词汇：fort

n. 堡垒；要塞；（美）边界贸易站

相关场景

“We hung your man for you,” Call said. “He fell in with a bad bunch. We caught them up in Kansas.” For a second, July didn’t remember what he was talking about. It seemed a life ago that he had left Fort Smith in pursuit of Jake Spoon. He had long since ceased to give the man any thought. The news that he was dead did not affect him.“I doubt I would have caught him myself,” July said. “I had horse trouble, up around Dodge.” When Clara got back to the house she was in high color. The way Call had stood there silently, not even asking a question or making an offer, just waiting for her to come down on the price, struck her as arrogant. The more she thought about it, the less hospitable she felt toward the man.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Fort Smith,” July said.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
To his surprise, he didn’t enjoy the visit to Ogallala very much. He hit the dry-goods store just as the owner was closing and persuaded him to reopen long enough for him to buy Lorie a mass of clothes. He bought everything from petticoats to dresses, a hat, and also a warm coat, for they were sure to strike cool weather in Montana. He even bought himself a black frock coat worthy of a preacher, and a silk string tie. The merchant soon was in no mood to close; he offered Augustus muffs and gloves and felt-lined boots and other oddities. In the end he had such a purchase that he couldn’t even consider carrying it—they would have to come in tomorrow and pick it up in the wagon, though he did wrap up a few things in case Lorie wanted to wear them to Clara’s. He bought her combs and brushes and a mirror—women liked to see themselves, he knew, and Lorena hadn’t had the opportunity since Fort Worth.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
July hadn’t. He wished she would just be quiet. He had no idea what to do next, and hadn’t since he left Fort Smith many months ago. At moments, what he wanted was just to go home. Let Ellie go, if she didn’t want to be his wife. Let Clara have the baby, if she wanted him so much. He had once felt competent being a sheriff—maybe if he went back and stuck to it he would someday feel competent again. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand to feel such a failure.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“My husband’s dying,” Clara said. “But whether he’s dead or alive, I’ll still raise that child.” “I don’t know what to do,” July said. “It’s been so long since I done anything right that I can’t remember it. I don’t know if I’ll ever get Ellie back to Fort Smith. They might even have hired a new sheriff by now.” “Finding a job’s the least of your problems,” Clara said. “I’ll give you a job, if you want one. Cholo’s been doing Bob’s work and his too, and he can’t keep it up forever.” “I always lived in Arkansas,” July said. It had never occurred to him that he might settle anywhere else.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
All during the trip he had been haunted by the memory of something that had happened in Fort Smith several years before. One of the nicest men in town, a cotton merchant, had gone to Memphis on a business trip, only to have his wife take sick while he was gone. They tried to send a telegram to notify the man, but he was on his way back and the telegram never got delivered. The man’s name was John Fisher. As he rode back into Fort Smith, John Fisher saw a burying party out behind the church. Being a neighborly man, he had ridden over to see who had died, and the people had all stopped, stricken, for they were burying his wife. July had been helping to cover the coffin. He never forgot the look on John Fisher’s face when he realized he was a day late—his wife had died the afternoon before his return. Though a healthy man, John Fisher only lived another year himself. If he ran into someone on the street who had seen his wife on her sickbed he always asked, “Do you think Jane might have lived if I’d got back sooner?” Everyone told him no, you couldn’t have done a thing, but John Fisher didn’t believe them.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
IT SEEMED TO JULY that he was nearly as cursed as Job when it came to catching Elmira. Despite his caution, he kept having accidents and setbacks of a kind that had never happened at home in Fort Smith. Three days out of Dodge, the new horse he had bought, which turned out not to be well-broken, fell and crippled himself trying to throw a hobble. July waited a day, hoping it wasn’t as bad as he thought it was—but the next day he saw it was even worse. It hardly seemed possible to lose two horses on one trip, when he had never lost a horse before in his life, but it was a fact he had to face.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Newt, why don’t you take this pony?” he said, looking at the boy. “He’s a pacer—you won’t find no easier gait. And the rest of you boys divide what money’s in my pocket.”He smiled at the thought of how surprised they would be when they saw how much he had—it was that lucky week in Fort Worth he had to thank for it.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Jake was lying on his saddle blanket feeling drunk and depressed. Dan Suggs had shot the old man driving the wagon at a hundred yards’ distance, without even speaking to him. Dan had been hiding in the trees along the creek, so the old man died without even suspecting that he was in danger. He only had about thirty dollars on him, but he had four jugs of whiskey, and they were divided equally, although Dan claimed he ought to have two for doing the shooting. Jake had been drinking steadily, hoping he would get so drunk the Suggses would just go off and leave him. But he knew they wouldn’t. For one thing, he had eight hundred dollars on him, won in poker games in Fort Worth, and if Dan Suggs didn’t know it, he certainly suspected it. They wouldn’t leave him without robbing him, or rob him without killing him, so for the time being his hope was to ride along and not rile Dan.