Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove, #1)

by Larry McMurtry

seemed to him he was pressed from dawn till dark, but for no good reason.

Augustus was just as capable, beneath all his rant, and would have got them through the same scrapes if it had been necessary, but Augustus wouldn’t bother rising to an occasion until it became absolutely necessary. He left the worrying to

though his day-to-day responsibilities had constantly shrunk over the last ten years, life did not seem easier. It just seemed smaller and a good deal more dull.

Call had found, over the years, that it only did to believe half of what Jake said. Jake was not a bald liar, but once he thought over a scrape, his imagination sort of worked on it and shaded it in his own favor.

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.

It was puzzling that such a muddy little river like the Rio Grande should make such a difference in terms of what was lawful and what not. On the Texas side, horse stealing was a hanging crime, and many of those hung for it were Mexican cowboys who came across the river to do pretty much what they themselves were

Evidently if you crossed the river to do it, it stopped being a crime and became a game.

not been thinking very far ahead since drifting back to Lonesome Dove. He had often thought of the fortune that could be made in cattle in Montana, but then a man could think of a fortune without actually having to go and make one.

It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men.

His daughters were his delight, but they would soon all marry and be gone, leaving him no protection from his wife.

Listening to men talk usually made him feel more alone than if he were a mile away by himself under a tree. He had never really been able to take part in the talk. The endless talk of cards and women made him feel more set apart—and even a little vain.

JULY JOHNSON HAD BEEN RAISED not to complain, so he didn’t complain, but the truth of the matter was, it had been the hardest year of his life: a year in which so many things went wrong that it was hard to know which trouble to pay attention to at any given time.

She spoke with a heat that surprised July. Elmira could get angry about almost anything, it seemed.

the young moved him to charity—they had no sense of the swiftness of life, nor of its limits. The years would pass like weeks, and loves would pass too, or else grow sour.

Jake was very fussy, complaining about the way she cooked the bacon or laid out the blankets. She ignored him. If he didn’t like the way she did things, he was free to do them different—but he never did them different. He just fussed at her.

Goats were plentiful and easy to catch, and his wife was the right distance away.

“We’ll be the Indians, if we last another twenty years,” Augustus said. “The way this place is settling up it’ll be nothing but churches and dry-goods stores before you know it. Next thing you know they’ll have to round up us old rowdies and stick us on a reservation to keep us from scaring the ladies.” “I’d say that’s unlikely,” Call said. “It’s dern likely,” Augustus said. “If I can find a squaw I like, I’m apt to marry her. The thing is, if I’m going to be treated like an Indian, I might as well act like one. I think we spent our best years fighting on the wrong side.”

“Just about being a live human being, free on the earth,” Augustus said.

The other men were easy to talk to, but they didn’t know anything. If one stopped to think about it, it was depressing how little most men learned in their lifetimes.

It made no sense that such a statement could haunt him for years, but as he got older, instead of seeming less important it became more important.

Every time Roscoe tried to think back along the line of events that had led to his being in a place where there was no trees to lean against, he strayed off the line and soon got all tangled up in his thinking. It was probably better not to try and think back down the line of life.

“Don’t be trying to give back pain for pain,” he said. “You can’t get even measures in business like this.

Clara got her way, and her way often turned out to make sense—and yet Bob more and more felt that her way skipped him, somehow.

“It’s a fine world, though rich in hardships at times,” Augustus said.

Though most of the hands were disgraceful, rude and incompetent, they were still his compañeros.

At close quarters she felt she would have struggled bitterly with him. Even during his brief visit she felt the struggle might start,

With Gus pressing him, it was his nature to resist, but with Gus gone he didn’t find it so distasteful to consider that the boy was his son. He had certainly gone to his mother, hateful as the memory was. Maggie, of course, had not been hateful—it was the strange need she induced in him that he disliked to remember.