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Lonesome Dove

Larry McMurtry, 1985. A hundred and two chapters, each with a summary and a short analysis, illustrated throughout as if the drive had been followed by a photographer working a wet-plate camera off the back of a wagon.

102 chapters · 1020 plates · Wet-plate collodion photograph, 1870s — sepia, long exposure, plate defects.

  1. Augustus comes out onto the porch to find the two blue pigs having a tug-of-war with a rattlesnake, and steps down into the yard to kick the shoat off the boards.

    Chapter 1 10 plates

    Chapter 1

    Evening in Lonesome Dove, a parched border town on the Rio Grande. Augustus McCrae drinks from his whiskey jug on the porch of the Hat Creek Cattle Company, arguing with the pigs and waitin…
  2. Call walks the river alone for an hour after supper, west of town, out of an old Ranger habit he no longer needs.

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    Chapter 2

    Call walks the river at night out of old Ranger habit, watching a Comanche crossing that no Comanche will use again. The long war with them is over, and he knows it; what he cannot shake is…
  3. Lorena at her upstairs window in the July heat, looking out at brown land, grey chaparral, the river and Mexico beyond.

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    Chapter 3

    Lorena's history. Orphaned at seventeen after her parents fled Mobile and died on the way west, she was taken up by the drunkard Mosby Marlin, who promised marriage, kept her in a squalid h…
  4. Augustus stops on the sandy bottom of Hat Creek to strap on the old Colt dragoon before walking down to the saloon.

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    Chapter 4

    Augustus straps on his old Colt dragoon and strolls down to the Dry Bean saloon. Inside are Lippy Jones, the piano player with an unhealed hole in his belly and a filthy bowler hat; Xavier…
  5. Four in the morning, still good dark — Augustus freshens the mesquite coals under the Dutch oven in the backyard and sets his moulded biscuits in.

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    Chapter 5

    Morning at Hat Creek. Augustus rises before dawn to bake sourdough biscuits in a Dutch oven, watch the sunrise redden the chaparral, and read a little of the Prophets. Breakfast is the usua…
  6. The name Jake Spoon strikes Newt on the back porch, and the boy goes still while the rest of the outfit talks on around him.

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    Chapter 6

    Jake Spoon's return means most to Newt, who remembers him as his dead mother Maggie's kindest visitor and privately suspects Jake is his father. Jake, a former Ranger and lifelong gambler,…
  7. Jake Spoon stands in the door of the low house watching Call and Deets walk off toward the barn.

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    Chapter 7

    Augustus and Jake drink by the springhouse and circle old ground: Deets's quilt trousers and the sheepskin coat Augustus secretly burned, Maggie's death, and Clara Allen, whom both men once…
  8. The middle of the afternoon, too hot to think, the hands working the half-dug well and the windlass in the bare lots at Lonesome Dove.

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    Chapter 8

    The famous sign. Augustus's compulsive elaborations turned a plain livery notice into a manifesto listing the partners, P. E. Parker (Wrangler), Deets, Joshua — added after Deets sulked at…
  9. Augustus alone on the front porch in the heat of the afternoon, biding his time with his jug while the blue pigs sleep in the dust.

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    Chapter 9

    Wilbarger rides up to the porch to buy horses. Augustus needles him, refuses to sell before sunup, and shares his jug; Wilbarger reveals his HIC brand is Latin and that he studied at Yale,…
  10. The seven riders cross the river into Coahuila and strike southeast at a long trot, into country that seems to contain nothing except itself.

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    Chapter 10

    The ride into Coahuila. Newt, wearing a gun for the first time, trots for hours through empty dark country, trying and failing to memorise landmarks, worrying equally about being killed and…
  11. Augustus and Jake sit their horses above the horse herd in the valley south of the old line camp — Call predicted the place exactly and got the size wrong; there are only about forty head.

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    Chapter 11

    The herd Augustus finds is only forty head — and when Newt ropes two mounts for the Irishmen, the brands turn out to be Wilbarger's HIC. Having set out to steal, they find themselves return…
  12. Just after sunrise, Wilbarger, Deets and Chick cut the H I C horses out of the corral while Dish works the gate and Newt stands idle at the fence.