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“They’re well known around Fort Worth for being murdering rascals,” Wilbarger said. “I never expected to be fool enough to let them murder me. It’s humbling. I lived through the worst war ever fought and then got killed by a damn sneaking horsethief. That galls me, I tell you.” “Any of us can oversleep,” Augustus said quietly. “If you was to lie quiet that lung might heal.” “No sir, not likely,” Wilbarger said. “I saw too many lung-shot boys when we were fighting the Rebs to expect that to happen. I’d rather just enjoy a little more conversation.” He turned his eyes toward the Hell Bitch and smiled—the sight of her seemed to cheer him more than anything.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Still, July liked the look of the cowboys—he always had, even when they got a little rowdy, as they sometimes did in Fort Smith. They were young and friendly and seemed not to have a care in the world. They rode as if they were grown to their horses. Their teamwork when the cattle misbehaved and tried to break out was interesting to see. He saw a cowboy rope a running steer by the horns and then cleverly trip it so that the steer fell heavily. When the animal rose, it showed no more fight and was soon loaded.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Yes,” July said. “Only two of them didn’t have no folks.” He vaguely remembered that Roscoe had a few brothers, but none of them lived around Fort Smith or had been heard of in years. He wiped his eyes on his shirtsleeve again, reflecting that he had cried more in the last few weeks than he had in his whole life up to that point.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
He walked along the dusty street for a few minutes, wiping the tears out of his eyes with his shirtsleeve. One or two men observed him curiously. It was obvious that he was upset, but no one said anything to him. He remembered walking into the post office in Fort Worth and getting the letter that told him about Ellie. Since then, it had all been puzzlement and pain. He felt that in most ways it would have been better if he had died on the plains with the rest of them. He was tired of wandering and looking.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
The first thing July did was buy a decent horse. He went to the post office, for he felt he owed Fort Smith an explanation as to why he had not come back. For some reason he felt a surge of optimism as he walked down the street to the post office. Now that he had survived the plains it seemed possible that he could find Ellie after all. He had lost all interest in catching Jake Spoon; he just wanted to find his wife and go home. If Peach didn’t like it—and she wouldn’t—she would just have to lump it. If Ellie wasn’t in Dodge she would probably be in Abilene. He would soon catch up with her.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
But the law wouldn’t look at it like that, of course. If he rode across the river with a hard bunch like the Suggses he would be an outlaw, whereas if he stayed, the nesters might try to hang him or at least try to jail him in Fort Worth or Dallas. If that happened, he’d soon be on trial for one accident or another.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Then nesters began to boil out of Doan’s Store—it seemed there were twenty or thirty of them. Jake felt discouraged by the sight, for it reminded him of how people had boiled out of the saloons in Fort Smith when they discovered Benny Johnson lying dead in the mud. Now another man was lying dead, and it was just as much an accident: if the old nester had just announced himself politely as the girl’s husband, Jake would have tipped his hat and walked off. But the old man had whacked him and offered to do it again—he had only shot to protect himself.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
ALMOST AT ONCE, before the group even got out of Texas, Jake had cause to regret that he had ever agreed to ride with the Suggs brothers. The first night he camped with them, not thirty miles north of Dallas, he heard talk that frightened him. The boys were discussing two outlaws who were in jail in Fort Worth, waiting to hang, and Dan Suggs claimed it was July Johnson who had brought them in. The robbers had put out the story that July was traveling with a young girl who could throw rocks better than most men could shoot.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
They had not seen one soul since leaving the Fort. Once she thought she saw an Indian watching her from a little ridge, but it turned out to be an antelope.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Luke looked at her belly. “Not for a while yet,” he said. “This ain’t gonna take no month. It probably won’t take six minutes. I’ll pay you. I won good money playing cards back at the Fort.” “No,” Elmira said. “I’m afraid of Zwey.” She wasn’t really, but it made a handy excuse. She was more afraid of Luke, who had mean eyes—there was something crazy in his looks. He also had a disgusting habit, which was that he liked to suck his own fingers. He would do it sitting by the fire at night—suck his fingers as if they were candy.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
What he was doing—indeed, his whole life—now seemed to him completely futile. He rode through the empty land without hope of anything, simply going on because he had to do something. As he went farther and farther onto the plains, he ceased to be able to imagine Fort Smith as a place where he might ever live and work again. What would he do if he did go back? Sit in the jail where he had worked with Roscoe? Or in the cabin where he had lived with Elmira?
