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Lonesome Dove: A Novel Paperback – June 15, 2010
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Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove is a book to make us laugh, weep, dream, and remember.
- Print length864 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSimon & Schuster
- Publication dateJune 15, 2010
- Dimensions5.25 x 1.9 x 8 inches
- ISBN-101439195269
- ISBN-13978-1439195260
The chilling story of the abduction of two teenagers, their escape, and the dark secrets that, years later, bring them back to the scene of the crime. | Learn more
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From the Publisher
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Everything about Lonesome Dove feels true . . . These are real people, and they are still larger than life.”—Nicholas Lemann, The New York Times Book Review
“Lonesome Dove is Larry McMurtry’s loftiest novel."—Los Angeles Times
"A marvelous novel . . . moves with joyous energy . . . amply imagined and crisply, lovingly written. I haven't enjoyed a book more this year . . . a joyous epic."--Newsweek
"The finest novel that McMurtry has yet accomplished . . . Lonesome Dove has all the action anyone could possibly imagine . . . [and] both in general and in details, the authority of exact authenticity . . . superb."--Chicago Tribune
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
WHENAUGUSTUS CAME OUT on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rat-tlesnake—not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its rattling days were over. The sow had it by the neck, and the shoat had the tail.
“You pigs git,” Augustus said, kicking the shoat. “Head on down to the creek if you want to eat that snake.” It was the porch he begrudged them, not the snake. Pigs on the porch just made things hotter, and things were already hot enough. He stepped down into the dusty yard and walked around to the springhouse to get his jug. The sun was still high, sulled in the sky like a mule, but Augustus had a keen eye for sun, and to his eye the long light from the west had taken on an encouraging slant.
Evening took a long time getting to Lonesome Dove, but when it came it was a comfort. For most of the hours of the day—and most of the months of the year—the sun had the town trapped deep in dust, far out in the chaparral flats, a heaven for snakes and horned toads, roadrunners and stinging lizards, but a hell for pigs and Tennesseans. There was not even a respectable shade tree within twenty or thirty miles; in fact, the actual location of the nearest decent shade was a matter of vigorous debate in the offices—if you wanted to call a roofless barn and a couple of patched-up corrals offices—of the Hat Creek Cattle Company, half of which Augustus owned.
His stubborn partner, Captain W. F. Call, maintained that there was excellent shade as close as Pickles Gap, only twelve miles away, but Augustus wouldn’t allow it. Pickles Gap was if anything a more worthless community than Lonesome Dove. It had only sprung up because a fool from north Georgia named Wesley Pickles had gotten himself and his family lost in the mesquites for about ten days. When he finally found a clearing, he wouldn’t leave it, and Pickles Gap came into being, mainly attracting travelers like its founder, which is to say people too weak-willed to be able to negotiate a few hundred miles of mesquite thicket without losing their nerve.
The springhouse was a little lumpy adobe building, so cool on the inside that Augustus would have been tempted to live in it had it not been for its popularity with black widows, yellow jackets and centipedes. When he opened the door he didn’t immediately see any centipedes but he did immediately hear the nervous buzz of a rattlesnake that was evidently smarter than the one the pigs were eating. Augustus could just make out the snake, coiled in a corner, but decided not to shoot it; on a quiet spring evening in Lonesome Dove, a shot could cause complications. Everybody in town would hear it and conclude either that the Comanches were down from the plains or the Mexicans up from the river. If any of the customers of the Dry Bean, the town’s one saloon, happened to be drunk or unhappy—which was very likely—they would probably run out into the street and shoot a Mexican or two, just to be on the safe side.
At the very least, Call would come stomping up from the lots, only to be annoyed to discover it had just been a snake. Call had no respect whatsoever for snakes, or for anyone who stood aside for snakes. He treated rattlers like gnats, disposing of them with one stroke of whatever tool he had in hand. “A man that slows down for snakes might as well walk,” he often said, a statement that made about as much sense to an educated man as most of the things Call said.
Augustus held to a more leisurely philosophy. He believed in giving creatures a little time to think, so he stood in the sun a few minutes until the rattler calmed down and crawled out a hole. Then he reached in and lifted his jug out of the mud. It had been a dry year, even by the standards of Lonesome Dove, and the spring was just springing enough to make a nice mud puddle. The pigs spent half their time rooting around the springhouse, hoping to get into the mud, but so far none of the holes in the adobe was big enough to admit a pig.
The damp burlap the jug was wrapped in naturally appealed to the centipedes, so Augustus made sure none had sneaked under the wrapping before he uncorked the jug and took a modest swig. The one white barber in Lonesome Dove, a fellow Tennessean named Dillard Brawley, had to do his barbering on one leg because he had not been cautious enough about centipedes. Two of the vicious red-legged variety had crawled into his pants one night and Dillard had got up in a hurry and had neglected to shake out the pants. The leg hadn’t totally rotted off, but it had rotted sufficiently that the family got nervous about blood poisoning and persuaded he and Call to saw it off.
For a year or two Lonesome Dove had had a real doctor, but the young man had lacked good sense. A vaquero with a loose manner that everybody was getting ready to hang at the first excuse anyway passed out from drink one night and let a blister bug crawl in his ear. The bug couldn’t find its way out, but it could move around enough to upset the vaquero, who persuaded the young doctor to try and flush it. The young man was doing his best with some warm salt water, but the vaquero lost his temper and shot him. It was a fatal mistake on the vaquero’s part: someone blasted his horse out from under him as he was racing away, and the incensed citizenry, most of whom were nearby at the Dry Bean, passing the time, hung him immediately.
