Lonesome Dove: Chapter 94 Summary & Analysis

The men—especially Jasper—get more nervous about crossing the Yellowstone the closer they get to it. Lippy longs for a town, and the rest of the hands start to ponder their futures. While few want to stay in Montana, none relish the idea of riding home, alone, in the winter. Unfortunately for everyone, Call isn’t ready to stop. Jake said some of the prettiest land was farther north. He decides to send Augustus and Pea Eye on a scouting mission.

Pea Eye isn’t happy about the mission, but he’s not about to start refusing the Captain’s orders, so he packs his bedroll and sharpens his knife. As he and Gus ride north out of camp, they pass Po Campo, who has wandered over a mile in search of wild onions. As they ride, Augustus keeps veering off to “taste the view.” When they surprise a herd of buffalo watering at the Yellowstone River, Gus chases them for a while.

Then, in the afternoon, Gus startles a band of 20 Indigenous riders who immediately start chasing him. By the time he’s made it back to Pea Eye, Gus has two arrows embedded in his leg. On their superior horses, Pea Eye and Gus put a little distance between themselves and their pursuers, and they take cover in a tree-lined creek bed. But their pursuers aren’t easily deterred and soon have them surrounded. Several take advantage of the dense underbrush to creep close enough to kill Gus’s and Pea Eye’s horses, but Gus shoots them before they can harm him or his companion. Lugging saddle bags full of ammunition, he and Pea Eye work their way upstream and dig in under a cutbank.

There, they assess their wounds. Pea Eye took a shot to his shoulder, but the bullet went straight through, leaving a clean hole. An arrow—or possibly a bullet—got Augustus in the back, in addition to the two arrows in his leg. One comes out relatively easily, but the other is so deeply embedded that he must push it all the way through his leg to remove it. As the sun sets, the Indigenous men who have them pinned down begin trading war cries. Gus contributes one of his own—a Comanche war cry he learned in Texas—to thank them “for the concert.”

In the morning, Gus is running a high fever, signifying that one or more of his wounds have become infected. Then, it starts to rain. All day long, Gus and Pea Eye crouch in their hole, occasionally trading shots with the Indigenous men. At nightfall, Gus tells Pea Eye to swim downriver a ways and head back toward the cattle train on foot. Pea Eye hates this idea, but eventually he complies. He’s never disobeyed an order from either Captain Call or Captain McCrae, and he’s not about to start. And if he doesn’t get help, it seems clear that Gus will die.

Pea Eye’s odyssey back to the herd is arduous. While swimming in the stream, he loses his gun, ammunition, food, and even the clothes on his back. Freezing, and exhausted, he crawls onto the bank and starts walking, knowing all too well that the night’s dark cover won’t last. In the morning, he realizes that there’s no place on the vast prairie to hide, so he walks through the day, too. In all, Pea Eye walks through four nights and three days. He suffers both a snow squall and blazing heat; the rough terrain cuts up his bare feet; he has no food except the prairie chicken he kills with a lucky rock throw and eats raw. He starts talking to himself, and then he becomes convinced that Deets’s ghost is leading him through the nights.

Dish, on a morning scouting ride, spots Pea Eye on the morning of the fourth day. He quickly summons Call, whose first question is whether Gus is dead. Confusedly, Pea Eye first says something about Deets—scaring Dish, who is afraid of ghosts—but he eventually manages to give Call enough of the story. While the cowhands help Pea Eye back to the wagon, where Po Campo tries to revive him with coffee, Call saddles the Hell Bitch and rides out of camp, leaving Dish in charge. The men look forlorn, like they won’t know what to do without their Captain. Their dependency and need annoy Call, who knows they’re capable of more than they realize.