Lonesome Dove

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1985

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Part 1, Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapter 11 Summary

Call rejoins the party and tells Newt to get two horses for Sean and Allen. The horses are branded with HIC, which is Wilbarger’s brand. Call is angry because they can’t charge Wilbarger for his own horses, so the night might be a waste. To salvage the work, he sends Jake and Deets back with the horses. Gus goes to fetch Sean and Allen as Call takes Newt and Pea Eye to wrangle the horses. Newt hears a shot in the distance and the horses stampede. They’ve run into a herd being driven by four other bandits who are also stealing from Pedro. They separate and make it back to Lonesome Dove.

Part 1, Chapter 12 Summary

Back at Hat Creek, Wilbarger offers Call 38 horses in exchange for the Hell Bitch but Call refuses. Wilbarger tries to hire Dish before he goes, but Call says they’re taking him to Montana. Wilbarger advises against it and leaves.

The men tease Pea Eye about getting married. He remembers hearing Maggie talk to Call; he’d been surprised that Call would be with her since he never had anything to do with women. Gus always urges Pea Eye to marry a woman named Mary Cole, whose husband had been killed by lightning. Pea Eye remembers helping her catch her wash after it blew off a clothesline in a storm. Nothing had ever made him more uncomfortable than seeing her wet clothes clinging to her. Gus arrives with Sean and Allen. Sean asks why there is no snow and then becomes so homesick that he begins to cry.

Part 1, Chapter 13 Summary

Lorena is thinking about when she met Jake. She’d been impressed by how relaxed and instantly charming he was. He had casually mentioned that she belonged in San Francisco. Uncharacteristically, she had quickly told him her story, saying more to him than Xavier or Lippy had ever heard from her. Jake had implied that he was in danger because of shooting the dentist and that he was just trying to make the most of what time he had left. The romantic, dangerous story had done its work on Lorena. By the end of the night, she was turning away customers, no longer a sporting girl. Everyone in town was furious that the one sporting girl had retired.

Part 1, Chapter 14 Summary

Jake is in a quandary. He worries that he’ll have to marry Lorena to avoid going to Montana. He has over-committed himself and is now nervous that Call is so set on the idea of the cattle drive. He is furious with himself for mentioning Montana to them. He also worries that Lorena expects him to take her to San Francisco. Once again, he made promises to a beautiful woman that he never intended to keep.

Part 1, Chapter 15 Summary

Deets thinks about his affinity for the moon. Sometimes he imagines that he could climb to it with a ladder. Convinced that Pedro Flores isn’t going to retaliate, Dish leaves their watch post to go see Lorena, thinking it might be his last chance before the trip to Montana. When he arrives, Jasper, Xavier, and Lippy are already with her. She immediately asks Dish where Jake is. She wins every hand at cards that night because the men are frustrated and distracted by the fact that they can no longer buy her.

Part 1, Chapters 11-15 Analysis

McMurtry spends most of Chapters 11-15 on logistical details as the men prepare to leave Lonesome Dove. Jake and Lorena undergo the most significant developments in their narrative arcs. Once again, Jake is in a situation of his own making, which began with his tendency to self-aggrandize as he flattered yet another woman. Jake is unapologetically a lover of beautiful women and the finer things in life, which set him outside the relatively coarse culture of the other cowboys. Worse, he knows the effect he has on women, and his ego never lets him refrain from flattering them to get what he wants.

Once he realizes Lorena intends to hold him to his (false) promises, he faces a dilemma for both his ego and his safety. If he abandons Lorena, he is giving up the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, a woman who is devoted to him. But if he stays, he is committed to at least part of the cattle drive, a prospect that will take him away from everything he enjoys about his life. He has to weigh the protection that Call and Gus might offer him from the law against losing Lorena. He will try to have it both ways, with disastrous results.

Lorena uses Jake as a chance to retire from serving men and as a chance for greater opportunity. The fact that she is no longer a sporting girl on Xavier’s payroll gives her an agency that the reader has not yet seen. Once she can make her own choices, a new tension arises from the reader’s awareness that she is choosing wrongly—Jake is not going to provide what she wants and will most likely react badly when she insists on it. Her character arc illustrates and complicates the novel’s theme of Honor, Principles, Duty, and Purpose. Just as Call's restlessness and sense of dissatisfaction cause him to embark on a cattle drive that he has not fully considered economically or logistically, similar feelings cause Lorena to partner with Jake. Both characters have a strong sense of purpose beyond Lonesome Dove, and their pursuit of those goals will bring them to destinations different than they planned.