词汇：prairie

n. 大草原；牧场

相关场景

Frog Lip rode up beside the cows and fired a couple of shots into the air. When the cows started a lumbering run, he skillfully turned them up the slope and chased them right onto the roof of the sod house. The sod on the roof had grass still on it and looked not unlike the prairie. The cows took a few steps onto the roof and then their forequarters disappeared, as if they had fallen into a hole. Then their hindquarters disappeared too. Frog Lip reined in his horse and watched as both cows fell through the roof of the sod house. A minute later one came squeezing out the small door, and the other followed. Both cows trotted back to where they had been grazing.>>完整场景

The fanner was plowing a shallow furrow through the tough prairie grass. Seeing the riders approach, he stopped. He was a middle-aged man with a curly black beard, thoroughly sweated from his work. His wife and son watched the Suggsesapproach. Their wheelbarrow was nearly full of buffalo chips.>>完整场景

“Pull the flaps,” he said, and Lorena did. Soon there was just the hole the two ropes fed through. It was dim and dark in the tent, as more and more grasshoppers covered the canvas—insects on top of insects. The hum they made as they spread over the prairie grass was so loud Lorena had to grit her teeth. As the tent got darker, she began to cry and shake—it was just more trouble and more fear, this life.>>完整场景

Augustus held her close and didn’t try to discuss it with her. Soon she stopped trembling. Two big hawks were skimming the surface of the prairie, not far away.>>完整场景

“Look how blue it is toward the sunset,” Augustus said. “I’ve heard about what they call the Blue Mounds. I guess those must be them.” The prairie was rolling, and there were humplike rises to the north as far as they could see. Though the sky was still bright yellow with afterglow, the mounds ahead did have a bluish electric look, almost as if blue lightning had condensed over their tops.>>完整场景

July didn’t see how things could get worse, since he had lost his wife and led three people to their deaths. But four days after he left Augustus, his horse went lame. Some small spiky cactus hidden by the tall prairie grass proved more deadly than a snake. A thorn worked its way far up into the horse’s hoof. July had to tie the horse down to get the thorn out, and even then he was not sure he had got it all. They were three days north of the Cimarron when it happened. Water was scarce and the horse soon too lame to ride. He led the horse, taking it slow, hoping the hoof would get better, but it did no good. The horse was lamed and could put no weight on the hoof at all.>>完整场景

self didn’t plan to be around to see it.JULY RODE FOR DAYS without seeing any person, or, for that matter, many signs of life except the hawks and buzzards circling in the blue prairie sky. Once he saw a wolf loping along a ridge, and at night he heard coyotes, but the only game he saw were jackrabbits, and it was mostly rabbit he ate.>>完整场景

Lorena said nothing. That night she woke up crying and shaking. Augustus held her and crooned to her as if she were a child. But she didn’t go back to sleep. She lay on the pallet, her eyes wide open. An hour or two before dawn the rain stopped, and soon a bright sun shone above the wet prairie.>>完整场景

The thought that Gus was dead began to weigh on Call. It came to him several times a day, at moments, and made him feel empty and strange. They had not had much of a talk before Gus left. Nothing much had been said. He began to wish that somehow things could have been rounded off a little better. Of course he knew death was no respecter. People just dropped when they dropped, whether they had rounded things off or not. Still, it haunted him that Gus had just ridden off and might not ride back. He would look over the cattle herd strung out across the prairie and feel it was all worthless, and a little absurd. Some days he almost felt like turning the cattle loose and paying off the crew. He could take Pea and Deets and maybe the boy, and they would look for Gus until they found him.>>完整场景

“Don’t be trying to give back pain for pain,” he said. “You can’t get even measures in business like this. You best go find your wife.” July looked across the river at the unending prairie. If I find her she’ll hate me worse now, he thought.>>完整场景

He carried the bodies up to the prairie, laid them in their shallow graves and helped July pile rocks on the graves, a pitiful expedient that wouldn’t deter the varmints for long. In the other camp he had merely laid the buffalo hunters and the dead Kiowas in a line and left them.>>完整场景

He had not stayed, but when he had gone, he hadn’t fought, either. He had done nothing but ride twice over the same stretch of prairie, while death had come to both camps. He had no doubt that if he had stayed with Roscoe and the children, it would have come to him too. The man who had killed them must be a fighter on the order of Captain McCrae.>>完整场景

As soon as he was sure the horse was beyond rising, he picked up his rifle. The Indians were shooting, though still far out of effective range. Again he heard the zing of bullets cutting the prairie grass. Augustus rested the rifle barrel across the dying horse’s withers and waited. The Indians were yelling as they raced down on him—one or two carried lances, but those were mainly for show, or to puncture him with if they caught him alive.>>完整场景

He glimpsed something white on the prairie slightly to the east and headed for it—it turned out just to be more buffalo bones, another place where a sizable herd of animals had been slaughtered. As Augustus raced through the bones he saw a wallow, a place where many buffalo had laid down and rolled in the dirt. It was only a slight depression on the plain, not more than a foot deep, but he decided it was the best he was going to get. The Indians were barely a minute behind him.>>完整场景

There was plenty of ground to lose, too. He had hoped for a creek or a bank or a gully—something he could get down into and make his stand—but he was on the flat prairie as far as the eye could see. He contemplated turning and trying to charge through them; if he killed three or four they might get discouraged. But if there was even one man among them with any sense they’d just shoot the horse, and there he’d be.>>完整场景

