Luck, Fate, and Chance Theme Analysis

It was funny how one shot could make a man’s reputation like that. It was a hip shot Jake made because he was scared, and it killed a Mexican bandit […]. Jake shot blind from the hip, with the sun in his eyes to boot, and hit the bandit right in the Adam’s apple, a thing not likely to occur more than once in a lifetime, if that often.

But it was Jake’s luck that most of the men who saw him make the shot were raw boys too, with not enough judgment to appreciate how lucky a thing it was. Those that survived grew up told the story all across the West [… about] what a dead pistol shot Jake Spoon was, though any many who had fought with him through the years would know that he was no shot at all with a pistol and only a fair shot with a rifle.

It seemed the Irishmen were part of the outfit, though. Their total inexperience was offset by an energy and a will to learn that impressed even Call. He let them stay in the first place, because he was so short-handed he couldn’t afford to turn away any willing hand. By the time more competent men arrived the Irishmen had gotten over their fear of horses and worked with a will. Not being cowboys, they had no prejudice against working on the ground. Once shown the proper way to throw a roped animal, they cheerfully flung themselves on whatever the ropers drug up to the branding fire, even if it was a two-year-old bull with lots of horn and a mean disposition. They had no great finesse, but they were dogged and would eventually get the creature down.

They had unpacked in the dark and made a mess of it. […] It was plain camping wasn’t a neat way of life. There was no place to wash, and they were carrying very little water, which was the main reason she had refused Jake. She liked a wash and felt he could wait until they camped near a river and could splash a little of the dust off before bedding down.

Augustus watched them eat the poor burned breakfast. It was eternally amusing to him, the flow of human behavior. Who could have predicted Jake would be the one to take Lorena out of Lonesome Dove? She had been meaning to leave since the day she arrived, and now Jake, who had slipped from the grasp of every woman who had known him, was firmly caught by a young whore from Alabama.

“I hope this is hard enough for you, Call,” he said. I hope it makes you happy. If it don’t, I give up. Driving all these skinny cattle all that way is a funny way to maintain an interest in life, if you ask me.”

“Well, I didn’t,” Call said.

“No, but then you seldom ask,” Augustus said. “You should have died in the line of duty, Woodrow. You’d know how to do that fine. The problem is you don’t know how to live.”

“Whereas you do?” Call asked.

“Most certainly,” Augustus said. “I’ve lived about a hundred to your one. I’ll be a little riled if I end up being the one to die in the line of duty, because it ain’t my duty and it ain’t yours, either. This is just fortune hunting.”

“Well, we wasn’t finding one in Lonesome Dove,” Call said.

“Well, I’ll say a word,” Augustus said. “This was a good, brave boy, for we all saw that he conquered his fear of riding. He had a fine tenor voice, and we’ll all miss that. But he wasn’t used to this part of the world. There’s accidents in life and he met with a bad one. We may all do the same if we ain’t careful.”

He turned and mounted old Malaria. “Dust to dust,” he said. “Let’s the rest of us go to Montana.”

He’s right, Call thought. The best thing to do with a death was to move on from it. One by one the cowboys mounted and went off to the herd, many of them taking a quick last look at the muddy grave under the tree.

He began to feel more and more of a grievance against more and more people. […] It seemed to him that a chain of thoughtless actions, on the part of many people he knew, had resulted in his being stuck in a cabin in the wilderness with a difficult widow woman. Jake should have kept his pistol handier, and not resorted to a buffalo gun. Benny Johnson should have been paying attention to his dentistry and not walking around in the street in the middle of the day. July shouldn’t have married Elmira if she was going to run off, and of course Elmira certainly had no business getting on the whiskey boat.

In all of it no one had given much consideration to him, least of all the townspeople of Fort Smith. Peach Johnson and Charlie Barnes, in particular, had done their best to see that he had to leave.

July didn’t want to see it. He knew he had to, but he didn’t want to.

He felt a terrible need to turn things back, all the way back to the time when he and Roscoe and Joe and Elmira had all been in Arkansas. He knew it could never be. Something had happened which he would never be free of. He had even lost the chance to stay and die with his people, though Captain McCrae had offered him that chance. “I’d feel better in my mind if you’d stay with your part,” he had said.

He had not stayed, but when he had gone, he hadn’t fought, either. He had done nothing but ride twice over the same stretch of prairie, while death had come to both camps.

It occurred to her that she had taken a hard route, just to escape July Johnson. Her own folly amused her: she had one thought of herself as smart—but look at where she was. If Dee Boot could see her he would laugh his head off. Dee loved to laugh about the absurd things people did for bad reasons. The fact that she had done it because she wanted to see him would only amuse him more. Dee would tell her that she ought to have gone back to Dodge and asked one of the girls to get her work.

Instead, shew as driving a mule wagon across northern Kansas. They had been lucky and seen no Indians, but that could always change. Besides, it soon developed that Luke was going to be as much trouble as an Indian.

Sitting in the kitchen with the girls and the baby, Lorena felt happy in a way that was new to her. It stirred in her distant memories of the days she had spent in her grandmother’s house in Mobile when she was four. […] It was her happiest memory, one she treasured so, that in her years of travelling she grew almost afraid to remember it […] She was very afraid of losing her one good, warm memory. […]

But in Clara’s house she wasn’t afraid to remember her grandmother and the softness of the bed. Clara’s house was the kind of house she thought she might live in some day—at least she had hoped to when she was little. But […] she had started living in hotels or little rooms. She slowly stopped thinking of nice houses and the things that went with them, such as little girls and babies.

“I like to keep Woodrow feeling that he’s caused a peck of trouble,” Augustus said. “I don’t want him to get sassy. But I wouldn’t have missed coming up here. I can’t think of nothing better than riding a fine horse into a new country. It’s exactly what I was meant for, and Woodrow too.”

“Do you think we’ll see Indians?” Newt asked.

“You bet,” Augustus said. “We might all get killed this afternoon, for all I know. That’s the wild for you—it’s got its dangers, which is part of the beauty. ’Course the Indians have had this land forever. To them it’s precious because it’s old. To us it’s exciting because it’s new.”

Newt noticed that Mr. Gus had a keen look in his eye. His white hair was long, almost to his shoulders. There seemed to be no one who could enjoy himself like Mr. Gus.