These don’t smell much different from any of the others.” “One of them’s big,” Betsey observed. “Is he the lady’s husband?” “I don’t think so, and don’t be a busybody,” Clara said. “She’s worn out. Maybe tomorrow she’ll feel like talking.” But the girls were to hear Elmira’s voice long before morning. The men sitting in the wagon heard it too—long screams that raked the prairie night for hours.>>完整场景

They started Wilbarger’s horses west across the dark prairie in the direction the cattle should be. Captain Call led, Augustus and Deets rode to the sides, and Pea Eye and Newt brought up the rear. Newt had to admit that Jake’s horse had a beautiful smooth gait, but even so he wished he hadn’t changed horses—not so soon. It seemed wrong to be enjoying Jake’s horse, and his fine saddle too, after what had happened. But he was tired, so tired he didn’t even feel the sadness for very long. Soon his head dropped and he sat on the pacing gelding, sound asleep. Pea Eye noticed and trotted close beside him so he could catch the weary boy if he started to fall off.>>完整场景

“They’re camped,” Deets said. “They killed somebody in a wagon and he had whiskey.” “More work for the gravediggers,” Augustus said, checking his rifle. “We better go challenge them before they wipe out Kansas.” Pea Eye and Newt were left with the horses. Deets led Call and Augustus on foot for a mile. They crept up the crest of a ridge and saw Wilbarger’s horses grazing three or four miles away on the rolling prairie. Between them and the horse herd was a steep banked creek. A small wagon was stopped on the near bank, and four men were lounging on their saddle blankets. One of the men was Jake Spoon. The corpse of the man who had been driving the wagon lay some fifty yards away. The men on the blankets were amusing themselves by shooting their pistols at the buzzards that attempted to approach the corpse. One man, annoyed at missing with his pistol, picked up a rifle and knocked over a buzzard.>>完整场景

“You like to eat, see how you like being eaten,” he said to the dead buzzards. “There’s that bad black man. Wilbarger did get him.” The smell suddenly got to Newt—he dismounted and was sick. Pea Eye dug a shallow grave with a little shovel they had brought. They rolled the remains in the grave and covered them, while the buzzards watched. Many stood on the prairie, like a black army, while others circled in the sky. Deets went off to study the thieves’ tracks. Newt had vomited so hard that he felt lightheaded, but even so, he noticed that Deets didn’t look happy when he returned.>>完整场景

“I’LL BE GLAD to get to Dodge,” Jake said. “I’d like a bath and a whore. And a good barber to shave me. There’s a barber there named Sandy that I fancy, if nobody ain’t shot him.” “You’ll know tomorrow, I guess,” Dan Suggs said. “I’ve never liked barbers myself.” “Dan don’t even like whores,” Roy Suggs said. “Dan’s hard to please.” Jake was cheered by the thought that Dodge was so close. He was tired of the empty prairie and the sullen Suggses, and was looking forward to jolly company and some good card games. He had every intention of wiggling loose from the Suggses in Dodge. Gambling might be his ticket. He could win a lot of money and tell them he’d had enough of the roving life. They didn’t own him, after all.>>完整场景

“I never seen such a jealous bug as you are, Dish,” Jasper said.Call had eaten quickly and left with Deets—the Arkansas was only a few miles away and he wanted to have a look at the crossing. They loped up to the river through the long prairie dusk and sat on the riverbank awhile. Even in the moonlight they could see that the current was strong.>>完整场景

But to his surprise, the minute he stepped inside the door of the post office his optimism gave way in a flash to bitter depression. In trying to think of what he would say in his letter he remembered all that had happened. Roscoe was dead, Joe was dead, the girl was dead, and Ellie not found—maybe she too was dead. All he had to report was death and failure. At the thought of poor Roscoe, gutted and left under a little pile of rocks on the prairie, his eyes filled with tears and he had to turn and walk back out the door to keep from embarrassing himself.>>完整场景