词汇：bank

n. 银行；岸；储库；浅滩

相关场景

He never remembered getting out of the water, but somehow he did, for when he next took note of things he was laying in the mud, his feet still in the water. He was stark naked and the mud was cold, so he pulled himself up and laboriously climbed the bank. It was only eight or ten feet high, but it was slippery.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Worse than that, he almost immediately lost the little bundle of boots and pants, shirt, all his provisions and part of his ammunition. He had reached down with one hand to try and move the rifle a little higher up on his leg, and the water sucked the bundle away and swept it far ahead of him. Pea Eye began to realize he was going to drown unless he did better than he was doing. The water pushed him under several times. He wanted badly to climb up the bank but was by no means sure he was past the Indians. Gus said to go down at least a mile, and he wasn’t sure he had gone that far. The water had a suck to it that he had constantly to fight against; to his horror he felt it sucking his pants off. He had been so disconsolate when he walked into the river that he had not buckled his belt tightly. He had nothing much in the way of hips, and the water sucked his pants down past them. The rifle sight was gouging him in the leg. He grabbed the rifle, but then went under. The dragging pants, with the rifle in one leg, were drowning him. He began to try frantically to get them off, so as to have the free use of his legs. He wanted to cuss Gus for having suggested sticking the rifle in his pants leg. He could never get it out in time to shoot an Indian, if one appeared, and it was causing him terrible aggravation. He fought to the surface again, went under, and when he came up wanted to yell for help, and then remembered there would be no one around to hear him but Indians. Then his leg was almost jerked off—he had been swept close to the bank and the dragging gun had caught in some underbrush. The bank was only a few feet away and he tried to claw over to it, but that didn’t work. While he was struggling, the pants came off and he was swept down the river backwards. One minute he could see the south bank of the river, and the next minute all he could see was water. Twice he opened his mouth to suck in air and sucked in water instead, some of which came back out his nose. His legs and feet were so numb from the cold water that he couldn’t feel them.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
They shot from downriver, and Gus opened up on them at once. They were so respectful of his gun that their bullets only splattered uselessly in the mud, or else hit the water and ricocheted off with a whine. Gus looked so weak and shaky that Pea Eye wondered if he could still shoot accurately, but the question was answered later in the day when an Indian tried to shoot them from the opposite bank, using a little rain squall as cover. He got off his shot, which hit one of the saddles; then Gus shot him as he turned to crawl away. The shot caused the Indian to straighten up, and Gus shot him again. The second bullet seemed to suck the Indian backward—he toppled off the bank and rolled into the water. He was not dead; he tried to swim, so Gus shot him again. A minute or two later he floated past them face down.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Then it began to rain in earnest. It rained so hard that it became impossible to see, or even talk. A muddy stream began to pour off the bank, only inches in front of them. The rain struck so hard it reminded Pea of driving nails. Usually such freshets were short-lived, but this one wasn’t. It seemed to rain for hours, and was still raining when dawn came, though not as hard. Alarmingly, to Pea, the creek had become a river, more than deep enough to swim a horse. It rose so that it was only two or three yards in from where they were scrunched into the cave, and it soon washed away their crude breastworks.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“I ’spect they’d catch me if I tried that,” Pea said. “Maybe the Captain will figure out that we’re in trouble and hurry on up here.” “He won’t miss us for another week,” Augustus said. “I don’t fancy squatting here by this creek for a week.” A few minutes later they heard a loud, strange cry from the east. It was an Indian war cry. Another came from the west, and several from the far bank of the river. The evening would be still and peaceful for a few minutes and then the war cries would start again. Pea had never approved of the way Indians yelled when they fought—it upset his nerves. This yelling was no exception. Some of the cries were so piercing that he wanted to hold his ears.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“I’ll watch west and you watch east,” Augustus said. Almost as soon as he finished speaking a shot hit the cave bank just above their heads, causing dirt to shower down. Augustus looked down the creek and saw two horsemen cross it, too far away to make accurate targets in the dusk.
“我向西看，你向东看，”奥古斯都说。他刚说完，一声枪响就击中了他们头顶上方的洞穴堤岸，导致泥土倾泻而下。奥古斯都顺着小溪往下看，看见两个骑兵穿过小溪，离得太远，在黄昏时无法准确瞄准。
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
But the rush never came. Whoever was above them left. The creek bank on their side was already in shadow. Augustus uncocked his pistol and stretched his leg out again. He knew better than to put off anything to do with wounds, so he grasped the arrow and began to push it on through his leg. The pain was severe and caused a cold sweat to break out but at least the arrow moved.