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    Chapter 12

    Wilbarger collects his thirty-eight recovered horses, offers all of them for the Hell Bitch, is refused, tries to hire Dish away from Call, is refused again, and rides off warning that Mont…
  13. Lorena alone at her table in the Dry Bean, waiting without pleasure for Dish Boggett to come back with the two dollars he has borrowed somewhere.

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    Chapter 13

    Lorena's side of meeting Jake Spoon. He is the first man to walk into the Dry Bean and not be made nervous by her, and within a minute he names San Francisco — the one hope she has left. Ov…
  14. Jake comes ambling up from Lorena's bed in the afternoon and walks past the two Irishmen asleep under the wagon without a glance.

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    Chapter 14

    Jake surfaces from Lorena's bed in the afternoon, wanting to borrow ten dollars and already regretting having mentioned Montana. He sees his options as getting scalped in the north or hange…
  15. Dish Boggett leans on the gate of the big corral under the red afterglow, smoking, and cannot make himself believe in the swarm of bandits.

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    Chapter 15

    Deets, left alone guarding the penned horses, gives the chapter its centre. He lets Dish slip away to the saloon and settles against the water trough to watch the moon, which he loves and p…
  16. Call rides up to the Spettle creek-bottom farm north of Pickles Gap, hiring boys.

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    Chapter 16

    Call goes hiring. At the Spettle place he finds a barefoot widow raising eight children on a dirt floor and takes her two eldest boys, Bill and Pete, paying a month's wages in advance; the…
  17. Ten days in, Lorena watches Jake sleep after a root and realises she is not excited about him the way she was on the first day.

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    Chapter 17

    Ten days in, Lorena has worked out that Jake is more attached to her than she is to him, and that he is the one needing care. She resolves to hold him to San Francisco. Then Augustus walks…
  18. Augustus rides back from town to the gathering camp a little after sunset, the herd held in a long valley five miles from Lonesome Dove.

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    Chapter 18

    The gathering camp. Call raids Mexico nightly for cattle and brands by day, working both shifts on the Hell Bitch; Bolivar cooks fiery beans and slips rattlesnake into the stew, to Jasper F…
  19. Newt night-herding, riding slowly around and around the bedded cattle with his mind gone north.

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    Chapter 19

    Newt, night-herding, dwells on the north — plains without end, buffalo, bears too thick for bullets. He befriends Sean O'Brien, who is homesick for his dead mother and for Irish grass thick…
  20. Jake Spoon steps in the door of the Dry Bean in a sulk, filthy with branding dust, and goes straight to the bar for a bottle and two glasses.

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    Chapter 20

    Jake comes back to town sulking, filthy with branding dust, and takes Lorena upstairs before washing. Afterwards he complains that Call and Gus expect him to drive cattle to Montana simply…
  21. First red light over the mesquite flats — Lorena awake before dawn at the foot of the bed, Jake still asleep behind her.

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    Chapter 21

    Lorena is awake before dawn, already gone in her mind. She hands Jake Gus's fifty dollars to buy her a horse — a joke Jake enjoys, since the money from Gus's poke will carry her north. No s…
  22. Late afternoon at Bolivar's cook fire, Augustus looks up from his plate and sees Jake and Lorena riding into camp on two good horses, leading a pack horse — and Lorena is wearing pants.

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    Chapter 22

    Jake and Lorena ride into the cow camp at supper, she in pants — a sight that freezes every hand over his plate and sends Dish Boggett straight out to the herd without a word. Call, silentl…
  23. Call and Augustus eat their bacon by the fire in the faint morning light of departure day, arguing about biscuits and the well.

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    Chapter 23

    Departure day. Soupy Jones, once the finest horseman any of them knew, rides in widowed and is hired on the spot. The blue pigs have tracked the outfit out from town and settle under the wa…
  24. First light on the last day in Lonesome Dove — Newt, too excited to have slept or eaten, sits up in his blanket with the food gone cold beside him.

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    Chapter 24

    The last day before starting. The hands see to equipment, though several of them — the Spettle boys, Newt, the Irishmen — have almost none. Lippy is put in charge of the horse herd, to Dish…
  25. Late afternoon, a rope corral strung around the remuda while each hand takes his four picks, and Jasper Fant and Needle Nelson cannot make up their minds.

