Larry McMurtry · 1985 · overland

Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer-winning epic of the old West: the great cattle drive of the Hat Creek outfit, led by the former Texas Rangers Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call, from the Rio Grande to Montana. This route follows the herd two thousand miles north from the border town of Lonesome Dove through Texas and the Indian Territory, across the plains of Kansas and Nebraska, into the badlands of Wyoming and on to the unspoiled grasslands of Montana, a journey of brutal hardship, friendship and loss that ends, for Gus McCrae, in the long road home.

1. 1
   Lonesome Dove

   In the dusty little town of Lonesome Dove, on the Rio Grande in deep south Texas, two ageing former Texas Rangers, Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call, run the down-at-heel Hat Creek Cattle Company. When their old comrade Jake Spoon drifts back through with tales of the unspoiled grasslands of Montana, the restless Call resolves to drive a herd two thousand miles north and found the first ranch in that pristine country.

2. 2
   The Nueces River

   The outfit crosses the Nueces, and the Irish boy Sean O'Brien rides into a nest of water moccasins and is swarmed - dying on the bank of snakebite, the first death of the drive and a warning of its cost.

3. 3
   San Antonio

   The outfit rustles thousands of cattle and horses from across the river in Mexico and points the herd north across the brush country of Texas. Near San Antonio, after their cook quits at a river full of water moccasins, Gus and Call ride into town and find the strange and gifted cook Po Campo, while Gus chases after Lorena, the young woman whose fate becomes bound up with the drive.

4. 4
   Fort Worth

   On north the great herd moves, through the heart of Texas to Fort Worth, where the crew come back from the saloons and the red-light district hung over and subdued. Behind them, Lorena is seized by the murderous renegade Blue Duck, and Gus rides off alone to bring her back from the Comancheros of the high plains.

5. 5
   The Red River

   The outfit crosses the Red River out of Texas and into the Indian Territory, fording the wide, treacherous water with thousands of bawling cattle. Ahead lie the open plains, the great emptiness of the frontier, and a journey longer and harder than any of them has truly reckoned on.

6. 6
   Dodge City

   Across the Indian Territory and up into Kansas the drive presses on, past the great trail town of Dodge City on the Arkansas River, through hail and lightning and drought, river crossing after river crossing, the days blurring into the vast labour of moving a herd across a continent.

7. 7
   Ogallala

   At Ogallala on the Platte, Gus turns aside to visit Clara Allen, the great love of his youth, who long ago refused him and married a horse trader and settled here in Nebraska. Clara takes in the fragile Lorena but will not rekindle the old romance, and Gus, his heart unsettled, rides on to see the journey through to its end.

8. 8
   The Powder River

   In the badlands of Wyoming the outfit is harried by starving Indians. Riding to recover stolen horses, the faithful tracker Deets is killed, and is buried on the lonely plains. Soon after, scouting ahead near the Powder River, Gus is run down by mounted warriors and takes two arrows in the leg, a wound that will not heal.

9. 9
   Miles City

   Gus rides on for days before he can be brought to a doctor at Miles City in Montana, but by then the gangrene has set in. One leg is taken off, and when the doctor says the other must follow, Gus refuses, choosing death over life as a cripple. He asks Call to carry his body back to Texas, to a spring by the Guadalupe, and dies at peace with his old friend beside him.

10. 10
    The Milk River

    Call drives the last of the herd into the fertile, ungrazed country between the Missouri and the Milk rivers, and there, at the edge of the known world, the dream is realised: the first cattle ranch in northern Montana. Yet the cost has been terrible. True to his word, the next spring Call sets out alone with Gus in a coffin and hauls him the whole length of the plains, two thousand miles home to Texas, to bury him by the river of his youth.