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Chapter 63
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
In Fort Worth, Jake mainly hangs around an establishment called Bill’s Saloon, where he plays cards—he gets on quite a winning streak immediately after Lorena’s abduction—and takes up with the saloon’s madam, Sally Skull. Sally is the antithesis of Lorena: rough and crude where Lorena is beautiful and girlish. She makes $100 a day on her clients, most of which she spends on dresses, alcohol, and drugs. But Jake can’t keep away from her, and he even pays $10 a day for the privilege of living in her room and sleeping with her—when she’s not busy with other men. One day she shocks him by saying she once paid a Black man to have sex with her. Afterwards, he bragged and got lynched, and she got run out of town.
Sally Skull seems to illustrate rough and uncivilized characters the frontier, with its lawlessness and freedom, attracted. Jake’s decision to stay in Fort Worth and his evident lack of concern for Lorena—who, remember, got kidnapped while allegedly in his care—suggest the flightiness of his own temperament. He cares about his own pleasure to the exclusion and detriment of those around him. Like July, he's a victim of circumstances, but Jake’s misfortune, unlike July’s, stems from his own selfishness.
Themes
Then, one of Sally Skull’s customers complains, and she shoots him—just a little, in the shoulder. But it’s enough to get her thrown in jail overnight. In an attempt to escape, she lures the deputy into her cell and, in a tussle over his gun, they both wind up fatally shot. With the mood in Fort Worth turning against sex workers and gamblers, Jake steals $600 from Sally’s room and heads for Dallas.
Again, the story about Sally Skull—and even her name—contributes to the book’s presentation of the western frontier as a wild, rough, and dangerous place. Jake’s apparent lack of emotion over her death mirrors his unconcern over Lorena, at least after he got over the insult to his pride of assuming Gus or someone else had seduced Lorena away from him. He cares about only himself.
Themes
It’s in Dallas that Jake meets Dan, Ed, and Roy Suggs, a “hard-looking crew of brothers” who like drinking and gambling and not much else. Dan recognizes Jake’s name, and he pumps Jake for information about his storied former partners, Call and McCrae. It irritates Jake that they’re so much more famous than him, when he thinks that he’s at least as impressive. Eventually, Dan Suggs asks Jake if he’s interested in a job as a “regulator”—essentially a bandit—in Kansas. Jake isn’t, and he warns the brothers that if they try to “tax” Call and McCrae’s herd, they’re likely to end up dead.
Again, like July, Jake finds himself somewhat at the mercy of his changing circumstances. Unlike July, however, it’s easier to see how Jake’s own selfishness and bad choices contribute to his quickly changing circumstances. Notably, Jake realizes that Call and Gus have better reputations than him, and so he feels too insulted to see how his own actions (gambling, accidentally killing a man, running from the law, abandoning Lorena) contribute to that dynamic.
Themes
Dan clearly wants to recruit Jake to join one of his criminal schemes. Over the course of the evening, in addition to robbing cattle drives, he proposes extorting protection money from settlers and robbing banks. Jake finds the brothers repulsive, but he’s uncomfortably close to Fort Smith, and he’s still worried about running into July Johnson. So, when Dan, Ed, Roy, and their friend Frog Lip—a tall Black man who’s the best shot Jake has ever seen—head north to Kansas three days later, Jake rides with them.
Fort Smith and Dallas are less than 300 miles apart, and, as Wilbarger noted in an earlier chapter, there’s a well-established trail between the two. Jake clearly understands that the Suggs brothers are bad news, but his fear for his own safety outweighs any sense of morality (or even respect for the law he once represented) he may have once had—or not. He drifts into their orbit and lets chance take him where it will.
Themes
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