Unfortunately no medical man had taken an interest in the town since, and Augustus and Call, both of whom had coped with their share of wounds, got called on to do such surgery as was deemed essential. Dillard Brawley’s leg had presented no problem, except that Dillard screeched so loudly that he injured his vocal cords. He got around good on one leg, but the vocal cords had never fully recovered, which ultimately hurt his business. Dillard had always talked too much, but after the trouble with the centipedes, what he did was whisper too much. Customers couldn’t relax under their hot towels for trying to make out Dillard’s whispers. He hadn’t really been worth listening to, even when he had two legs, and in time many of his customers drifted off to the Mexican barber. Call even used the Mexican, and Call didn’t trust Mexicans or barbers.
Augustus took the jug back to the porch and placed his rope-bottomed chair so as to utilize the smidgin of shade he had to work with. As the sun sank, the shade would gradually extend itself across the porch, the wagon yard, Hat Creek, Lonesome Dove and, eventually, the Rio Grande. By the time the shade had reached the river, Augustus would have mellowed with the evening and be ready for some intelligent conversation, which usually involved talking to himself. Call would work until slap dark if he could find anything to do, and if he couldn’t find anything he would make up something—and Pea Eye was too much of a corporal to quit before the Captain quit, even if Call would have let him.
The two pigs had quietly disregarded Augustus’s orders to go to the creek, and were under one of the wagons, eating the snake. That made good sense, for the creek was just as dry as the wagon yard, and farther off. Fifty weeks out of the year Hat Creek was nothing but a sandy ditch, and the fact that the two pigs didn’t regard it as a fit wallow was a credit to their intelligence. Augustus often praised the pigs’ intelligence in a running argument he had been having with Call for the last few years. Augustus maintained that pigs were smarter than all horses and most people, a claim that galled Call severely.
“No slop-eating pig is as smart as a horse,” Call said, before going on to say worse things.
As was his custom, Augustus drank a fair amount of whiskey as he sat and watched the sun ease out of the day. If he wasn’t tilting the rope-bottomed chair, he was tilting the jug. The days in Lonesome Dove were a blur of heat and as dry as chalk, but mash whiskey took some of the dry away and made Augustus feel nicely misty inside—foggy and cool as a morning in the Tennessee hills. He seldom got downright drunk, but he did enjoy feeling misty along about sundown, keeping his mood good with tasteful swigs as the sky to the west began to color up. The whiskey didn’t damage his intellectual powers any, but it did make him more tolerant of the raw sorts he had to live with: Call and Pea Eye and Deets, young Newt, and old Bolivar, the cook.
When the sky had pinked up nicely over the western flats, Augustus went around to the back of the house and kicked the kitchen door a time or two. “Better warm up the sowbelly and mash a few beans,” he said. Old Bolivar didn’t answer, so Augustus kicked the door once or twice more, to emphasize his point, and went back to the porch. The blue shoat was waiting for him at the corner of the house, quiet as a cat. It was probably hoping he would drop something—a belt or a pocketknife or a hat—so he could eat it.
“Git from here, shoat,” Augustus said. “If you’re that hungry go hunt up another snake.” It occurred to him that a leather belt couldn’t be much tougher or less palatable than the fried goat Bolivar served up three or four times a week. The old man had been a competent Mexican bandit before he ran out of steam and crossed the river. Since then he had led a quiet life, but it was a fact that goat kept turning up on the table. The Hat Creek Cattle Company didn’t trade in them, and it was unlikely that Bolivar was buying them out of his own pocket—stealing goats was probably his way of keeping up his old skills. His old skills did not include cooking. The goat meat tasted like it had been fried in tar, but Augustus was the only member of the establishment sensitive enough to raise a complaint. “Bol, where’d you get the tar you fried this goat in?” he asked regularly, his quiet attempt at wit falling as usual on deaf ears. Bolivar ignored all queries, direct or indirect.
Augustus was getting about ready to start talking to the sow and the shoat when he saw Call and Pea Eye walking up from the lots. Pea Eye was tall and lank, had never been full in his life, and looked so awkward that he appeared to be about to fall down even when he was standing still. He looked totally helpless, but that was another case of looks deceiving. In fact, he was one of the ablest men Augustus had ever known. He had never been an outstanding Indian fighter, but if you gave him something he could work at deliberately, like carpentering or blacksmithing, or well-digging or harness repair, Pea was excellent. If he had been a man to do sloppy work, Call would have run him off long before.
Augustus walked down and met the men at the wagons. “It’s a little early for you two to be quittin’, ain’t it, girls?” he said. “Or is this Christmas or what?”
Both men had sweated their shirts through so many times during the day that they were practically black. Augustus offered Call the jug, and Call put a foot on a wagon tongue and took a swig just to rinse the dry out of his mouth. He spat a mouthful of perfectly good whiskey in the dust and handed the jug to Pea Eye.
“Girls yourself,” he said. “It ain’t Christmas.” Then he went on to the house, so abruptly that Augustus was a little taken aback. Call had never been one for fine manners, but if the day’s work had gone to his satisfaction he would usually stand and pass the time a minute.
The funny thing about Woodrow Call was how hard he was to keep in scale. He wasn’t a big man—in fact, was barely middle-sized—but when you walked up and looked him in the eye it didn’t seem that way. Augustus was four inches taller than his partner, and Pea Eye three inches taller yet, but there was no way you could have convinced Pea Eye that Captain Call was the short man. Call had him buffaloed, and in that respect Pea had plenty of company. If a man meant to hold his own with Call it was necessary to keep in mind that Call wasn’t as big as he seemed. Augustus was the one man in south Texas who could usually keep him in scale, and he built on his advantage whenever he could. He started many a day by pitching Call a hot biscuit and remarking point-blank, “You know, Call, you ain’t really no giant.”
