752 McMurtry, Larry
reading of Lonesome Dove reveals that while the men
might have started on a straight path, it was the
women whose characters gave the book many of its
interesting twists and turns.
Ronald C. Thomas, Jr.
JuStice in Lonesome Dove
Justice, the blind balancer of right and wrong, is put
to the test in Larry McMurtry’s sprawling epic of
the West, Lonesome Dove. This is far more than a
classic white-hat, black-hat story about good guys
and bad guys. The characters inhabit a world that
features lots of gray areas and concepts of justice are
malleable things.
The two central characters, Captains Woodrow
Call and Augustus McCrae, are retired Texas Rang-
ers. One of the most respected law enforcement
agencies in the world, the Rangers have had, from
their frontier beginnings to the present day, a nearly
free hand to travel the length and breadth of the
state to investigate, pursue, and arrest any criminal.
Only a very few men, those with a finely honed sense
of right and wrong, can be entrusted with that circu-
lar badge. Throughout the novel Call and McCrae’s
sense of justice is needed to resolve various conflicts
on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana.
It is another former Ranger, Jake Spoon, who
presents the idea of a cattle drive to his former
comrades, a money-making adventure. Spoon is
already on the wrong side of justice, having just left
Arkansas after the accidental shooting of a dentist.
Spoon has been drifting since leaving the Rangers,
gambling his way from one town to another. In a
showdown with a mule skinner, Spoon’s shot had
accidentally hit a resting rifle and that rifle’s shot
killed the dentist who was walking on the other side
of the street. His current reputation as a gambler and
gunfighter would outweigh any benefit-of-doubt
Spoon might have enjoyed as an ex-Ranger. Spoon’s
character and actions provide much of the tension in
the novel about the nature of justice.
As Call and McCrae mount the cattle drive, the
hard work involved doesn’t suit Jake Spoon. He’d
rather be drinking, gambling, and womanizing so he
abandons the drive that he suggested. In the course
of this, he joins a gang headed by the sadistic Dan
Suggs. Suggs is clearly an evil character who not
only shoots down a farm family whose only offense
was being farmers but also sets their bodies on fire
and burns down the farm.
When Call and McCrae’s cattle drive brings
them into the same area, they discover the charred
remains. Even though they are no longer active
Rangers, their duty is clear and they track down
the Suggs gang. Once the gang is subdued, rough
justice is summarily dispensed via strong rope and a
tall tree. Spoon was not an active participant in the
atrocities and initially tries to plead his case. How-
ever, Call and McCrae do not waiver, as Spoon has
cast his lot in with the Suggs outfit and will have to
share in their punishment.
Justice is also represented through the character
of July Johnson, the Fort Smith, Arkansas, sheriff.
The dentist was his brother but it was the dentist’s
widow who pressures July into going into Texas after
Spoon. Even though it appears to be an accidental
shooting, July reluctantly agrees to go after Spoon.
In this instance, justice becomes a matter of personal
vendetta.
July’s mission is diverted from Spoon when he
learns that his wife, Ellie, has seized this oppor-
tunity to run back to her former man, the outlaw
Dee Boots. Again, justice becomes personal as July
abandons the pursuit of Spoon to track down his
runaway wife. After traveling with buffalo hunters
upriver and becoming mortally ill, Ellie finally finds
Boots in a jail cell charged with killing a boy. The
man she thought would hold the key to her freedom
from domestic life is himself a prisoner, truly a case
of poetic justice.
Another character who represents the cyclical
nature of justice is the half-Comanche, half-Mex-
ican outlaw Blue Duck. A long-time adversary of
Captain Call, this renegade kidnapped Jake Spoon’s
girlfriend (who had been traveling along with the
cattle drive). McCrae leads a party to rescue her, but
Blue Duck escapes. At the end of the novel, McCrae
has died and Call is transporting the body back to
Texas when he learns that Blue Duck is in custody
in New Mexico, sentenced to hang. As long as it is
on his way to Texas, Call decides to stop over and
see the hanging. This intended moment of closure
does not take place as Call had hoped. Blue Duck
escapes from custody on the way to the gallows but