Larry McMurtry · 1997 · overland

The second Lonesome Dove prequel, written last. Gus and Call are captains in their thirties, chasing the horse thief Kicking Wolf across the Llano Estacado and a Mexican bandit called the Black Vaquero into Coahuila - while Buffalo Hump takes the Comanche on the warpath and raids Austin behind them.

1. 1
   Austin

   1858, and Gus and Call are in their thirties under Captain Inish Scull - a Harvard history professor with a taste for combat who reads Napoleon aloud to illiterate Rangers by the campfire, and whose horse is about to be stolen.

2. 2
   The Llano Estacado

   North-west after Kicking Wolf, the Comanche horse thief, who is sheltering in Buffalo Hump's camp - and who takes Scull's Shire horse Hector out from under the whole troop, which is what starts everything.

3. 3
   The Rio Grande

   Scull deputises Call and McCrae to take the men home and goes on alone with the Kickapoo scout Famous Shoes - and then separates from him too at a river crossing, and rides into Mexico after a horse.

4. 4
   The Yellow Cliffs

   Ahumado's stronghold in Coahuila - the Black Vaquero, a bandit said to be of Mayan blood, who puts Scull in a wooden cage on a cliff face and sends word to Austin that he will sell him back for a thousand cattle.

5. 5
   Austin

   Buffalo Hump takes the Comanche on the warpath and raids the town, drawn from the real Linville raid of 1840 - Maggie hiding under a smokehouse, and the Rangers turning back the moment they hear.

6. 6
   The Yellow Cliffs

   Now captains, Gus and Call are sent back into Mexico with a small troop to get Scull out - a rescue McMurtry lets go about as well as such things went, which is to say expensively.

7. 7
   Austin

   And then the long unwinding: Buffalo Hump killed by his own son Blue Duck, the Comanche driven off their land, a civil war that barely touches them, and two men becoming the pair who will one day retire to Lonesome Dove.