Lonesome Dove

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1985

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Part 2, Chapters 46-50Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2, Chapter 46 Summary

Gus tells Newt to wait with Lorena until Jake returns. Call returns and says he has found a cook. He and Gus talk about Blue Duck. Deets is already tracking him. When he returns, he says he lost the trail in a creek.

Call rides off to scout and thinks about Maggie. He saw her for a couple of months. He remembers that she always asked him to say her name; he had realized she was in despair. Gus had said she was in love with Call, but Call didn’t want anyone to need him. After Newt’s birth, he was more conflicted. He could never make himself acknowledge Newt.

Part 2, Chapter 47 Summary

Lorena tells Newt to go back, claiming that she’ll be safe. He leaves and then goes back to keep watch on her without her knowing. He hears the cattle stampede and realizes that his horse, Mouse, is lost. Back at the camp, Mouse is there. Pea Eye says they were upset, thinking Newt had been trampled. The new cook is there as well. His name is Po Campo. He is an eccentric man who doesn’t ride animals and enjoys cooking with insects.

Part 2, Chapter 48 Summary

Call is worried that Deets couldn’t track Blue Duck. Po Campo makes omelets that the men love, and Call is relieved that he has a way with people. He says his wife lives in hell, where he sent her. He cooks fried grasshoppers, which the men, after some hesitation, enjoy with molasses. Jake returns and says Lorena is gone and Blue Duck took her. Gus saddles his horse and leaves. He refuses to let Jake or Dish come with him. Jake blames Newt for not watching her, but he feels the men’s disrespect for him. A day later, Gus has not returned.

Part 2, Chapter 49 Summary

Blue Duck and Lorena ride for days. He tells her that he owes Gus, who will come for her. She realizes he wears a necklace of human finger bones. They reach his camp, and four men are there. Their leader is a man named Ermoke. The four men rape her, and then they keep riding.

Part 2, Chapter 50 Summary

July writes a letter to Elmira saying that he and Joe saw a buffalo herd and that Joe is shocked at the size of Fort Worth. The postmaster has a letter for July. It’s from Peach, telling him that Elmira left. She also says she sent Roscoe after July and that she still expects him to catch Jake. Joe guesses that his mother left. He says that she’s probably looking for Dee, and now July wonders if Dee is alive. July decides they need to find Roscoe. That night, he dreams that they are all together again and wakes up crying.

Chapters 46-50 Analysis

The primary event of these chapters is Blue Duck’s abduction of Lorena. This event occurs near the midpoint of the novel and is the turn that drives the action almost to the end. The fact that Deets is unable to track Blue Duck is another unwelcome reminder that the ranchers are out of their element. The men at Blue Duck’s camp are brutal with Lorena, far beyond anything she has experienced. The sparse, featureless, almost waterless land is hostile to anyone without expert knowledge. And yet, once Gus realizes that she has been taken, he immediately sets out to rescue her. The novel’s major themes interweave at the halfway point of the narrative as Gus’s loyalty to Lorena is opposed by the brutality of both nature and human beings in the American West.

July’s letter to Elmira presents another facet of loyalty—the kind of naïve loyalty that Clara will scold him for later. He is loyal to a woman who ignores him at best. Even Joe knows that there is no point now. His sobbing after he dreams of their family will be even more heartbreaking in hindsight since he is about to lose everyone to whom he is attached.