Of course they had heard that the buffalo were being wiped out, but with the memory of the southern herd so vivid, they had hardly credited the news. Discussing it in Lonesome Dove they had decided that the reports must be exaggerated—thinned out, maybe, but not wiped out. Thus the sight of the road of bones stretching over the prairie was a shock. Maybe roads of bones were all that was left. The thought gave the very emptiness of the plains a different feel.>>完整场景

“Well, Aus, I see you’ve been busy,” Augustus said. “You’ll be so rich one of these days some bank will come along and rob you. Who do you sell these bones to?” Aus Frank ignored the question. While Augustus watched, he pushed his wheelbarrow up to the bottom of the pyramid of bones and began to throw the bones as high as possible up the pyramid. Once or twice he got a leg bone or thigh bone all the way to the top, but most of the bones hit midway and stuck. In five minutes the big wheelbarrow was empty. Without a word Aus Frank took the wheelbarrow and started back across the prairie.>>完整场景

He decided to head first for the big crossing on the Canadian. If there was no sign of Blue Duck there he could always follow the river over to the Walls. He crossed the Prairie Dog Fork of the Red River—plenty of prairie dogs were in evidence, too—and rode west to the edge of the Palo Duro. Several times he saw small herds of buffalo, and twice rode through valleys of bleached bones, places where hunters had slaughtered several hundred animals at a time. By good luck he found a spring and spent the night by it, resting his horse for the final push.>>完整场景

Luke got his dice out and soon they were playing. Elmira was able to sleep, but awoke to the roll of thunder a few hours later. The men were asleep by the dying fire. Across the prairie she began to see lightning darting down the sky, and within a few minutes big drops of water hit her. In a minute she was wet. She jumped down and crawled under the wagon. It wasn’t much protection but it was some. Soon lightning was crashing all around and the thunder came in big, flat cracks, as if a building had fallen down. It frightened her so that she hugged her knees and trembled. When the lightning struck, the whole prairie would be bathed for a second in white light.>>完整场景

Alone with the two men, in the middle of the great, empty prairie, she felt apprehensive. In the cow towns there had been lots of girls around—if a man got mean, she could yell. On the boat it hadn’t seemed as dangerous, because the men were always fighting and gambling among themselves. But at night on the prairie there were only the three of them, and nothing much to keep anyone busy. Big Zwey sat and looked at her through the campfire, and Luke looked, too, while he talked. She didn’t know if Big Zwey considered that in some way he had married her already. She worried that he might suddenly come over and want the marriage to begin, though so far he had been too shy even to speak to her much. For all she knew he might expect her to be married to Luke, too, and she didn’t want that. The thought made her so nervous that she couldn’t eat the buffalo meat they offered her—anyway, it was tougher than any meat she had ever tried to chew. She chewed on one bite until her jaws got tired and then spat it out.>>完整场景

It sounded like July, and it looked like July, so Roscoe was forced to conclude that he was saved. He had been in the process of adjusting to impending death, and it seemed to him a part of him must already have left for the other place, because he felt sort of absent and dull. Ordinarily he would not have stood around on a muddy prairie naked, and yet in some ways it was easier than having to pick up the pieces of his life again, which meant, first off, having to literally pick up pieces of his clothes.>>完整场景

“Prairie chicken,” Janey said. “There was two but one got away.” They ate the prairie chicken and it was as good as any regular chicken Roscoe had ever had. Janey cracked open the bones with her teeth and sucked out the marrow.>>完整场景

The light had gone off at the Pumphreys’ and the armadillo was no longer there to roll its shadow at him. The pigs were stretched out on the porch, lying practically snout to snout. Augustus was about to kick them off to make room for the guest he more or less expected, but they looked so peaceful he relented and went around to the back door. If Dish Boggett, with his prairie dog of a mustache, considered himself too refined to throw his bedroll beside two fine pigs, then he could rout them out himself.>>完整场景

Dish Boggett was sitting at one of the tables with Lorena, hoping to persuade her to give him a poke on credit. Though Dish was barely twenty-two, he wore a walrus mustache that made him look years older than he was, and much more solemn. In color the mustache was stuck between yellow and brown—kind of prairie-dog-colored, Augustus thought. He frequently suggested to Dish that if he wanted to eat prairie dog he ought to remember to pick his teeth, a reference to the mustache whose subtlety was lost on Dish.>>完整场景

Call knew there was no point in arguing. That was what Augustus wanted: argument. He didn’t really care what the question was, and it made no great difference to him which side he was on. He just plain loved to argue, whereas Call hated to. Long experience had taught him that there was no winning arguments with Augustus, even in cases where there was a simple right and wrong at issue. Even in the old days, when they were in the thick of it, with Indians and hardcases to worry about, Augustus would seize any chance for a dispute. Practically the closest call they ever had, when the two of them and six Rangers got surprised by the Comanches up the Prairie Dog Fork of the Red and were all digging holes in the bank that could have turned out to be their graves if they hadn’t been lucky and got a cloudy night and sneaked away, Augustus had kept up a running argument with a Ranger they called Ugly Bobby. The argument was entirely about coon dogs, and Augustus had kept it up all night, though most of the Rangers were so scared they couldn’t pass water.>>完整场景