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Chapter 24
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
Late in the day, the cowhands take turns selecting four horses each from the remuda. It takes a long time because some of them—especially Dish and Needle Nelson—are picky. Call assigns Dish and Soupy to ride point, greatly disappointing Nelson and Bert Borum. Newt, who along with Sean and Allen is assigned to bringing up the rear, understands their annoyance almost as soon as they get underway: the large herd (2,600 cattle and two pigs, according to Augustus’s count) kicks up a lot of dust. Newt can barely breathe, but he’s not going to complain. He’s anxious to prove himself. Thus, it’s disastrous when shortly after they start moving, he realizes that 30 cows are trailing behind him—he didn’t see them when he passed them because of the dust—and he nearly falls off his horse trying to get them back into the main herd.
Newt anxiously tries to prove himself worthy of being a member of the drive. It’s not an easy task, especially since most of the cowhands are more experienced than him. He’s got a leg up only on Sean, who never even rode a horse before he arrived in North America. Notably, Newt channels some of Call’s stoic resilience in his determination not to complain about the dust or the hard work, showing readers yet again that the man he’s most anxious to please is the Captain. And he’s just as hard on himself as Call for perceived mistakes—like the lagging cows—even when there’s no harm done.
Themes
Call and Augustus ride together, discussing the best route. At the top of a little hill, they pause. Augustus turns and looks back toward Lonesome Dove, which lies behind them in the sunset. Call studies the herd, feeling a little lost. When he was a Ranger, things were simple. He fought Indigenous people to allow settlers to come to Texas, and then he fought Mexicans to protect the border. Those were necessary tasks (in his mind). The cattle drive, however, isn’t necessary. As if he can read Call’s mind, Augustus comments that Call should have “died in the line of duty,” because he would have known how to do that. It’s living that he finds challenging. Call answers that they weren’t really living in Lonesome Dove, either. Deets’s return saves him from further conversation. As Call rides off, Gus lingers on the hill, watching the sunset.
As they leave Lonesome Dove, Call comes as close as he ever will to admitting his true reason for setting out on this borderline crazy cattle drive: he's bored. It’s a testament to his and Gus’s friendship (and Gus’s ability to understand human nature) that Gus understands what Call can’t articulate. Call’s musings remind readers how unglamorous and difficult it was for American settlers and their proxies like the Rangers and the Army to subdue the Indigenous people and Mexicans they displaced as the country’s borders extended. Modern readers might question his mission, noting the violence and oppression of the American colonial project; Call has no such compunctions in part because they were largely foreign to his era and in part because he judges himself by his ability to complete a mission—not by whether the mission was worth undertaking in the first place. This, in turn, should alert readers to question whether the cattle drive is worth the risks it poses.
Themes