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
He had a longing to get them back in places they belonged: Fort Smith, in the case of Roscoe and Joe. He didn’t know where the girl had belonged, though it wasn’t in a grave on the Canadian.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Roy and Ed almost got into a gunfight over a hand of cards. He offered to get them whores, for he had stayed friendly with several of the girls who had come over from Fort Worth, but the Suggs brothers weren’t interested. Drinking and card playing appealed to them more.Had it not been for the threat of July Johnson somewhere around, he would have let the Suggs brothers head for Kansas without him. He was comfortable where he was, and had no appetite for hard riding and gunfighting. But Dallas wasn’t far from Fort Smith, and July Johnson might arrive any time. That was an uncomfortable thought, so uncomfortable that three days later Jake found himself riding north with the three Suggs boys and a tall black man they called Frog Lip. Jake equipped himself with a new rifle before they left. He had made the Suggs brothers no promises, and as soon as he found a nice saloon in Kansas, he meant to let them go their way.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Hell, I’m the only one of your customers that’s taken a bath this year,” Jake complained. “You could take up with bankers and lawyers, and the sheets wouldn’t stink so.” “I like ’em muddy and bloody,” Sally said. “I ain’t nice, this ain’t a nice place, and it ain’t a nice life. I’d take a hog to bed if I could find one that walked on two legs.” Jake had seen hogs that kept cleaner than some of the men Sally Skull took upstairs, but something about her raw behavior stirred him, and he stayed with her and paid the daily ten dollars. The cowboys that came through were very poor cardplayers, so he could usually make his fee back in an hour. He tried other whores in other saloons, skinny ones and fat ones, but with them a time came when he would remember Lorena and immediately lose interest. Lorena was the most beautiful woman he had ever known, and her beauty grew in his memory. He thought of her often with a pang, but also with anger, for in his view it was entirely her own fault that she had been stolen. Whatever was happening to her, it was her punishment for stubbornness. She could easily have been living with him in a decent hotel in Austin or Fort Worth.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Sally drank hard from the time she woke up until the time she passed out. She kept one of the three rooms for her own exclusive use—the one with a little porch off it. When Jake got tired of card playing he would come and sit with his feet propped up on the porch rail and watch the wagons move up and down the streets of Fort Worth. Once Sally had the alarm clocks set she would come in for a few minutes herself, with a whiskey glass, and help him watch. He had hit it off with her at once, and she let him sleep in her bed, but the bed and the privileges that went with it cost him ten dollars a day—a sum he readily agreed to, since he was on a winning streak. Once he had got his first ten dollars’ worth, he felt free to discuss the arrangements.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“I don’t know, we ain’t there yet,” Augustus said. “What’s the word on Jake?” “He was in Fort Worth when we passed by,” Call said. “I guess he’s mainly card playing.” “I met that sheriff that’s after him,” Augustus said. “He’s ahead of us somewhere. His wife run off and Blue Duck killed his deputy and two youngsters who were traveling with him. He’s got other things on his mind besides Jake.” “He’s welcome to Jake, if he wants him,” Call said. “I won’t defend a man who lets a woman get stolen and just goes back to his cards.” “It was wisdom,” Augustus said. “Blue Duck would have scattered Jake over two counties if he had run into him.” “I call it cowardice,” Call said. “Why didn’t you kill Blue Duck?” “He’s quick,” Augustus said. “I couldn’t follow him on this piece of soap I’m riding. Anyway, I had Lorie to consider.” “I hate to let a man like that get away,” Call said.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