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Dead Man's Walk
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The iconic McMurtry gives us the prequel to the classic "Lonesome Dove."
- Sales Rank: #742556 in Books
- Published on: 1600
- Binding: Hardcover
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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Dead men walking
By BOB
The novel begins with the image of a 200-pound whore emerging from a bath in a river, holding a snapping turtle. Four hundred pages later there is a climactic image of a leprous, nude Scotswoman riding a horse ‘Lady Godiva’ style, with an enormous boa draped over her arms, singing an aria as she rides into the line of sight of completely baffled Comanche’s. Between these images lie hundreds of miles of desert, exhaustion, starvation and brutality committed by whites, Mexicans, Comanche’s and Apaches.
‘Dead Man’s Walk’ is the first, chronologically, in Larry McMurtry’s saga of Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call. The codgers of his acclaimed epic ‘Lonesome Dove’ at this point are approaching twenty in 1842, young bucks eager for adventures out west and fairly naïve, gullible and susceptible to volunteering for dangerous and foolish expeditions under the command of dangerous and foolhardy men. McMurtry describes the Texas of that time as:
“…the sort of place where people could simply name themselves something and start being whatever they happened to name. Then they could start acquiring the skills of their new profession—or not acquiring them, as the case might be.”
The first expedition ends disastrously in western Texas in which most of the rangers are picked off and scalped by stealthy Comanche’s, most notably the ferocious, ruthless and hunchbacked war chief Buffalo Hump. Gus, one night when he and Call are supposed to be on guard, wanders off only to spot Buffalo Hump sitting on a hill nearby, illuminated by lightning. Gus manages to escape with a lance embedded in his thigh. Call, out looking for him, also sees Buffalo Hump. They are extremely lucky to have seen this warrior and lived to tell about it. After the survivors of the expedition realize the mission has been doomed, they all head back to Austin, Texas, where Gus, Call and others from their earlier mission are restless for another adventure, for a relief from boredom and the need for ready cash as anything else. They sign on with an unscrupulous pirate, Caleb Cobb, who is leading a great expedition to annex Santa Fe from Mexico.
The aforementioned prostitute, known as “The Great Western”, is Mattie Chambers, the only one along for the ride. As the only game in town she can choose to provide credit to all the young bucks anxious for a ‘poke’ or refuse service depending on how she is disposed. She is also the surrogate mother to these young fellows and looks after them when they are injured. Veteran scouts Big Foot Wallace and Shadrach know the territory better than anyone else in the expedition. They also know enough to know that the Comanche’s have the advantage of knowing the country better than even the most experienced of the Texas rangers, including how to hide almost in plain sight, slit throats, scalp and steal horses in the night while their owners are asleep. The attrition of 200 down to 40 due to starvation, bear attacks, stealth Comanche attacks and other assorted hardships, merely lands them into captivity at the hands of Mexican soldiers, who lead them through the ‘dead man’s walk’ through the desert toward El Paso and then on into Mexico.
The action in this novel takes place in the same general geographic area and time period as Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian’, which was released about 10 years earlier. ‘Dead Man’s Walk’ includes much of the same harsh brutality, although where the ranging band in ‘Blood Meridian’ succumbed to the savage spell of their diabolical leader Judge Holden and committed indiscriminate atrocities to white, Mexican and Indian alike, the protagonists of ‘Dead Man’s Walk’ draw a clear moral line between what they will and will not do. The white scalp hunters in ‘Dead Man’s Walk’ are ostracized by the rest of the party and meet Comanche and Apache justice as one would expect. Unfortunately, as we have seen in many other harsh fictional sagas (such as George R.R. Martin’s ‘Song of Ice and Fire’), the virtuous do not always survive and a violent fate can befall anyone.
The leprous woman also mentioned at the beginning is a fellow prisoner in the mission/prison/leper colony in Mexico to which the surviving captives are taken to draw beans for their fate (a white bean means one will be spared; a black one means one will be shot by a firing squad). It is no spoiler to state that Gus and Call both draw white whereas at least one of the other most noble and heroic characters does not. As the bodies are being loaded into an oxcart, a beautiful operatic voice can be heard from the balcony. The survivors look up and see a lady dressed all in black, including a hat and a veil covering her face.
