Lonesome Dove: Chapter 54 Summary & Analysis

It takes Augustus half a day just to find Blue Duck’s tracks, since he rode straight through the stampede. But after that, the tracks go northwest in a line as straight as an arrow. Gus’s tracking skills are a bit rusty, but he believes Blue Duck will just head northwest of the Palo Duro Canyon to his favorite hideout. As Gus rides the country gets even emptier; although settlers, Rangers, and the Army have subdued most of the Comanches, enough roving bands remain to strike terror into the hearts of settlers. And without settlers to occupy and hold the land, it’s not hard for the Comanches to maintain their foothold.

It’s late spring, the time of year when the buffalo herds used to move north, except there are barely any herds left to speak of. Augustus can remember when the buffalo were almost as thick as the mosquitoes. But now the plains are eerily empty and quiet. Not long after Augustus comes in sight of the Canadian River, he sees a strange spectacle indeed: an old man pushing a wheelbarrow piled high with buffalo bones. Augustus recognizes the man as Aus Frank, an odd store owner from Waco. He and Call once arrested Aus after he evidently went out of his mind, robbed the bank next door, and ran off. He quickly escaped the jail and fled, and Augustus had no idea what happened to him.

Riding up to Aus, Augustus strikes up a conversation. Aus was never much of a talker and his conversational skills have evidently suffered from his isolation. As he pushes his wheelbarrow back to the foot of a gigantic pyramid of buffalo bones—one of five along the banks of the river—and begins tossing bones onto it, Aus tells Augustus his story. He first went to the Pecos Mountains to trap beavers. Five years ago, for some reason he doesn’t mention, he and another trapper came to the Canadian River. Blue Duck and a band of Kiowa killed his friend and his dog, which they ate. The sun sets while Aus is talking, and he falls asleep in the middle of his story. After a while, Augustus sleeps, too, only to wake in the middle of the night to the unfamiliar sound of Aus chucking more bones onto his pyramids.

Augustus mounts his horse and bids Aus farewell, as the sun rises. It’s his favorite time of the day, but he feels melancholy and a bit foolish for riding off into such danger by himself, all for  Lorena, whom Jake Spoon seduced and abandoned. But, then again, he was never very good at being sensible.