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    Chapter 25

    The herd starts. Each hand picks four mounts from a rope corral; Dish takes the right point, Soupy the left, and Newt, the Rainey boys and the Irishmen are put on the drags, where the dust…
  26. Part II opens on the main street of Fort Smith, dry for once, with July Johnson and his deputy Roscoe Brown sitting out in front of what passes for a jail.

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    Chapter 26

    Part II opens in Fort Smith, Arkansas, with July Johnson, the sheriff — twenty-four, still yellow with jaundice caught at a trial in Missouri, and four months married to Elmira, who has los…
  27. July rides home at dusk and finds little Joe in the horse pen, his rope on the milk-pen calf again.

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    Chapter 27

    Elmira's history and her contempt. She eats apart from July and her son Joe, sitting in the sleeping loft with her legs dangling over the table, and no longer hears a word her husband says.…
  28. An hour before dawn, July and Joe leave the cabin and catch their horses in the dark lot.

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    Chapter 28

    July and Joe leave Fort Smith before dawn. Joe rides a rat-chewed singletree saddle borrowed from Peach, who is delighted the hunt is finally starting, and is thrown by his horse Red within…
  29. Roscoe Brown whittling on the jail porch on a fine morning, Peach Johnson and Charlie Barnes coming up the street toward him.

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    Chapter 29

    Six days after July leaves, Peach Johnson and the banker Charlie Barnes turn up at the jail to inform Roscoe Brown that Elmira is missing from the cabin. Roscoe, who has not thought of her…
  30. Lorena and Jake ride out of the mesquite thickets toward the Nueces, Jake drunk in the saddle, the herd's dust standing behind them.

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    Chapter 30

    Lorena's first wash of the journey, in the Nueces. Jake has drunk whiskey all day against the pain of the thorn still buried in his thumb, now purple, and is too sick to finish when he pull…
  31. Augustus jokes that the outfit is about to find out if it was meant to be cowboys, while Call asks Deets whether the herd can reach the Nueces before the storm.

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    Chapter 31

    The storm hits before the herd can reach the river. Sand comes first, blowing up from Mexico in low streams that run like wolves under the cattle's bellies, and it blinds Newt at the moment…
  32. The first lightning strikes and Lorena's young mare snaps her rein and runs off into the blowing sand.

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    Chapter 32

    The same storm, at Jake and Lorena's camp. Jake forgot to hobble the horses and Lorena's mare breaks loose. Lorena, who fears lightning above everything, huddles against a big mesquite unti…
  33. Dawn after the storm — the rain has stopped completely, the sky is cloudless, and the first sunlight sparkles on wet thickets and hundreds of puddles.

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    Chapter 33

    Clear dawn after the storm. The outfit has come through better than Call feared — Dish reckons no more than twenty-five cattle lost, and he has kept the main herd together, which even Call…
  34. Early morning after the storm — Lorena spreads the soaked gear over the trees and bushes to dry.

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    Chapter 34

    The morning after the storm finds Lorena's spirits high — she likes being outdoors after years of hot little rooms. Augustus rides in leading her recovered mare, cuts her bacon, and tells h…
  35. In the brush near the Nueces the mosquito swarms hit, and Sean O'Brien, his face lumpy with bites, tells Newt he would go to Ireland if he only knew where the boats were.

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    Chapter 35

    Sean O'Brien's death. Through mosquito swarms and one maddening red cow that keeps hiding in thickets, the outfit brings the herd to the Nueces behind Old Dog, the lead steer Call bought fr…
  36. The whiskey boat inching up the brown Arkansas, Elmira alone at the stern watching the water go by.

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    Chapter 36

    Elmira on the whiskey boat, working up the Arkansas among traders and buffalo hunters. She sleeps in a cubbyhole among the casks, spends her days at the stern watching the brown water, the…
  37. Three hours out of Fort Smith, the wild pigs put Memphis into a runaway through the pines and Roscoe empties his pistol at the boar without hitting anything.

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    Chapter 37

    Roscoe's journey goes badly at once: a herd of wild pigs stampedes his horse Memphis within three hours of Fort Smith, and he spends the night sitting against a tree with a pistol in his ha…
  38. In the dripping pine woods, Joe turns in the saddle mid-question and July rides on without answering.

