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Chapter 97
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
When Hugh Auld catches up to the cattle drive, he becomes the company’s resident chatterbox. When the crew crosses the Missouri River, Jasper Fant finally comes close to drowning when a beaver scares his horse and it throws him into the water, but Ben Rainey quickly pulls him to the other side. From then on, he shoots at any beaver he sees, annoying Hugh, who is a trapper by trade.
Hugh joins the group, but he cannot replace Gus—no one can replace Gus. And without Gus to balance out Call, the group starts to lose cohesion and self-control. All signs point toward the necessity of stopping, but Call refuses to stop.
Themes
Call continues to press north in silence. No one knows when they will stop, and no one dares to ask. The day after they cross the Marais River, Old Dog, the former lead steer, gets killed and eaten by grizzly bears. The Texas bull has been the lead animal for a while, anyway, notwithstanding the fact that he has just one eye and just one horn left after standing down the first grizzly bear. Finally, they cross the Milk River, and Call forces himself to stop, because they really can’t go much farther. He finds a place to build a cabin. But the deaths of Gus and Deets have so affected him that he’s lost even his drive to work. He only kept going north because he didn’t know what else to do with himself. He struggles to take any interest in the construction of the company’s new headquarters.
The degree to which Gus’s death unbalances Call quickly becomes apparent. Without his friend by his side—and, crucially, without acknowledging the son whose presence might still give his life meaning—Call doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s like the Texas bull—too blind to recognize his faults, and too driven to stop. And he’s a danger to the others: in his relentless pursuit of the perfect place to stop, he exposes the herd and the men to the dangers of the encroaching winter. As it is, they barely have enough time to build a cabin before the snow sets in.
Themes
Dish is also uninterested in setting up a life in Montana. He wants to leave as soon as possible and try to make Ogallala—and Lorena—before the snow flies. Call is surprised that he would take such a risk; it seems clear to him that the hands must winter in Montana, at the very least. But when Dish insists, Call agrees to let him go after the cabin’s built. Dish dislikes manual labor, but he’s so anxious to go that he quickly becomes the company’s best worker. Even having had his first real taste of northern weather in the form of a blizzard, as soon as the cabin is done, Dish sets out southward with an extra horse and a pay slip from Call to cash in Miles City.
Unable to accept (or even acknowledge to himself) that he has feelings or needs others, Call loses interest in his life when he loses his two closest friends and advisors. The book shows that while elements of his character may be noble (his willpower and leadership abilities, his loyalty) he is on the whole a deeply flawed role model. Dish demonstrates a different kind of steadfastness in his love for Lorena. Just as Call plans to do in the spring, he risks a dangerous solo trip south, but for a living person rather than a dead one. Thus, the book subtly criticizes Call for his disordered priorities.
Themes
Dish’s departure hits Newt like the other losses—hard. By letting the young man go, Call surprises himself. Normally, he would have just ordered Dish to stay, and the force of his will would have been sufficient to keep the man where he was. But he’s not that man anymore. Call doesn’t move into the cabin. He makes his own camp using Wilbarger’s old tent down in the creek bed.
It isn’t until Dish leaves that something shakes Call enough to register through his grief. It offers yet more proof that he’s not the man he was—or the man he wanted to think of himself as—when Gus was alive. Although he outlived Gus, the book clearly suggests that he’s lost the argument about the good life to his dead friend.
Themes
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After Dish leaves, Call rides to Fort Benton, where the US Army stations cavalry soldiers to fight Indigenous people. The commander purchases some of the company’s cattle to feed his men. Call now has a regular customer who will keep the outfit going over the winter. While he’s gone, Newt displays a formerly undiscovered talent for breaking and training horses. So, when Call visits Fort Benton again later, he allows Newt to stay and help the soldiers break a few dozen wild horses the soldiers have recently captured.
Despite his grief and sorrow, Call continues with his mission on autopilot, making sure that he’s fulfilling his obligations to the men he dragged north with him on what proved to be an unfulfilling mission (or at least, without Gus by his side, it has proved to be unfulfilling for Call). Newt, on the other hand, has grown up over the course of the journey and is now ready to take his place as Call’s successor in the company.
Themes