A simple heart like Pea could never understand such behavior. It gave Augustus a laugh sometimes to consider that Call could hoodwink a man nearly twice his size, getting Pea to confuse the inner with the outer man. But of course Call himself had such a single-track mind that he scarcely realized he was doing it. He just did it. What made it a fascinating trick was that Call had never noticed that he had a trick. The man never wasted five minutes appreciating himself; it would have meant losing five minutes off whatever job he had decided he wanted to get done that day.
“It’s a good thing I ain’t scairt to be lazy,” Augustus told him once.
“You may think so. I don’t,” Call said.
“Hell, Call, if I worked as hard as you, there’d be no thinking done at all around this outfit. You stay in a lather fifteen hours a day. A man that’s always in a lather can’t think nothin’ out.”
“I’d like to see you think the roof back on that barn,” Call said.
A strange little wind had whipped over from Mexico and blown the roof off clean as a whistle, three years before. Fortunately it only rained in Lonesome Dove once or twice a year, so the loss of the roof didn’t result in much suffering for the stock, when there was stock. It mostly meant suffering for Call, who had never been able to locate enough decent lumber to build a new roof. Unfortunately a rare downpour had occurred only about a week after the wind dropped the old roof in the middle of Hat Creek. It had been a real turd-floater, and also a lumber-floater, washing much of the roof straight into the Rio Grande.
“If you think so much, why didn’t you think of that rain?” Call asked. Ever since, he had been throwing the turd-floater up to Augustus. Give Call a grievance, however silly, and he would save it like money.
Pea Eye wasn’t spitting out any mash whiskey. He had a skinny neck— his Adam’s apple bulged so when he drank that it reminded Augustus of a snake with a frog stuck in its gullet.
“Call looks mad enough to kick the stump,” Augustus said, when Pea finally stopped to breathe.
“She bit a hunk out of him, that’s why,” Pea said. “I don’t know why the Captain wants to keep her.”
“Fillies are his only form of folly,” Augustus said. “What’s he doing letting a horse bite him? I thought you boys were digging the new well?”
“Hit rock,” Pea said. “Ain’t room for but one man to swing a pick down in that hole, so Newt swung it while I shod horses. The Captain took a ride. I guess he thought he had her sweated down. He turned his back on her and she bit a hunk out.”
The mare in question was known around town as the Hell Bitch. Call had bought her in Mexico, from some caballeros who claimed to have killed an Indian to get her—a Comanche, they said. Augustus doubted that part of the story: it was unlikely one Comanche had been riding around by himself in that part of Mexico, and if there had been two Comanches the caballeros wouldn’t have lived to do any horse trading. The mare was a dapple gray, with a white muzzle and a white streak down her forehead, too tall to be pure Indian pony and too short-barreled to be pure thoroughbred. Her disposition did suggest some time spent with Indians, but which Indians and how long was anybody’s guess. Every man who saw her wanted to buy her, she was that stylish, but Call wouldn’t even listen to an offer, though Pea Eye and Newt were both anxious to see her sold. They had to work around her every day and suffered accordingly. She had once kicked Newt all the way into the blacksmith’s shop and nearly into the forge. Pea Eye was at least as scared of her as he was of Comanches, which was saying a lot.
“What’s keeping Newt?” Augustus asked.
“He may have went to sleep down in that well,” Pea Eye said.
Then Augustus saw the boy walking up from the lots, so tired he was barely moving. Pea Eye was half drunk by the time Newt finally made the wagons.
“’I god, Newt, I’m glad you got here before fall,” Augustus said. “We’d have missed you during the summer.”
“I been throwin’ rocks at the mare,” Newt said, with a grin. “Did you see what a hunk she bit out of the Captain?”
Newt lifted one foot and carefully scraped the mud from the well off the sole of his boot, while Pea Eye continued to wash the dust out of his throat.
Augustus had always admired the way Newt could stand on one leg while cleaning the other boot. “Look at that, Pea,” he said. “I bet you can’t do that.”
Pea Eye was so used to seeing Newt stand on one leg to clean his boot that he couldn’t figure out what it was Gus thought he couldn’t do. A few big swigs of liquor sometimes slowed his thinking down to a crawl. This usually happened at sundown, after a hard day of well-digging or horseshoeing; at such times Pea was doubly glad he worked with the Captain, rather than Gus. The less talk the Captain had to listen to, the better humor he was in, whereas Gus was just the opposite. He’d rattle off five or six different questions and opinions, running them all together like so many unbranded cattle—it made it hard to pick out one and think about it carefully and slowly, the only ways Pea Eye liked to think. At such times his only recourse was to pretend the questions had hit him in his deaf ear, the left one, which hadn’t really worked well since the day of their big fight with the Keechis—what they called the Stone House fight. It had been pure confusion, since the Indians had been smart enough to fire the prairie grass, smoking things up so badly that no one could see six feet ahead. They kept bumping into Indians in the smoke and having to shoot point-blank; a Ranger right next to Pea had spotted one and fired too close to Pea’s ear.
That was the day the Indians got away with their horses, which made Captain Call about as mad as Pea had ever seen him. It meant they had to walk down the Brazos for nearly two hundred miles, worrying constantly about what would happen if the Comanches discovered they were afoot. Pea Eye hadn’t noticed he was half deaf until they had walked most of the way out.