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    Chapter 38

    July rides sixteen hours a day and will not talk, so filled with dread about Elmira that only hard travel keeps it down. Joe gives up asking questions and dozes in the saddle. At the Red Ri…
  39. The week after Sean's death — the cowboys sit at their grub after dark and talk of nothing but deaths they have witnessed.

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    Chapter 39

    Sean's death hangs over the camp for a week. Jasper Fant talks without stopping to hold his fear at bay; Allen O'Brien rides in silence and cries by the fire; Deets falls into a rare gloom,…
  40. Night on the trail — rain wakes them and Lorena stumbles up alone in the dark to drag the stiff tarp over the blankets while Jake cusses the weather.

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    Chapter 40

    Lorena takes to travelling; Jake does not. Deets, stopping by their camp most days, has taught her to build a fire and pack a mule — chores Jake neglects while complaining about how she doe…
  41. The herd moseying north past San Antonio on a hot day, the mosquitoes thinning and the cowboys half asleep in their saddles.

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    Chapter 41

    The wagon is destroyed. Bolivar, dozing on the seat and dreaming of his daughters, accidentally discharges his ten-gauge and is knocked off; the runaway mules go over a three-foot cutbank a…
  42. Augustus watches Bolivar ride away south from the wrecked chuck wagon, and pronounces the outfit doomed.

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    Chapter 42

    Call and Augustus ride into San Antonio for a wagon and a cook, Call sunk in one of the blue spells that little accidents rather than real crises bring on. At the Buckhorn saloon, where the…
  43. Roscoe, lost somewhere north of the Red, asks a settler the way to Texas and gets a vague arm pointed at the horizon.

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    Chapter 43

    Roscoe cannot find Texas. The settlers he asks have never been more than a few hundred feet from where they stand, until a party of drunk soldiers points him at the Red River and gets him s…
  44. North of San Antonio the mesquite thins and the country opens; the herd grazes north so slowly Newt feels it will take forever to get out of Texas.

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    Chapter 44

    North of San Antonio the country opens and the going eases. With no cook since Bolivar left, Augustus makes breakfast to suit himself and scrambles the eggs, to the daily disgust of Dish. R…
  45. Lorena alone at the water-hole camp on the second wearisome day since Jake rode off, discouraged enough to have thought about drowning herself in the little pool.

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    Chapter 45

    Blue Duck arrives. Augustus, sitting in his underwear after a swim, spots the rider at a distance and asks for his gun belt: an Indian on a pacing horse with Mexican silver on the saddle. T…
  46. Newt and the Rainey boys ride in from the drags white with dust, and Pea Eye makes his nightly remark about the flour sack.

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    Chapter 46

    Augustus sends Newt to watch over Lorena — young and innocent, so Jake won't shoot him — over Dish's furious objection, and sends Deets to track Blue Duck. Deets loses the trail in a creek…
  47. Newt rides east alone through the dusk toward Lorena's camp, anxious enough to have given himself a headache.

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    Chapter 47

    Newt rides to Lorena's camp and can think of nothing to say; she tells him to go back, and he compromises by tying Mouse half a mile off and creeping back on foot to keep watch in secret. H…
  48. First light by the wagon, Call and Augustus arguing about the stampede and the Indian while they wait on a cook who has not arrived.

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    Chapter 48

    Po Campo wins the crew in a morning: an omelette of seventy plover's eggs gathered on the walk in, then a stew of ingredients he refuses to name, and finally fried grasshoppers dipped in th…
  49. Lorena looks up from her bedding and Blue Duck is simply standing there, rifle held one-handed like a toy, the moon gone behind a cloud.

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    Chapter 49

    Lorena's abduction. Blue Duck appears without a sound, ties her ankles to her stirrups, and rides straight through the stampede he has started. He rides day and night through empty country,…
  50. Camped on the road, July scratches the word "skeeters" in the dirt and asks Joe whether he has spelled it right.

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    Chapter 50

    July and Joe reach Fort Worth, where July mails a short, laboured letter to Elmira that he has fussed over for days, down to the spelling of "skeeters." At the post office the clerk digs ou…
  51. First light on the misty flats — July making coffee at the little creek while Joe, still in his blankets, hears cattle bawling somewhere out in the fog.

