Desert Island Books #2

Lonesome Dove

by Larry McMurtry

“Why not go north?”

Woodrow Call poses that question to Augustus “Gus” McCrae, his long-time friend and fellow Texas Ranger, early in Lonesome Dove. Gus can think of no good reason to go, and plenty of reasons not to. “…It sounds like a goddamn wilderness,” he tells Call. “I’ve slept on the ground enough for one life. Now I’m in the mood for a little civilization.” But at the same time, he realizes that there really is nothing left to do in Lonesome Dove:

The surprising thing to Augustus was not just what Call was suggesting but how he sounded. For years Call had looked at life as if it were essentially over. Call had never been a man who could think of much reason for acting happy, but then he had always been one who knew his purpose. His purpose was to get done what needed to be done, and what needed to be done was simple, if not easy. The settlers of Texas needed protection, from Indians on the north and bandits on the south. As a Ranger, Call had a job that fit him, and he had gone about the work with a vigor that would have passed for happiness in another man.

But the job wore out…

And so, for no particularly good reason except that there’s nothing left to do in Texas, the men and boys of the Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium head for Montana, with “a passel of shitting cattle” in tow. And thus begins a magnificent adventure, one that takes the clichés of the cattle-drive story and turns them into something memorable and magical. Much that happens in Lonesome Dove had already appeared in some previous novel or film about a cattle drive, but McMurtry creates a landscape – and more importantly, a host of characters – that make Lonesome Dove seem as if it were the only book ever written on the subject.

I’m not sure that any great themes are involved, outside of Americans sometimes do heroic things for no particular reason except that there’s nothing else to do at the moment. And while this is a great adventure story, it is also much more than that. McMurtry paints an enormous canvas that is epic in scope, but at the same time the book is full of wonderful small moments. Such as the moment when Gus encounters on the plains an enormous killing field filled with buffalo bones, and an unusual man who spends his time gathering them:

He remembered when he had first come to the high plains, years before. For two days he and Call and the Rangers had ridden parallel to the great southern buffalo herd – hundreds of thousands of animals, slowly grazing north. It had been difficult to sleep at night because the horses were nervous around so many animals, and the sounds of the herd were constant. They had ridden for nearly a hundred miles and seldom been out of sight of buffalo.

…Thus the sight of the road of bones stretching out 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. With those millions of animals gone, 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. Augustus thought that they were crazed remnants, mostly, like the old mountain man who worked night and day gathering bones to no purpose.

Another reason for the greatness of Lonesome Dove is that there have been few books with as many brilliantly rendered characters – from Call, Gus and the Hat Creek Company – Pea Eye, Newt, Deets, Dish, and others – to the women of the story – Lorena, Clara, Elmira – who are in nearly all aspects just as strong and heroic as the men; to the villainous Blue Duck and the Suggs Gang, both evil incarnate – to the aimless Jake Spoon – to the tragic July Johnson – and even the lesser characters such as Wilbarger – the educated cattleman who reads Milton on the plains, and Po Campo – the cook who fries grasshoppers in molasses – that are drawn in such a way that in just a few pages one feels that they know them well. A great novel could be written about any of these characters, and McMurtry clearly understands the importance that each brings to the story.

But as great as all those characters are, the book really belongs to Gus McCrae. It is through Gus that McMurtry makes most of his important statements about change, about life, and about the fickle nature of that life. It is through Gus that it is demonstrated that there is more than one way to define a hero. It is through Gus’ thoughts that the book’s most moving moments are articulated, in particular this one –which may just be the most important passage of the book:

Though dawn was his favorite hour, it was also an hour at which Augustus most keenly felt himself to be a fool. What was it but folly to be riding along the Canadian River alone, easy pickings for an outlaw gang, and hungry to boot? A chain of follies had put him there: Call’s abrupt decision to become a cattleman and his own decision, equally abrupt, to try and rescue a girl foolish enough to be taken in by Jake Spoon. None of it was sensible, yet he had to admit there was something about such follies that he liked. The sensible way, which he had pursued once or twice in his life, had always proved boring, usually within a few days. In his case it had led to nothing much, just excessive drunkenness and reckless card playing. There was more enterprise in certain follies, it seemed to him.

There are parts of Lonesome Dove that are laugh out loud-funny, parts that are stunning in their unexpected violence, and parts that are just plain exciting – the book really has everything. And while McMurtry would go on to write three other novels featuring many of the same characters, none of them matched the original. Nothing could, and it is not likely that anything ever will.