All Chapters of Lonely Dove: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Of course, real scouting skills were superfluous in a place as tame as Lonesome Dove, but Call still liked to get out at night,sniff the breeze and let the country talk. The country talked quiet; one human voice could drown it out, particularly if itwas a voice as loud as Augustus McCrae’s. Augustus was notorious all over Texas for the strength of his voice. On a stillnight he could be heard at least a mile, even if he was more or less whispering. Call did his best to get out of range ofAugustus’s voice so that he could relax and pay attention to other sounds. If nothing else, he might get a clue as to whatweather was coming—not that there was much mystery about the weather around Lonesome Dove. If a man lookedstraight up at the stars he was apt to get dizzy, the night was so clear. Clouds were scarcer than cash money, and cashmoney was scarce enough.There was really little in the way of a threat to be looked for, either. A coyote might sneak in and s

The border nights had qualities that he had come to admire, different as they were from the qualities of nights in Tennessee. In Tennessee, as he remembered, nights tended to get mushy, with a cottony mist drifting into the hollows. Border nights were so dry you could smell the dirt, and clear as dew. In fact, the nights were so clear it was tricky; even with hardly any moon the stars were bright enough that every bush and fence post cast a shadow. Pea Eye, who had a jumpy disposition, was always shying from shadows, and he had even blazed away at innocent chaparral bushes on occasion, mistaking them for bandits. Augustus was not particularly nervous, but even so he had hardly started down the street before he got a scare: a little ball of shadow ran right at his feet. He jumped sideways, fearing snakebite, although his brain knew snakes didn’t roll like balls. Then he saw an armadillo hustle past his feet. Once he saw

 Jake Spoon was the man who came most often to see her. It had begun to be clear to him, as he turned over his memories, that his mother had been a whore, like Lorena, but this realization tarnished nothing, least of all his memories of Jake Spoon. No man had been kinder, either to him or his mother—her name had been Maggie. Jake had given him hard candy and pennies and had set him on a pacing horse and given him his first ride; he had even had old Jesus, the bootmaker, make him his first pair of boots; and once when Jake won a lady’s saddle in a card game he gave the saddle to Newt and had the stirrups cut down to his size. Those were the days before order came to Lonesome Dove, when Captain Call and Augustus were still Rangers, with responsibilities that took them up and down the border. Jake Spoon was a Ranger too, and in Newt’s eyes the most dashing of them all. He always carried a pearl-handled pistol and rode

At least Newt couldn’t, and the other hands didn’t seem to be thinking very fast either. All they could find to argue about was whether it was hotter down in the well digging or up in the sun working the windlass. Down in the well they all worked so close together and sweated so much that it practically made a fog, while up in the sun fog was no problem. Being down in the well made Newt nervous, particularly if Pea was with him, because when Pea got to working the crowbar he didn’t always look where he was jabbing and once had almost jabbed it through Newt’s foot. From then on Newt worked spraddle-legged, so as to keep his feet out of the way. They were going at it hard when the Captain came riding back, having lathered the mare good by loping her along the river for about twenty miles. He rode her right up to the well. “Hello, boys,” he said. “Ain’t the water flowing yet?” “It’s flowin’,” Dish said. “A

 The minute they crossed the river the Captain struck southeast in a long trot, and in no time the land darkened and they were riding by moonlight, still in a long trot. Since he had never been allowed in Mexico, except once in a while in one of the small villages down the river when they were buying stock legitimately, he didn’t really know what to expect, but he hadn’t expected it to be quite so dark and empty. Pea Eye and Mr. Gus were always talking about how thick the bandits were, and yet the seven of them rode for two hours into country that seemed to contain nothing except itself. They saw no lights, heard no sounds—they just rode, across shallow gullies, through thinning chaparral, farther and farther from the river. Once in a while the Captain stepped up the pace and they traveled in a short lope, but mostly he stuck with the trot. Since Mouse had an easy trot and a hard lope, Newt was happy with the gait.