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    Chapter 51

    July and Joe come upon a huge trail herd at dawn and find its owner, Wilbarger, sitting by the ashes reading Milton in iron-rimmed spectacles — the only quiet minute of his day. Blunt and t…
  52. Janey walks the trail west on her bare feet, keeping them on the road while Roscoe rides behind her and does nothing but trot along and think.

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    Chapter 52

    Janey turns out to know the trail, prefers walking, and feeds them nightly on rabbits, possums and prairie chickens she runs down by hand; she hides whenever travellers appear, afraid of th…
  53. The whiskey wagons hauling west across the plains toward Bent's Fort, Elmira riding on a load and Big Zwey's eyes never off her.

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    Chapter 53

    Elmira reaches Bent's Fort and finds it is not a town — a few ruined buildings, one crazy woman, a flea-ridden closet beside a warehouse of buffalo hides, and no stage out. She realises she…
  54. The first morning of the pursuit, Augustus rides wide circles over ground churned to nothing by the stampede, finding only Hat Creek horse tracks.

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    Chapter 54

    Augustus loses half a day to Blue Duck's trick of riding the captives through the stampede, finds the trail, then abandons tracking altogether and rides on instinct toward the Palo Duro and…
  55. Monkey John sits on Lorena's chest with his big knife an inch from her face, and Dog Face cocks his pistol to make him stop.

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    Chapter 55

    Lorena's captivity on the Canadian. Blue Duck has sold her for hides to two buffalo hunters — the vicious old runt Monkey John, who burns and beats her, and the crazy-eyed Dog Face, who hal…
  56. Augustus, alone and off Blue Duck's trail, rides east all morning across a level plain with a bad feeling in his heart.

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    Chapter 56

    Caught in the open by a dozen riders, Augustus outruns them only far enough to reach a shallow buffalo wallow. He cuts his own horse's throat, wrestles the dying animal down as a breastwork…
  57. Dog Face lies gutshot on a saddle blanket while Blue Duck squats over him, blocking his view of the girl and asking how many men were in the party that shot him.

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    Chapter 57

    The rescue. Dog Face lies gutshot and begging to be shot; Blue Duck refuses to waste a bullet, kicks Lorena until she curls up, tells the Kiowas they can have her and carve her up, and ride…
  58. The fireless camp in the canyon on the Canadian, Roscoe and Joe sitting up in the dark waiting to hear the fight, Janey off by herself.

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    Chapter 58

    While July is away, Blue Duck comes to the other camp. Roscoe, dozing with a cocked pistol, wakes to see Janey standing over him with a rock raised in both hands; she throws it, is knocked…
  59. The third day passes without Gus returning and Call, alone at the horse herd before sunrise, begins to be uneasy.

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    Chapter 59

    A week passes and Augustus does not return. The herd crosses the Brazos and the Trinity, the crew carouses in Fort Worth — where they find Jake Spoon gambling with a whore on his arm, too h…
  60. Two days south of the Red River, low black clouds boil out of the northwest over a treeless rolling plain and the fair spring morning turns to water.

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    Chapter 60

    Days of rain. The outfit reaches the Red River, famous for quicksand, and Deets rejects the first crossing, riding downstream to find a gravel bar that lets Old Dog walk the herd across alm…
  61. The second day out, the rains strike, and Augustus and Lorena ride east through the cold downpour with Lorena wrapped in the crude poncho he cut for her out of a buffalo hunter's tarp.

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    Chapter 61

    Augustus shelters Lorena at Adobe Walls, deserted and full of rattlesnakes two years after its famous fight. He finds an abandoned box of buttons, sorts them into stakes and deals cards — a…
  62. In the empty Territory, the Spettle boys tell Newt they would run away home if they weren't afraid of getting lost.

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    Chapter 62

    The worst storm yet. A bolt of lightning bisects the setting sun, and another strikes the herd, dropping thirteen cattle like bricks out of a wall and killing Bill Spettle, knocked from his…
  63. Augustus rides up over the hailstones on a strange horse and finds Call and Dish half into their dry pants on the naked riverbank.

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    Chapter 63

    Augustus rejoins the outfit and finds it naked on a hailstone-covered riverbank. He reports Lorena rescued and camped in Wilbarger's borrowed tent, and says he and she will travel alongside…
  64. Bill's Saloon on the Trinity River bluffs at Fort Worth, where Jake has settled in, with a small herd trailing north beyond it.

