Chapter 54

Summary

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 the Canadian. He reflects on how badly his skills have rusted, and on the country itself: the buffalo gone, the Indians nearly gone, thousands of miles of grass unused — a moment of true emptiness between what was and what will be. On the Canadian he meets Aus Frank, an old mountain man and one-time bank robber he and Call once arrested, who now works night and day wheeling barrowloads of bones into vast pyramids beside the river for no purpose anyone can name. Aus tells him Blue Duck burned his partner Bob alive, rides with six Kiowas, and that they ate his dog. Augustus guesses wrong about the western route, turns east along a road of buffalo bones, and admits to himself he prefers folly to sense.

Analysis

The pursuit becomes an elegy. Aus Frank's pyramids of buffalo bones let McMurtry state the novel's largest theme directly: this is the brief empty moment between what the plains were and what they will be. Augustus rides through it admitting he prefers folly to sense.

Plates

00 The first morning of the pursuit, Augustus rides wide circles over ground churned to nothing by the stampede, finding only Hat Creek horse tracks.

01 Twelve years earlier — Call and Augustus hang the horsethief Webster Witter from a mesquite so short his feet drag the ground.

02 Beyond the Clear Fork of the Brazos, Augustus passes the half-built cabin that settlers abandoned to the Comanches.

03 A cold camp on a little bluff in the post-oak country near the Brazos, where the silence is complete and Augustus eats jerky alone under the moon.

04 The next day Augustus finds the carcass of Lorena's mare, ridden until she died and left on the plain.

05 Augustus rides into the Quitaque, where dust devils spiral off the bare red earth and mirages lie ahead like flat lakes.

06 Near the breaks of the Canadian, the speck Augustus rides down turns out to be Aus Frank, pushing a barrow of buffalo bones across the open plain.

07 Asked about Blue Duck, Aus Frank sets down the barrow and spits a mouthful of tobacco juice straight into the hole of a red-ant bed.

08 At sundown by the Canadian, Aus Frank turns the empty barrow over and sits on it beneath his pyramid of bones, telling Augustus that Blue Duck burned Bob alive and rides with six Kiowas.

09 As the sun lights the grass, Augustus rides east along the road of buffalo bones, admitting to himself that he prefers folly to sense.