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Chapter 71

Chapter 71

Summary

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 "You coming?" makes clear he has no choice. They swim the Arkansas by moonlight and attack in pitch darkness. Wilbarger's man Chick and a boy wrangler are shot in their blankets, but Wilbarger himself puts three bullets into Frog Lip and escapes on a horse he must have slept holding. Dan orders the dying Frog Lip shot; nobody wants to do it, and little Eddie finally does, then robs his pockets. Riding north, Jake resolves to slip away east to St. Louis or New York. Two hours later Dan shoots two ploughing settlers at point-blank range, hangs their corpses from the only tree in sight, and sets them on fire because a sodbuster can never be dead enough to suit him.

Analysis

Dan Suggs is the novel's one purely malignant figure, and McMurtry gives him no interiority whatever — he burns the dead because a tree was going spare. Jake watches, participates in nothing, and is thereby condemned. Wilbarger's wounding here is what brings Call down on them.

Plates

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.
00 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.
Dan Suggs rides up on a low ridge and studies Wilbarger's twenty-five horses through his old army spyglasses.
01 Dan Suggs rides up on a low ridge and studies Wilbarger's twenty-five horses through his old army spyglasses.
Frog Lip breaks his silence to ask Jake "You coming?", and the insolence in the look almost makes Jake go for his gun.
02 Frog Lip breaks his silence to ask Jake "You coming?", and the insolence in the look almost makes Jake go for his gun.
The long afternoon at the spring — the Suggs brothers nap under the low trees while Frog Lip sits apart, cleaning his guns.
03 The long afternoon at the spring — the Suggs brothers nap under the low trees while Frog Lip sits apart, cleaning his guns.
They strike the Arkansas and swim it by moonlight without a word spoken, Jake hating to ride sopping wet.
04 They strike the Arkansas and swim it by moonlight without a word spoken, Jake hating to ride sopping wet.
The attack in pitch darkness — Jake fires twice into nothing, sees running figures he cannot name, and hears a horse going away.
05 The attack in pitch darkness — Jake fires twice into nothing, sees running figures he cannot name, and hears a horse going away.
First light shows the result — Wilbarger's two hands dead in their blankets, Chick with his head nearly torn loose by a rifle bullet, and no sign of Wilbarger at all.
06 First light shows the result — Wilbarger's two hands dead in their blankets, Chick with his head nearly torn loose by a rifle bullet, and no sign of Wilbarger at all.
Frog Lip lies gut-shot in the rising sun while Dan Suggs takes his rifle and his pistol off him and tells him it was his unlucky day, and nobody will shoot him.
07 Frog Lip lies gut-shot in the rising sun while Dan Suggs takes his rifle and his pistol off him and tells him it was his unlucky day, and nobody will shoot him.
Two hours north, Dan Suggs lopes over to a tent staked under a single tree and shoots the two ploughing settlers at point-blank range while Jake watches from the horse herd.
08 Two hours north, Dan Suggs lopes over to a tent staked under a single tree and shoots the two ploughing settlers at point-blank range while Jake watches from the horse herd.
The dead sodbusters hang from the only tree with their feet inches off the ground, blackened by coal oil and burning, and the Suggses ride off with the mules.
09 The dead sodbusters hang from the only tree with their feet inches off the ground, blackened by coal oil and burning, and the Suggses ride off with the mules.