>> 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
“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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Let’s dig,” Augustus said, and began to work with his knife to create a shallow cave under the bank. They worked furiously for half an hour until both were drenched with sweat and covered with dirt. Augustus used the stock of the Indian boy’s carbine as a rude shovel and tried to shape the dirt they raked out into low breastworks on either side of the cave. They watched as best they could, but saw no Indians.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“We gotta move,” he said. “This cover’s working against us. But for luck we’d both be dead now already. What we need is a stretch with a steep bank and no cover.” They worked their way upstream, carrying the saddle, saddlebags and guns, for nearly a mile, hugging the bank. Augustus was limping badly but didn’t stop to worry about it. Finally they came to a bend in the creek, where the bank was sheer and about ten feet high. The creek bottom was nearly bare of foliage.
>> 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
“I don’t see what’s so smart about them,” he said. “They’re just standing there.” “Yes, but they’re out of range,” Augustus said. “They’re hoping to tempt me to waste ammunition.” Augustus propped the saddle on the bank in such a way that he could shoot under it and be that much safer if the Indians shot back. He then proceeded to shoot six times, rapidly. Five of the Indians horses dropped, and a sixth ran squealing over the prairie—it fell several hundred yards away. The Indians fired several shots in reply, their bullets slicing harmlessly into the underbrush.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
When he got back Gus was reloading. Pea peeped over the bank and saw the Indians, stopped some distance away. Many of them had dismounted and were standing behind their horses, using them as shields.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Pea heard the big Henry rifle begin to roar as he dragged the sweating horses into the thickest part of the underbrush. It was thick but low, and he didn’t think there was much chance for the horses. He yanked the saddlebags and bedrolls offboth horses and was hiding them under the bank when Gus stopped firing for a moment.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Get all the ammunition you can,” he said. “We’re in for a shooting match. And tie the horses in the best cover you can find, or they’ll shoot ’em. This is long country to be afoot in.” Then he hobbled to the bank, wishing he had time to cut the two arrows out of his leg. But if they were poisoned it was already too late, and if he didn’t do some fine shooting it wouldn’t matter anyway because the Indians would overrun them.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
They saw the curve of the little creek from two miles away and angled for the nearest juncture. The Indians had fallen nearly a quarter of a mile back, but were still coming. When they struck the creek Augustus raced along the bank until he found a spot where the weeds and brush were thickest. Then he jumped his horse off the bank and grabbed his saddlebags.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
A day and a half later the two scouts rode over a grassy bluff and saw the Yellowstone River, a few miles away. Fifty or sixty buffalo were watering when they rode up. At the sight of the horsemen the buffalo scattered. The cloud bank had blown away and the blue sky was clear for as far as one could see. The river was swift but not deep—Augustus paused in his crossing and leaned down, drinking from his cupped hands. The water was cold.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
It was a breezy morning when they started out—a dark cloud bank had formed in the northwest, and the men were talking of snow.
>> 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
“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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
They got back to Wilbarger a little after sundown, before the plains had begun to lose the long twilight. He had reached the Arkansas before collapsing, and lay under the shade of the bank on a blanket Deets had left him. He was too weak to do more than raise his head when they rode up; even that exhausted him.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“I know, I’m surprised that it ain’t hailing or shooting lightning bolts at us,” Call said. Though the scattering was annoying, he was not seriously disturbed, for the river was fairly shallow and the banks rather low where they were crossing. It would only take a little more time to restart the cattle that had gone back to the south bank. Fortunately no cattle were bogged, and this time no cowboys drowned.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Eventually the herd split into five or six groups. Augustus came over to help, but there was not much he could do. Most of the cattle went back to the south bank, but quite a few swam far downstream.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
The trouble opened a gap in the line of cowboys and some three hundred cattle veered off and began to swim straight downstream. The line of cattle broke, and in no time there were pockets of cattle here and there, swimming down the Arkansas, paying no attention to the riders who tried to turn them. Newt got caught beside such a bunch, and after swimming two hundred yards downstream with them, ended up on the same bank he had started out on.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