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Chapter 15
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Lonesome Dove, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
American Mythology
Family
Luck, Fate, and Chance
The Good Life
The Meaning of Masculinity
Feminine Strength
Summary
Analysis
At the dirt-floored shack of Widow Spettle—who, rumor has it, grew up wealthy back East—Call hires his first two cowhands, the widow’s eldest sons Swift Bill and Pete. He promises to take good care of them, and their family desperately needs the advanced wages Call leaves behind, but he still feels a stab of worry over taking the boys. A lot can happen on a 2,500-mile cattle drive. He feels less guilty hiring Jimmy and Ben Rainey, whose comfortably fed and stable family can better handle their absence.
The widow Spettle has had a hard life on the frontier, even though she allegedly came from a privileged background. Survival in this harsh and unforgiving landscape seems to have more to do with luck than resources. And although the American cowboy has since been heavily romanticized, this scene suggests that many people took to that life more out of necessity than anything else.
Themes
When Call gets back to Hat Creek around midafternoon the following day, he learns much to his surprise that no one from Mexico has tried to steal back the horses because Pedro Flores is dead—word just reached Augustus via Jasper Fant. This news hits Call like a blow to the stomach. It seemed like Pedro Flores would live forever. Call takes a big swig from Augustus’s whiskey jug. He felt the same way when Comanche chief Kicking Wolf died, in part because that rival’s death was also unexpected. After a few minutes, Call regains his equanimity. It’s good they’re headed north, he says, since all the “fun” in south Texas is over. Augustus retorts that most of it wasn’t fun. He wryly notes that Call just wants a new challenge—or to make enough money to buy for old bandits he likes.
The Hat Creek outfit gets a stroke of good luck—in the form of Pedro Flores’ bad luck. It’s yet another reminder that life—and a person’s chance to make a mark on the world—is fleeting. That’s why the news seems to confirm Call’s decision to go north. First, it’s his chance to make a name for himself one final time. And second, there’s no one left down here to prove himself against. The drive is the only challenge he feels worthy of taking on. This moment also marks one of Call’s rare losses of equanimity. Mostly, he strives to take life as it comes. But this reminder of his own mortality—if even his most feared enemies die, so can he—proves harder to stomach.
Themes