Fortunately, while he was worrying the question of what it was he couldn’t do, old Bolivar began to whack the dinner bell, which put an end to discussion. The old dinner bell had lost its clapper, but Bolivar had found a crowbar that somebody had managed to break, and he laid into the bell so hard that you couldn’t have heard the clapper if there had been one.
The sun had finally set, and it was so still along the river that they could hear the horses swishing their tails, down in the lots—or they could until Bolivar laid into the bell. Although he probably knew they were standing around the wagons, in easy hearing distance, Bolivar continued to pound the bell for a good five minutes. Bolivar pounded the bell for reasons of his own; even Call couldn’t control him in that regard. The sound drowned out the quiet of sunset, which annoyed Augustus so much that at times he was tempted to go up and shoot the old man, just to teach him a lesson.
“I figure he’s calling bandits,” Augustus said, when the ringing finally stopped. They started for the house, and the pigs fell in with them, the shoat eating a lizard he had caught somewhere. The pigs liked Newt even better than Augustus—when he didn’t have anything better to do he would feed them scraps of rawhide and scratch their ears.
“If them bandits were to come, maybe the Captain would let me start wearing a gun,” Newt said wistfully. It seemed he would never get old enough to wear a gun, though he was well into his teens.
“If you was to wear a gun somebody would just mistake you for a gunfighter and shoot you,” Augustus said, noting the boy’s wistful look. “It ain’t worth it. If Bol ever calls up any bandits I’ll lend you my Henry.”
“That old man can barely cook,” Pea Eye remarked. “Where would he get any bandits?”
“Why, you remember that greasy bunch he had,” Augustus said. “We used to buy horses from ’em. That’s the only reason Call hired him to cook. In the business we’re in, it don’t hurt to know a few horsethieves, as long as they’re Mexicans. I figure Bol’s just biding his time. As soon as he gains our trust his bunch will sneak up some night and murder us all.”
He didn’t believe anything of the kind—he just liked to stimulate the boy once in a while, and Pea too, though Pea was an exceptionally hard man to stimulate, being insensitive to most fears. Pea had just sense enough to fear Comanches—that didn’t require an abundance of sense. Mexican bandits did not impress him.
Newt had more imagination. He turned and looked across the river, where a big darkness was about to settle. Every now and then, about sundown, the Captain and Augustus and Pea and Deets would strap on guns and ride off into that darkness, into Mexico, to return about sunup with thirty or forty horses or perhaps a hundred skinny cattle. It was the way the stock business seemed to work along the border, the Mexican ranchers raiding north while the Texans raided south. Some of the skinny cattle spent their lives being chased back and forth across the Rio Grande. Newt’s fondest hope was to get old enough to be taken along on the raids. Many a night he lay in his hot little bunk, listening to old Bolivar snore and mumble below him, peering out the window toward Mexico, imagining the wild doings that must be going on. Once in a while he even heard gunfire, though seldom more than a shot or two, from up or down the river—it got his imagination to working all the harder.
“You can go when you’re grown,” the Captain said, and that was all he said. There was no arguing with it, either—not if you were just hired help. Arguing with the Captain was a privilege reserved for Mr. Gus.
They no sooner got in the house than Mr. Gus began to exercise the privilege. The Captain had his shirt off, letting Bolivar treat his mare bite. She had got him just above the belt. Enough blood had run down into his pants that one pants leg was caked with it. Bol was about to pack the bite with his usual dope, a mixture of axle grease and turpentine, but Mr. Gus made him wait until he could get a look at the wound himself.
“’I god, Woodrow,” Augustus said. “As long as you’ve worked around horses it looks like you’d know better than to turn your back on a Kiowa mare.”
Call was thinking of something and didn’t answer for a minute. What he was thinking was that the moon was in the quarter—what they called the rustler’s moon. Let it get full over the pale flats and some Mexicans could see well enough to draw a fair bead. Men he’d ridden with for years were dead and buried, or at least dead, because they’d crossed the river under a full moon. No moon at all was nearly as bad: then it was too hard to find the stock, and too hard to move it. The quarter moon was the right moon for a swing below the border. The brush country to the north was already thick with cattlemen, making up their spring herds and getting trail crews together; it wouldn’t be a week before they began to drift into Lonesome Dove. It was time to go gather cattle.
“Who said she was Kiowa?” he said, looking at Augustus.
“I’ve reasoned it out,” Augustus said. “You could have done the same if you ever stopped working long enough to think.”
“I can work and think too,” Call said. “You’re the only man I know whose brain don’t work unless it’s in the shade.”
Augustus ignored the remark. “I figure it was a Kiowa on his way to steal a woman that lost that mare,” he said. “Your Comanche don’t hunger much after señoritas. White women are easier to steal, and don’t eat as much besides. The Kiowa are different. They fancy señoritas.”
“Can we eat or do we have to wait till the argument’s over?” Pea Eye asked.
“We starve if we wait for that,” Bolivar said, plunking a potful of sowbelly and beans down on the rough table. Augustus, to the surprise of no one, was the first to fill his plate.
