Larry McMurtry - Dead Man's Walk

Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is one of the best regarded Western novels of the 20th century. It certainly sustained me on a trip through the American West. The two main characters of that epic story, Woodrow F. Call and Augustus "Gus" McCrae, are two Texas Rangers. Legendary men of the frontier whose job was to enforce frontier justice and stop the Native Americans halting the White settlers. Dead Man's Walk, published a decade later, is the Woodrow and Gus' origin story. The tale of their first travels with the Texas Rangers, and the story of how they develop their friendship and the knowledge that enables them to survive on the frontier.

The book begins with their first expedition in which their party is hunted and nearly destroyed by the Comanche chief Buffalo Hump. Buffalo Hump is a experienced and skillful hunter and killer. He doesn't simply kill off party members one by one, he traps and hunts them like animals. His plan is to terrorise the White people off. It's a frightening experience that scars the two Rangers permanently. But not enough to prevent them joining a gung ho expedition into New Mexico to capture Santa Fe. This expedition is a disaster too, failures of leadership, experience and equipment lead the 200 strong force to be decimated and reduced to a motley crew of forty who are captured and tortured by the Mexican Army. The Dead Man's Walk of the title is the desert journey the remaining Rangers and the Mexican troops are forced to make. One that claims many lives.

Like Lonesome Dove this is a novel that doesn't pause for breath. There are a sequence of events that blend into each other. Most of them violent and characters are often only introduced to be knocked off a few chapters later. At the heart is the growing story of love and respect between Woodrow and Gus, their growth into adulthood and the sharing of experiences that bonds them. The growing love between Gus and Clara, a young woman he meets near the beginning of his adventures and will feature throughout the series, is actually a backdrop between the love of the two men.

It works well as a novel, but I was uncomfortable with the depiction of the Native Americans. They are always violent and bloodthirsty. While they are clearly fighting for the lives and society, they feel two dimensional, depicted as violent killers to give the White characters something to revolve around. I've seen online comment that suggests this is to do with how they are seen by the main characters. But it feels lazy and inadequate. McMurtry could have rounded out Buffalo Hump and his contemporaries, but instead they're too simple - untrustworthy, violent and superstitous. It felt like the worst stereotypes of the previous century and detracted from an otherwise excellent novel.

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