“The lady in black gripped the railing of the balcony as she sang. As she was finishing her song, the notes dipped down low—they carried a sadness that was more than a sadness at the death of men; rather it was a sadness at the lives of men, and of women. It reminded those who heard the rising, dipping, notes, of notes of hope that had been born, and yet, died: of promise, and the failure of promise. Gus began to cry; he didn’t know why, but he couldn’t stop, not while the song continued.”
The improbable and surreal climax mentioned at the beginning refers to Lady Carey, the woman in black. She and the other prisoners have been freed as long as they return to Texas. She wants escorts to get her and her entourage (son Willy and two handmaids, Mrs. Chubb and Emerald, an African) back to Austin. When they see the approaching Comanche’s, Lady Carey disrobes and mounts her horse, wearing only her hat, veil, boots and boa draped across her arms. At the rear of the procession is Emerald, also naked, riding a white mule, holding a sword high above her head. The last image appears to be the fulfillment of a Comanche prophecy, which is why the travelers are given a wide berth as they pass. Would this audacity actually spare the travelers? I don’t know, but it is certainly an evocative image, a deus ex machina delivering the surviving rangers from the valley of the shadow of Death.
Gus and Call have the same personalities we first encountered in ‘Lonesome Dove’, retrospectively seen in their young and impressionable states. We see the men they will become later. McMurtry knows his characters. He portrays very convincingly the immaturity and recklessness of Gus that became tempered slightly through the ensuing decades of experience in the later book. At this point, Gus cares mostly about whoring, drinking and cards, although he succumbs to love at first sight with a character that also reappears in ‘Lonesome Dove’. Call still has the petrified emotional reticence and caution he exhibits later, an introvert contrasted with the extravert Gus McCrae. He possesses a strong ethical, moral compass that merely grows more rigid in his later years.
McMurtry is a master at depicting the wide, open landscapes of Texas, both in the era of the Wild West as well as in the era in which he was young, so memorably depicted in ‘The Last Picture Show’. He is also a master at depicting the folly of young men, as well as their vulnerability. With ‘Dead Man’s Walk’ he depicts the first extensive immersion into the harshness of the barren environment in which these two characters will learn to navigate and inhabit through the rest of their lives.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Great follow up to Lonesome Dove
By octoberwoman
LONESOME DOVE is one of my all time favorite books ever. It's one of those books that stayed with me long after I turned the last page. STREETS OF LAREDO wasn't as good, but was still very worth reading. DEAD MAN'S WALK falls right in between them. It's better than Streets, but not quite on a par with Dove. Which translates to I loved it and highly recommend it.
In DEAD MAN'S WALK we meet Gus and Call as young men, joining up with the Rangers and embarking on their first big adventure. A lot of the reviews I read on Goodreads complained or mentioned that Gus and Call don't really do anything in the book, that all the action occurs around them, that they're more like bystanders than active protagonists. But I didn't notice that at all, and even after reading those reviews and thinking back, I still don't agree. (And this is one reason I wait until after I've finished a book before I read reviews about it. No pre-conceivances – is that a word? - going into it.)
As with the other books, there are lots of characters, mostly new to us, but some familiar names as well. Particularly Clara, who was Gus McCrae's the-one-who-got-away. She's a feisty outspoken storekeeper's daughter, and while Call couldn't understand why, after barely meeting her, Gus is talking about quitting rangering to marry her, I thought she was delightful. But fortunately for the story Gus has committed himself to the Rangers and has to leave Clara behind.
Clara is in the first part of the book, and an English lady becomes rather important in the last part. But the only female who figures throughout the story is Matilda, a whore (with the proverbial heart of gold) who travels with the Rangers in the hopes of eventually getting to California. Along the way she falls for the scout Shadrach, and as the hardships pile up she takes Call and Gus under her wing (but not into her bedroll – she gives for Shadrach). She was one of my favorite characters.
There's lots of violence, as the Rangers come up against both Indians and the Mexican army. Call often laments their lack of true leadership as the group of Rangers dwindles from 200 to double digits, and you could practically see his own future leadership qualities being born. Gus constantly talks about wanting a whore and finding some whores. The two boys are as different as night and day, but they're comradeship is always front and center,and they remain loyal to each other even when they disagree or irk each other. Once this expedition is over and everyone is safely home (or at least back in Texas), it wouldn't be surprising to see them go their separate ways, but their friendship is sealed, and I can't wait to get into COMANCHE MOON, the last book in this series.
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