“I don’t know where you keep finding these Mexican strawberries,” he said, referring to the beans. Bolivar managed to find them three hundred and sixty-five days a year, mixing them with so many red chilies that a spoonful of beans was more or less as hot as a spoonful of red ants. Newt had come to think that only two things were certain if you worked for the Hat Creek Cattle Company. One was that Captain Call would think of more things to do than he and Pea Eye and Deets could get done, and the other was that beans would be available at all meals. The only man in the outfit who didn’t fart frequently was old Bolivar himself—he never touched beans and lived mainly on sourdough biscuits and chickory coffee, or rather cups of brown sugar with little puddles of coffee floating on top. Sugar cost money, too, and it irked the Captain to spend it, but Bolivar could not be made to break a habit. Augustus claimed the old man’s droppings were so sugary that the blue shoat had taken to stalking him every time he went to shit, which might have been true. Newt had all he could do to keep clear of the shoat, and his own droppings were mostly bean.
By the time Call got his shirt on and came to the table, Augustus was reaching for a second helping. Pea and Newt were casting nervous glances at the pot, hoping for seconds themselves but too polite to grab before everyone had been served. Augustus’s appetite was a kind of natural calamity. Call had watched it with amazement for thirty years and yet it still surprised him to see how much Augustus ate. He didn’t work unless he had to, and yet he could sit down night after night and out-eat three men who had put in a day’s labor.
In their rangering days, when things were a little slow the boys would sit around and swap stories about Augustus’s eating. Not only did he eat a lot, he ate it fast. The cook that wanted to hold him at the grub for more than ten minutes had better have a side of beef handy.
Call pulled out a chair and sat down. As Augustus was ladling himself a big scoop of beans, Call stuck his plate under the ladle. Newt thought it such a slick move that he laughed out loud.
“Many thanks,” Call said. “If you ever get tired of loafing I guess you could get a job waiting tables.”
“Why, I had a job waiting tables once,” Augustus said, pretending he had meant to serve Call the beans. “On a riverboat. I wasn’t no older than Newt when I had that job. The cook even wore a white hat.”
“What for?” Pea Eye asked.
“Because it’s what real cooks are supposed to wear,” Augustus said, looking at Bolivar, who was stirring a little coffee into his brown sugar. “Not so much a hat as a kind of big white cap—it looked like it could have been made out of a bedsheet.”
“I’d be damned if I’d wear one,” Call said.
“Nobody would be loony enough to hire you to cook, Woodrow,” Augustus said. “The cap is supposed to keep the cook’s old greasy hairs from falling into the food. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of Bol’s hairs have found their way into this sow bosom.”
Newt looked at Bolivar, sitting over by the stove in his dirty serape. Bolivar’s hair looked like it had had a can of secondhand lard poured over it. Once every few months Bol would change clothes and go visit his wife, but his efforts at improving his appearance never went much higher than his mustache, which he occasionally tried to wax with grease of some kind.
“How come you to quit the riverboat?” Pea Eye asked.
“I was too young and pretty,” Augustus said. “The whores wouldn’t let me alone.”
Call was sorry it had come up. He didn’t like talk about whores—not anytime, but particularly not in front of the boy. Augustus had little shame, if any. It had long been a sore spot between them.
“I wish they’d drownt you then,” Call said, annoyed. Conversation at the table seldom led to any good.
Newt kept his eyes on his plate, as he usually did when the Captain grew annoyed.
“Drown me?” Augustus said. “Why, if anybody had tried it, those girls would have clawed them to shreds.” He knew Call was mad, but wasn’t much inclined to humor him. It was his dinner table as much as Call’s, and if Call didn’t like the conversation he could go to bed.
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.
Of course the boy lapped up Augustus’s stories about riverboats and whores. The boy hadn’t been anywhere, so it was all romance to him.
“Listening to you brag about women don’t improve the taste of my food,” he said, finally.
“Call, if you want better food you have to start by shooting Bolivar,” Augustus said, reminded of his own grievance against the cook.
“Bol, I want you to quit whackin’ that bell with that crowbar,” he said. “You can do it at noon if you want to but let off doin’ it at night. A man with any sense can tell when it’s sundown. You’ve spoilt many a pretty evening for me, whackin’ that bell.”
Bolivar stirred his sugary coffee and held his peace. He whacked the dinner bell because he liked the sound, not because he wanted anybody to come and eat. The men could eat when they liked—he would whack the bell when he liked. He enjoyed being a cook—it was a good deal more relaxing than being a bandit—but that didn’t mean that he intended to take orders. His sense of independence was undiminished.
“Gen-eral Lee freed the slaves,” he remarked in a surly tone.
Newt laughed. Bol never had been able to get the war straight, but he had been genuinely sorry when it ended. In fact, if it had kept going he would probably have stayed a bandit—it was a safe and profitable profession with most of the Texans gone. But the ones who came back from the war were mostly bandits themselves, and they had better guns. The profession immediately became overcrowded. Bolivar knew it was time to quit, but once in a while he got the urge for a little shooting.
“It wasn’t General Lee, it was Abe Lincoln who freed the slaves,” Augustus pointed out.
Bolivar shrugged. “No difference,” he said.
“A big difference,” Call said. “One was a Yankee and one wasn’t.”
Pea Eye got interested for a minute. The beans and sowbelly had revived him. He had been very interested in the notion of emancipation and had studied over it a lot while he went about his work. It was obviously just pure luck that he himself hadn’t been born a slave, but if he had been unlucky Lincoln would have freed him. It gave him a certain admiration for the man.
“He just freed Americans,” he pointed out to Bolivar.
Augustus snorted. “You’re in over your head, Pea,” he said. “Who Abe Lincoln freed was a bunch of Africans, no more American than Call here.”
Call pushed back his chair. He was not about to sit around arguing slavery after a long day, or after a short one either.
“I’m as American as the next,” he said, taking his hat and picking up a rifle.