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    Chapter 64

    Jake settles in at a Fort Worth saloon, winning steadily and paying ten dollars a day to sleep with Sally Skull, the tall, hard, powder-taking woman who runs the whores upstairs with alarm…
  65. July rides north for days without seeing a person, only hawks and buzzards turning in the empty prairie sky.

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    Chapter 65

    July rides north alone through empty country, dreaming of Roscoe every night. A cactus thorn lames his horse; unable to work it out, he shoots the animal, leaves the saddle, and walks east…
  66. The hide wagon bogged again on the soaked Kansas plain, Elmira on the seat in wet clothes wondering whether any of it was worth it.

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    Chapter 66

    Elmira, pregnant and bounced raw on the hide wagon, begins to doubt the whole enterprise. Zwey is kind in his slow way and asks nothing; Luke is the danger. He engineers separate hunts so h…
  67. Augustus spits on the chuck wagon boards and Po Campo bends over the expectoration to read his matrimonial fortune.

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    Chapter 67

    Po Campo reads Augustus's spit and tells him he will have no more wives — the sky is his wife. Five starving Wichitas ask Call for a beef and he gives them a crippled steer, recognising the…
  68. The first night's camp thirty miles north of Dallas, where Jake hears the Suggs brothers talk of hangings and killings and understands what he has ridden into.

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    Chapter 68

    Jake regrets the Suggs brothers within a day. Dan hates cowboys and proposes stealing a whole herd near Dodge and shooting the crew that drove it. At Doan's Store on the Red River, Jake wal…
  69. July Johnson rides down the main street of Dodge City and finds a town of whores, gamblers and saloons, and no Elmira in any of it.

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    Chapter 69

    July finds Dodge City full of whores, gamblers and saloons, and no Elmira. Writing to Peach from the post office breaks him twice into tears; the letter reports three deaths and tells the t…
  70. West of the grasshopper line the herd finds good grass and two clear weeks, and moves north toward the Arkansas without incident.

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    Chapter 70

    Two smooth weeks of good grass are broken by a freak accident: a small sharp-horned cow hooks Mouse under the girth while Ben Rainey is riding him, and the horse bleeds out. Call tells Newt…
  71. A sunny morning a day short of Dodge, Jake Spoon rides along with his lucky feeling on him, thinking of a bath, a barber and a whore.

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    Chapter 71

    A day short of Dodge and a bath and a barber, Dan Suggs spots Wilbarger driving twenty-five horses with two hands and decides to take them. Jake's lucky feeling dies; Frog Lip's insolent "Y…
  72. Wilbarger's riderless bay stands waiting on the north bank of the Arkansas, dried blood on the saddle and crusted in its mane.

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    Chapter 72

    Wilbarger's bloodied bay turns up riderless on the north bank of the Arkansas, and the crossing goes badly — Dish's horse panics and nearly drowns him until Deets fights it off, and the her…
  73. Dish holds up the supper line at the chuck wagon, picking out the best piece of beef for Lorena while Jasper jeers at him.

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    Chapter 73

    Dish, left in charge of both the herd and Lorena, carries her meals to the tent and can find none of the speeches he rehearses all night. She takes the plate, asks only whether Gus will com…
  74. Riding toward the buzzard knoll, the party passes a fat old badger carrying a human hand away across the grass, and no one but Newt thinks it worth stopping for.

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    Chapter 74

    Part III opens with the hanging of Jake Spoon. Following the horsethieves, the party buries what the buzzards have left of Wilbarger's men, then finds the two burned settlers still hanging…
  75. Clara is milking the mare in the lots when Sally comes racing down with news of a wagon, and the startled mare makes her squirt milk along her own arm.

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    Chapter 75

    Clara Allen, on the Platte twenty miles from Ogallala. Three sons — Jim, Jeff and Johnny — lie buried on the knoll; her husband Bob lies in the bedroom, skull fractured by a mustang he insi…
  76. Zwey at the hitched team in the dark yard, asking whether they aren't going to take the baby, while Elmira sits propped in the wagon bed with nothing in her arms.

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    Chapter 76

    Zwey, who believes he and Elmira are married and that the baby is somehow his, cannot understand why she left it; Luke, realising how completely Zwey misunderstands men and women, laughs at…
  77. Three days north of Dodge, July stands over the second horse, crippled trying to throw a hobble, and faces the fact that he has lost it.

