Lonesome Dove

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1985

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Part 2, Chapters 71-74Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2, Chapter 71 Summary

Jake and the Suggs gang are almost to Dodge City when they come across Wilbarger’s horses. Dan wants to steal them and says he’ll kill Jake if he doesn’t help them. When they reach the horses in the dark, someone shoots Frog Lip in the groin. They manage to kill two of Wilbarger’s men in the ensuing gunfight. They follow the horses, then come upon two fleeing men hours later. Dan shoots them both. He then hangs them after they’re dead, and then burns them with kerosene. Jake’s hopes of escape dwindle with every moment.

Part 2, Chapter 72 Summary

Deets finds Wilbarger, who has been shot three times. Wilbarger wants to see Gus and Call. Gus tells Lorena that Dish will guard her while he sees Wilbarger and follows the horse thieves. They take Newt and find Wilbarger. As they wait for him to die, he shakes hands with Gus and Call. He leaves Gus two of his books. They bury him and mark his grave with a buffalo skull.

Part 2, Chapter 73 Summary

Lorena refuses the food that Dish brings to her. He thinks about her all night, even though she keeps telling him that she needs Gus. He sleeps outside her tent at night and has never felt lonelier.

Part 2, Chapter 74 Summary

They bury Wilbarger’s men. Deets says that the tracks tell him that Jake is with the thieves, which shocks Call. They find the burned and hanged bodies hours later and bury them. Gus hopes that Jake will fight them when they catch up to him; he would rather shoot him than hang him.

They go to the camp when Jake and the others are drunk. After disarming them, they put the men on their horses after tying their hands behind them. They walk them to a tree and put them in nooses. Gus tells Jake they got Lorena back, and Jake can’t remember who he means. Jake gives Newt his pony, then spurs his horse and hangs himself without waiting.

They bury everyone but Dan. They leave him hanging with a sign that says “Dan Suggs, Man Burner and Horsethief” (642). Gus reminds Call that if he hadn’t insisted on the cattle drive, they wouldn’t have had to hang Jake.

Part 2, Chapters 71-74 Analysis

Jake’s death is the pivotal event of these chapters, and the climax of Part 2, which ends on a somber note. While the novel subverts many tropes of the Western genre, it follows a traditional three-act (or three-part) narrative structure. The first part ended at the 1/4 point in the story, in Chapter 25, with the beginning of the cattle drive. The second part ends at the 3/4 point, in Chapter 74, with the execution of one of their men. With Jake’s death, the man who put the cattle drive in motion is no longer part of their story. His death allows McMurtry to raise difficult questions about the nature of justice on the frontier. Jake did not participate in Dan’s murders, but neither did he challenge Dan. He let his fear override his judgment as he continued riding with them as the casualties mounted.

The code that Call and Gus live by—and by which they served in the Rangers—does not permit them to give preferential treatment to their friends. They never question whether they will hang him; it is their duty. Interestingly, they are all friendly at the end, and there is more sadness than animosity between the three of them. If Jake is to blame for the cattle drive, then he has now been punished for the losses that resulted from Call’s obsession with Montana. McMurtry gives the reader what the genre demands: fearless lawmen enacting justice against terrible odds. Yet, the scene is wrenching rather than triumphant because criminals’ evil can never be undone, and one of the men they execute is their friend.

With the end of the journey drawing near, the sense of foreboding is stronger than ever. Death has been such a constant feature of the trip that there will likely be more of it on the way to Montana. However, the remaining characters are all relatively pure of heart, which will make any coming deaths more devastating. Jake’s death does not serve as a release of tension, but as a reminder that they cannot control their circumstances as well as they would like, and there is more traveling to do.