“You was born in Scotland,” Augustus reminded him. “I know they brought you over when you was still draggin’ on the tit, but that don’t make you no less a Scot.”
Call didn’t reply. Newt looked up and saw him standing at the door, his hat on and his Henry in the crook of his arm. A couple of big moths flew past his head, drawn to the light of the kerosene lamp on the table. With nothing more said, the Captain went out the door.
© 1985 Larry McMurtry
Product details
- Publisher : Simon & Schuster; Anniversary,Updated edition (June 15, 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 864 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1439195269
- ISBN-13 : 978-1439195260
- Item Weight : 1.55 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.25 x 1.9 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,188 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #13 in Native American Literature (Books)
- #49 in Westerns (Books)
- #152 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Larry McMurtry is the author of twenty-nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove. His other works include two collections of essays, three memoirs, and more than thirty screenplays, including the coauthorship of Brokeback Mountain, for which he received an Academy Award. His most recent novel, When the Light Goes, is available from Simon & Schuster. He lived in Archer City, Texas.
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Customers find the characters interesting and likeable. They describe the book as a grand western epic with descriptive writing and an easy read. Readers appreciate the author's insights into human psychology and deep emotional investment in the characters. The book portrays realistic, believable situations and human emotions. The humor and pathos evoke laughter, tears, and reflection.
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Customers find the characters interesting and likeable. They appreciate the subtle variations of the narrator's voice. The characters are multidimensional, with good and bad traits, and muddy motivations. The book provides insights into life and different flavors of humanity, showing a dichotomy between men and women.
"...The cowboys' skills, courage to overcome their fears and endurance of the weather and endless days and nights in the saddle on the cattle drive is..." Read more
"...its a sad book with lots of goodbyes and death, and shows a dichotomy between the men and women (rough/wild living) vs civilization...." Read more
"...Even minor characters get distinctive traits. Lippy “was so named because his lower lip was about the size of the flap on a saddlebag...." Read more
"...We have various episodic character subplots that are revolving and happening simultaneously, and McMurtry allows these subplots to often converge so..." Read more
Customers enjoy the classic content of the book. They describe it as a grand western epic that captures the essence of the American West. The descriptions of pre-modern America feel realistic and make the reader feel like they have gone back in time. Readers find the book a timeless classic that has held up to today's market.
"A really long book, but a classic Western tale, that mixes romance, travel, and action...." Read more
"...Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry delivers a monumental tale of the American West that captures the essence of frontier life through the..." Read more
"...painted on a somewhat bigger canvas but "Lonesome Dove" is a very enjoyable Western, not a dud at all...." Read more
"...This is probably one of my favorite books. I thought it was wonderful in the 1980s when I first read it and its allure has recaptured me every time..." Read more
Customers find the writing quality excellent. They appreciate the descriptive passages and emotional content. The narration is superb, although the audio quality varies. The book is an easy read of a complicated story, with a high level of skill to be labeled literature. It's written in third-person omniscient and flows well.
"...The author has an uncanny knack of writing distinct dialogue, with humour, sarcasm, hope, fear, resentment, anger, regret, longing and love, all..." Read more
"...McMurtry writes in third-person omniscient, meandering from one character to the next and bringing them to life quickly and completely...." Read more
"...Excellent series to start at the beginning of winter. Fantastic writing, excellent character development. I love everything about these." Read more
"...storyteller if ever there is one - crams every page with beautifully descriptive passages, intensely emotional situations, and fast-paced action...." Read more
Customers find the book humorous and entertaining. They describe it as witty, with great dialogue that expresses emotions. Readers appreciate the author's empathy and humor. The story is described as emotional, heartwarming, and heartbreaking.
"...has an uncanny knack of writing distinct dialogue, with humour, sarcasm, hope, fear, resentment, anger, regret, longing and love, all equally well..." Read more
"...In general, its a sad book with lots of goodbyes and death, and shows a dichotomy between the men and women (rough/wild living) vs civilization...." Read more
"...Lonesome Dove is not just a novel; it's an epic journey that evokes laughter, tears, and deep reflection, making it a timeless classic that..." Read more
"...hard-boiled; poignant and violent; this novel is always fast paced, witty, and highly entertaining...." Read more
Customers enjoy the realistic portrayal of people, places, and situations in the book. They find the writing believable and authentic, perfectly capturing slices of humanity. The story is described as eye-opening and a true adventure that captures the essence of frontier life through the experiences of two characters. Readers appreciate the authenticity of every detail, including Bolivar's dinner bell.
"...I love his wit, honesty, wisdom and audacity and that he's as flawed a man as there ever was...." Read more
"...delivers a monumental tale of the American West that captures the essence of frontier life through the experiences of two aging Texas Rangers,..." Read more
"...with others, but his ignorance into this rugged lifestyle is an eye opening, coming of age and sometimes painful experience as he learns many harsh..." Read more
"...No language that intrigues, evokes, amazes. No intricacies of plot, nothing to suggest there is anything beneath the dusty, dry, flat surface...." Read more
Customers find the book insightful and emotional. They appreciate the author's ability to create deep emotional connections with the characters. The book brings the land and people to life with adventure, love, and compassionate moments. Readers find it uplifting and richer than expected, offering thought-provoking questions and meanings at different life stages.
"...The author has the amazing talent of creating heart rending insights into the mental states of his characters...." Read more
"...tears, and deep reflection, making it a timeless classic that resonates with readers long after they close the book...." Read more
"...of the work is vast in its scope, and it is an enduring and memorable expedition for the characters as well as the readers." Read more
"...- crams every page with beautifully descriptive passages, intensely emotional situations, and fast-paced action...." Read more
Customers find the book engaging and captivating. They describe it as an adventure that is beautiful and exciting. The author creates a vivid world that stirs their imagination. The characters are complex and unique, and the journeys they take are surprising and eloquent. Overall, the book sparks their desire for adventure and excitement.