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    Chapter 77

    July loses a second horse, walks back to Dodge to buy a third, and is bitten in his sleep by a snake near the Republican, spending days too weak to fetch his own saddle and talking aloud to…
  78. Lorena sits alone in her tent in the last of the light, three days into hoping Gus is not dead.

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    Chapter 78

    Augustus rides back to the tent and asks Lorena for a hug and then a kiss, which makes her blush. He tells her about the hangings; Jake means almost nothing to her now — he never came to fi…
  79. Newt rides the drag on the nameless pacer Jake Spoon gave him at the hanging, unable to get Jake out of his mind.

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    Chapter 79

    Jake's hanging sits on the outfit. Newt cannot let it go — nobody talked at the hanging, nobody has talked since — and finally says so to Deets, who tells him gently that the Captain and Mr…
  80. Elmira's fever breaks and the first thing she sees is Zwey standing out in the rain, looking in at her through the window.

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    Chapter 80

    Elmira's fever breaks in the house of Dr. Patrick Arandel, a coughing, whiskey-smelling man who refuses payment because he came west to get away from money. Big Zwey stands at the window da…
  81. July rides back to Clara's ranch from Ogallala at dusk, so sunk by the visit with Elmira that he has forgotten the errands and the mail.

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    Chapter 81

    July comes back from Ogallala so sunk he forgets the mail. Helping Clara turn and wash Bob, he stumbles into a door with a splitting head; she bathes his temples with a cool rag and then sa…
  82. July comes into Clara's kitchen the next morning to find Cholo sharpening a thin-bladed knife, the baby kicking on the table, and Clara in a man's hat telling the girls how to feed him.

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    Chapter 82

    July helps Clara and Cholo geld fifteen young horses — Clara does the cutting, because Cholo says she is better at it. Afterwards, without warning, she drops the baby into July's lap and te…
  83. A week out from Ogallala, the hands stand around the night fire talking about nothing but whoring, and Newt and the Rainey boys listen.

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    Chapter 83

    Within a week of Ogallala the crew can talk of nothing but whores; Po Campo argues fruitlessly for the barbershop instead. Call notices Deets has gone quiet and keeps looking south — he say…
  84. The herd crosses the Platte east of Ogallala and turns northwest, the town's shacks and frame buildings showing on the slopes beyond.

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    Chapter 84

    The herd crosses the Platte east of Ogallala and six hands race for town in fresh shirts. Lorena refuses to come, so Augustus rides in alone, keeps a dry-goods merchant open past closing an…
  85. Jasper Fant rides back into camp sick from his night in Ogallala, and Po Campo scolds him from the wagon tailgate.

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    Chapter 85

    In Ogallala the boys buy horehound candy and work up their nerve. Then Dixon, the cavalry scout, rides up to Dish outside the livery stable, demands his mare Sugar, and spits tobacco juice…
  86. After the fight, the boys stand around the bloody anvil explaining it to a freshly barbered Pea Eye while Augustus turns the loaded wagon in the street.

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    Chapter 86

    Augustus gives Newt and the other three boys a ten-dollar gold piece each, thinking wistfully that he can never again stand where they stand. Lippy, having let slip Gus's fifty-dollar secre…
  87. Clara stands at the upstairs window with a clean sheet in her hand and watches four riders come down the far north slopes of the Platte.

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    Chapter 87

    A soldier brings word that a woman and a buffalo hunter were killed by Indians sixty miles east; July knows it was Elmira and is useless for days. Clara tells her daughters plainly that it…
  88. Clara lights a lantern and takes Augustus up the stairs to the room where her husband lies.

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    Chapter 88

    Upstairs beside her dying husband, Clara and Augustus have the conversation of sixteen years. She admits she thought of him two or three hours a day but never wanted him actually present —…
  89. Newt shows off Candy, the sorrel Clara gave him on the Platte, to hands who got nothing out of Ogallala but a drunk.

    Chapter 89 10 plates

    Chapter 89

    The drought Po Campo predicted arrives. Beyond the Platte the grass thins, water turns alkaline, and Deets rides out twenty miles and finds nothing. Call scouts the country himself and find…
  90. Call, who has slept a distance out of camp and hardly slept at all, sits on his bedroll at first light on the Salt.

