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Chapter 28
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
Within a week, the kinds of responsibilities Roscoe would have preferred to avoid descend on him. One day, Peach Johnson and Charlie Barnes, Fort Smith’s banker and Peach’s most likely second husband, confront Roscoe. Peach informs him that Elmira is gone. She went to bring her sister-in-law some dumplings and found the cabin empty. She and Charlie think Roscoe should investigate. Roscoe hesitates, but ultimately agrees. Much to his dismay, Peach and Charlie follow him to July’s empty cabin. Through some clever sleuthing—there are no boots in the cabin and Peach testifies that Elmira owns boots—he determines that she left purposefully. There’s no sign of a bear attack (Roscoe’s preferred scenario), so Peach thinks Elmira probably got tired of July and went upriver with some whiskey runners who recently passed by.
Roscoe’s reluctance to investigate Elmira’s alleged disappearance speaks to his haplessness and laziness. He resents Peach’s bullying, and although the book explores the idea that women can exert an inordinate power over men elsewhere, this episode plays the gender dynamic for laughs. Peach certainly has an unpleasant, domineering personality (the book implies that she controls Charlie, too), but it’s equally true that Roscoe is terrible at his job, leaving it up to Peach to get to the bottom of things herself.
Themes
When Roscoe asks the ferryman, he learns that a woman—a sex worker, the ferryman assumed—did, in fact, board the whiskey boat. Neither of the town’s regular sex workers are missing, so it must have been Ellie. This puts Roscoe in a quandary. He knows it might be months before July gets back, and he can’t stand the anxiety of waiting all that time to give the man bad news as soon as he returns. Peach, Charlie, and other townsfolk start hounding him to either go after Elmira or to go find July. Eventually, he realizes he has no choice. No one even seems concerned about the chaos that might happen without a lawman around, and practically the entire town gathers to watch him saddle his horse and ride west, toward Texas.
The previous chapter vividly demonstrated how tied Roscoe is to his place in the world. He’s even less fit for an adventure than July, who has at least gone as far as Missouri before. Yet, like his boss, he lacks the internal strength to stand up for himself, and so he allows Peach and Charlie Barnes to bully him into not only investigating but also taking the news of Elmira’s disappearance to July. Those who allow themselves to be ruled by outside forces, Roscoe’s story suggests, are destined for trial and difficulty at the very least.
Themes