"...With their individual strengths, frailties and peculiarities so well defined, it's easy to keep track of them all...." Read more
"...The story and volume of the work is vast in its scope, and it is an enduring and memorable expedition for the characters as well as the readers." Read more
"...They move me emotionally, they provoke my imagination, and they make me want to experience them over and over again...." Read more
"...This was a real, dusty, funny, tearful, beautiful adventure...." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the book's length. Some find it interesting and huge, while others feel it could be difficult to stay focused over time. They mention certain scenes go on too long, the book is not a page-turner, and there are repetitive commentary pages.
"...It's very lengthy at 960 pages and yet, I didn't feel it was a long read...." Read more
"...The story and volume of the work is vast in its scope, and it is an enduring and memorable expedition for the characters as well as the readers." Read more
"A really long book, but a classic Western tale, that mixes romance, travel, and action...." Read more
"Daughter asked for the book. It’s a nice size. It’s exactly as it should be. Delivered with no damage." Read more
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If you read One Western in your life, read this one!
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2015It took me a few chapters to settle into Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry and get used to the dialogue. I knew it was a Pulitzer Prize winning novel and could see right away that the prose was exemplary. It's very lengthy at 960 pages and yet, I didn't feel it was a long read.
The story itself is a simple one about a group of cowboys, headed by two former Texas Rangers, on a 3000 mile cattle drive from Texas to Montana. But it isn't just a story about the expected trials and travails encountered along the way, Lonesome Dove is about the complicated relationships between the two primary, and the many secondary, characters. The tale unravels at a very steady pace which allows the reader time to absorb all the exquisite details of the landscape, towns and life on the Frontier and the riveting dramatic highs and lows.
The large cast of characters, some who flow in and out of the narrative, are brilliantly portrayed. With their individual strengths, frailties and peculiarities so well defined, it's easy to keep track of them all. The author has an uncanny knack of writing distinct dialogue, with humour, sarcasm, hope, fear, resentment, anger, regret, longing and love, all equally well expressed.
McMurtry lures us into complacency as he sets up the story, introduces the characters and the story begins to unfold. When the drama arrives, it's hard-hitting and gut-wrenching, Death is always near.
The cowboys' skills, courage to overcome their fears and endurance of the weather and endless days and nights in the saddle on the cattle drive is striking.
The author has the amazing talent of creating heart rending insights into the mental states of his characters. We see the petty jealousies between the men and how irritated with and intolerant of each other they become as their enforced time together on the trail lengthens. The story centers on the unspoken emotions and thoughts of the characters, Clara being the exception. She's used to speaking her mind and likes an argument as much as Gus does. The excessive anxiety and runaway thoughts which result in obsessiveness debunks the myth of the strong silent cowboy. Our cowboys are fragile and silent for the most part.
The few female figures are complex, independent and damaged. I was surprised by the depth of their bitterness and how adversarial they were towards the males. Most of the men come off badly, Gus less so because he genuinely knows and likes women. As my favourite figure, Gus McRae will be a character I remember for a long time. I love his wit, honesty, wisdom and audacity and that he's as flawed a man as there ever was.
I found myself disappearing into McMurtry's world and often replayed scenes as I fell asleep. Lonesome Dove will be one epic of the Old West that stays with me for quite a while.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2024A really long book, but a classic Western tale, that mixes romance, travel, and action. A tale of 2 former Texas Rangers, their friendship, and the odyssey from Texas to Montana they take with the Hat Creek Outfit. Every character has his/her qualities, positive and negative, some get on your nerves and some you love.
It's been a long time since I saw the TV series, but the cast of Duvall as McRae and Jones as the Captain seems perfect when reading the book.
The book as usual has more than the TV series and some of the wording is "racy" and would not be politically correct today.
In general, its a sad book with lots of goodbyes and death, and shows a dichotomy between the men and women (rough/wild living) vs civilization.
Will be watching the TV series again to see how it plays out with the book.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2020Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove starts with pigs and ends with sorrow. In between lies one of the best books I’ve ever read.
The novel is set in the American West after the Civil War. The protagonists, Woodrow Call and Augustus “Gus” McCrae, are former Texas Rangers who retired a decade ago and spent the intervening years in the little Texas town of Lonesome Dove. Nominally, they run the Hat Creek Cattle Company with a few of their old comrades (and two blue pigs, who kick off the book by eating a snake). But mostly they’re just whiling away the hours.
This part of the story is easy, pleasurable reading. McMurtry writes in third-person omniscient, meandering from one character to the next and bringing them to life quickly and completely. Call is a workaholic prone to brooding. (“Give Call a grievance,” we hear early on, “however silly, and he would save it like money.”) Gus is voluble and lazy. Pea Eye is simple but solid. Deets is as reliable as he is quirky (he makes his pants out of quilts). Newt is young and desperate to please.
Even minor characters get distinctive traits. Lippy “was so named because his lower lip was about the size of the flap on a saddlebag. He could tuck enough snuff under it to last a normal person at least a month; in general the lip lived a life of its own, there toward the bottom of his face. Even when he was just sitting quietly, studying his cards, the lip waved and wiggled as if it had a breeze blowing across it.” And Joe “had a habit of staring straight ahead. Though Call assumed he had a neck joint like other men, he had never seen him use it.”