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    Chapter 90

    Twelve horses are stolen in the night by Indians on foot. Call, Augustus and Deets track them for days into bleak salt country and find a starving band of some twenty people — mostly women,…
  91. The outfit trails the herd up the Powder River, the snow on the Bighorns showing to the west.

    Chapter 91 10 plates

    Chapter 91

    The outfit works up the Powder toward the Bighorns, subdued by Deets's death and jumpy about Indian sign Call keeps cutting. Newt turns over Augustus's remark that Call is his father and fi…
  92. Lorena feeds Clara's hens in the yard while Sally and Betsey trail after her asking questions she answers untruthfully.

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    Chapter 92

    Lorena settles into Clara's household — poultry, washing, and a clean room of her own that no man may enter, where Betsey comes for comfort after nightmares. She misses Gus only in sharp ac…
  93. The herd and the Hat Creek outfit ride up out of the barren Wyoming plain into Montana, sage and chalk giving way to tall grass and yellow flowers.

    Chapter 93 10 plates

    Chapter 93

    Montana proves everything Jake claimed: tall grass, yellow flowers, cold mornings, game everywhere, and skies deeper than any they have seen. An early snow falls one night and melts by noon…
  94. The outfit argues about the Yellowstone at the wagon, and Jasper Fant shows off the rude floats he has made from empty lard buckets.

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    Chapter 94

    Call sends Augustus and Pea Eye north of the Yellowstone to look for ranch country. They cross the river easily, chase buffalo for the pleasure of doing it once more, and are ambushed on th…
  95. Augustus keeps his pistol cocked all night in the cave under the riverbank, feverish and watching the black water for a floating log.

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    Chapter 95

    Augustus waits out the night with a cocked pistol, feverish and drifting into delirium. At dawn he judges his leg poisoned and decides against waiting for Call: he would rather move than si…
  96. Augustus surfaces from the red water in a small hot room in Miles City and looks down to find his left leg gone.

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    Chapter 96

    Augustus wakes minus his left leg, with the drunken Dr. Mobley beside him and a consumptive whore playing piano across the street; he throws her gold pieces out the window to keep her playi…
  97. In Dr. Mobley's surgery, Call says he intends to honour Gus's wish to be hauled to Texas, and the little doctor smiles and asks whether he wants the other leg.

    Chapter 97 10 plates

    Chapter 97

    Call has a sturdy coffin built, hauls salt from a lick six miles out, and has Augustus packed in charcoal and salt — amputated leg included — to be stored in Dr. Mobley's harness shed until…
  98. Major Court comes out of the little post at Fort Benton and finds the Hat Creek herd spread across the plain on the far side of the Missouri.

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    Chapter 98

    The outfit crosses the Missouri near Fort Benton, where an astonished Major Court buys two hundred head. Old Hugh Auld takes over as the outfit's talker. Old Dog is eaten by grizzlies; Jasp…
  99. July sets the sack of frozen potatoes on the kitchen table and asks Clara whether she would ever marry him.

    Chapter 99 10 plates

    Chapter 99

    July finally asks Clara whether she would marry him, and gets a fingerful of cake batter instead of an answer. When baby Martin falls dangerously ill she sits up alone with him all night; t…
  100. Alone in Wilbarger's tent through the winter, Call counts out a sale and puts half of it aside for the woman in Nebraska, resenting every note of it.

    Chapter 100 10 plates

    Chapter 100

    Winter on the Milk. Call banks half of every sale for Lorena, resenting it; the men learn to cook and to fight boredom; the pigs are eaten at Christmas. Horsethieves turn out to be a mad dr…
  101. In the Miles City shed, the coffin has been knocked off the barrels and splintered, and the amputated leg is gone.

    Chapter 101 10 plates

    Chapter 101

    In Miles City Call finds a varmint has broken into the shed and carried off the amputated leg. He has the coffin reinforced, buys an old buggy, and starts south. At Clara's he is met not wi…
  102. A week south of the Platte, Call trails the coffin buggy alone across the empty plain with Clara's words still stinging.

    Chapter 102 10 plates

    Chapter 102

    Call hauls the coffin south, Clara's words stinging all the way, until word runs ahead of him and Indians and cowboys alike come to look at the man carrying his compañero home. Goodnight te…