Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove, #1)

by Larry McMurtry

If a man looked straight up at the stars he was apt to get dizzy, the night was so clear. Clouds were scarcer than cash money, and cash money was scarce enough.

“I was having a dream,” Newt said, sounding very young. “Your tough luck, then, son,” Augustus said. “Morning around here is more like a nightmare.

Jack went broke as a buffalo hunter quicker than any man I ever knew. He couldn’t have hit a buffalo if one had swallowed him.”

when it came to getting women in love with him Jake Spoon had no equal. His big eyes convinced them he’d be lost without them, and none of them seemed to want him just to go on and be lost.

Kilt the dern Indians so they wouldn’t bother the bankers.” “They bothered more than bankers,” Call said. “Yes, lawyers and doctors and newspapermen and drummers of every description,” Augustus said. “Not to mention women and children,” Call said. “Not to mention plain settlers.” “Why, women and children and settlers are just cannon fodder for lawyers and bankers,” Augustus said. “They’re part of the scheme. After the Indians wipe out enough of them you get your public outcry, and we go chouse the Indians out of the way. If they keep coming back then the Army takes over and chouses them worse. Finally the Army will manage to whip ’em down to where they can be squeezed onto some reservation, so the lawyers and bankers can come in and get civilization started. Every bank in Texas ought to pay us a commission for the work we done. If we hadn’t done it, all the bankers would still be back in Georgia, living on poke salad and turnip greens.”

The thought had just occurred to him, so, following his habit, he put it at once into speech.

“Do we ask their names before we shoot them?” he inquired. “It ain’t necessary,” Augustus assured him. “Most of them are named Jesus anyway.”

felt curious—not sick but suddenly empty—it was the way a kick in the stomach could make you feel. It

Talking to Sean had made Newt curious about Ireland. Sean said the grass was thick as a carpet there. The description didn’t help much for Newt had never seen a carpet.

“Yes, but a man that goes to the trouble to take a wife don’t generally want to go off and leave her,” Augustus pointed out. “It means doing the chores all by yourself. Besides, without a wife handy you won’t be getting no kids, and kids are a wonderful source of free labor. They’re cheaper than slaves by a damn sight.”

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.

“I found him a likable man, but inexperienced.” “He’s got more experience now,” Augustus said. “Blue Duck killed his crew.” “Killed all three of them?” Wilbarger asked, startled. “I even offered that young boy a job.” “He should have took it,” Augustus said.

“It’s all right, though,” Augustus said. “It’s mostly bones we’re riding over, anyway. Why, think of all the buffalo that have died on these plains. Buffalo and other critters too. And the Indians have been here forever; their bones are down there in the earth. I’m told that over in the Old Country you can’t dig six feet without uncovering skulls and leg bones and such. People have been living there since the beginning, and their bones have kinda filled up the ground. It’s interesting to think about, all the bones in the ground. But it’s just fellow creatures, it’s nothing to shy from.” It was such a startling thought—that under him, beneath the long grass, were millions of bones—that Newt stopped feeling so strained. He rode beside Mr. Gus, thinking about it, the rest of the night.

The wife of their nearest neighbor, Maude Jones, had killed herself with a shotgun one morning, leaving a note which merely said, “Can’t stand listening to this wind no more.”

“I think you should all go to the barber and forget these whores,” he added. “They will just take your money, and what will you get for it?” “Something nice,” Needle said. “A haircut will last you a month, but what you get from the whores will only last a moment,” Po remarked. “Unless she gives you something you don’t want.”