For a while, it seems like the Hat Creek crew might putter around Lonesome Dove forever. Then Jake, another ex-ranger—on the run from the law, as it happens—rides into town and mentions that he’s been to Montana and seen vast tracts of good, unsettled land there. This lights a fire under Call. He spurs the boys into motion, leading them on cattle raids across the Mexican border and hiring extra hands to help drive the animals north. So begins a great, three-thousand-mile trek from some of the lowest latitudes of the country to the highest.
Things get hairy almost immediately. Death comes fast on the drive, and the dangers are too varied to guard against: snake-plagued river crossings, lightning storms on the open plains, searing droughts, and worse. Likable characters are abused and killed. Some of your favorites won’t make it. Prepare to be heartbroken.
Yet there’s no grand goal here. Call and Gus aren’t trying to open up the American West—they already served their time protecting settlers along the shifting frontier. Montana is a vague destination, not a mission; Call essentially leaves Lonesome Dove on a whim. Gus goes along for lack of anything better to do, but not eagerly. “Here you’ve brought these cattle all this way,” he complains to his partner around the halfway mark, “with all this inconvenience to me and everybody else, and you don’t have no reason in this world to be doing it.”
McMurtry has plenty of reasons for the drive, though. In his preface to the 25th-anniversary edition of Lonesome Dove, he argues that “the central theme of the novel is not the stocking of Montana but unacknowledged paternity,” namely Newt’s. His mother is long dead, and his father might be one of the Rangers.
But that wasn’t the thread that stood out most to me. The book is filled with restless souls regretting all sorts of errors. Gus wishes he’d married his sweetheart when he had the chance. “I expect it was the major mistake of my life, letting her slip by,” he tells Call. For his part, the quieter man laments getting involved with women at all. Jake can’t believe he’s committed hanging crimes. July Johnson, the Kansas sheriff pursuing Jake, hates himself for leaving three of his charges to face a murderer. And so on.
Aging is the through-line here—aging and change. Gus and Call are past their primes. They were legendary Rangers once, but now they’re fading into irrelevancy. The younger generation doesn’t hold them in the same esteem. “I guess they forgot us, like they forgot the Alamo,” August observes after the owner of a bar tries to kick him out for demanding respectful treatment. “Why wouldn’t they?” Call answers. “We ain’t been around.”
The West is moving on too. The buffalo are nearly done, pushed to the brink of extinction by wasteful hunting. Gus rides past several slaughter sites where it looks like “a whole herd had been wiped out, for a road of bones stretched far across the plain.” The Native Americans aren’t in much better shape—despite their fearsome reputation, their numbers have dwindled in tandem with the buffalos’. “With those millions of animals gone,” Gus reflects, “and the Indians mostly gone in their wake, the great plains were truly empty, unpeopled and ungrazed. Soon the whites would come, of course, but what he was seeing was a moment between, not the plains as they had been, or as they would be, but a moment of true emptiness, with thousands of miles of grass resting unused, occupied only by remnants—of the buffalo, the Indians, the hunters.”
This is all tragic, but it’s beautifully done.
A couple things bothered me, however. That 25th-anniversary preface contains what feel like major spoilers. They aren’t, but I’d still skip this section until you’re done with the story proper. (Unless you want to start the book as grumpy as I did.)
More significantly, while Deets shines as the only African American in the Hat Creek outfit (“He’s the best man we got,” Call says late in the drive; “Best man we’ve ever had,” Augustus agrees), the one Native American that gets extended time on the page is a vicious monster. We meet some friendlier indigenous people in passing, but I kept waiting for a real counterweight: a kind Comanche, or a decent Sioux. It never happens. (To be fair, McMurtry does have Gus take a few stabs at articulating why the Native Americans aren’t always hospitable. “We won more than our share with the natives,” he remarks near the end of the novel. They didn’t invite us here, you know. We got no call to be vengeful.” And earlier, he puzzles Call by saying, “I think we spent our best years fighting on the wrong side.” I don’t think this is enough, but it’s something.)
Other than that … it’s hard to complain. Lonesome Dove doesn’t close with a climactic shootout like you might find in other westerns. But it doesn’t need to. The journey—Gus and Call’s last shot at big, unnecessary adventure—is the point.
And it’s a masterpiece.
Top reviews from other countries
- Joanne FReviewed in Canada on August 29, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Deserved a Pulitzer!
Brilliant book by an accomplished author. Never expected a Western to have such depth of story. Definitely recommended!
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PietroReviewed in Brazil on May 23, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantástico
Um livro inesquecível. Como toda obra de ficção nota 10, é sobre personagens realistas, cheios de falhas, muitas vezes contraditórios, com conflitos mais internos do que externos. Um livro pé-no-chão que mostra um Velho Oeste mais realista e pacato, sem o constante bangue-bangue, porém ainda com momentos de tensão críveis e marcantes. Recomendado para todos que gostam de arcos de personagem profundos.
- Dr. Big BearReviewed in Germany on September 14, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Masterpiece!
The wild west, the fierce west; the disturbing west, the unsettling west; the inspiring west, the touching west. This is surely one of the best fictional works I have read in the past 15 years.
- arpit singhReviewed in India on August 19, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome read
An awesome classic western, which doesnt glorify old times, life was hard for men women. We follow call and gus and their adventures in tragic journey. Beautiful writing by Larry.
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Kindle CustomerReviewed in Spain on April 3, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars entretenido
Muy descriptivo en el ambiente de época, de paisajes y personajes. Una bonita hustoria