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Big Zwey
Dan Suggs is a failed cowhand-turned-outlaw and gambler whose gang—comprised of Dan’s brothers Roy and Ed and also a Black man named Frog Lip—Jake Spoon joins at Fort Worth. Dan and his gang plan to make a living as brigands and outlaws in Indian Territory by demanding protection money from settlers and rustling cows and horses from cattle drives—or by becoming bank robbers. Of the three brothers, Dan is the most bloodthirsty and psychotic; he kills settlers for fun and desecrates their corpses. Dan harbors a grudge against Wilbarger for once firing him, and he becomes irate with his brothers and Jake for letting Wilbarger escape when they steal his horses. He is executed by Call, Deets, and Pea Eye for the crimes of horse theft and murder.
Dan Suggs Quotes in Lonesome Dove
The Lonesome Dove quotes below are all either spoken by Dan Suggs or refer to Dan Suggs . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 6 Quotes
It was funny how one shot could make a man’s reputation like that. It was a hip shot Jake made because he was scared, and it killed a Mexican bandit […]. Jake shot blind from the hip, with the sun in his eyes to boot, and hit the bandit right in the Adam’s apple, a thing not likely to occur more than once in a lifetime, if that often.
But it was Jake’s luck that most of the men who saw him make the shot were raw boys too, with not enough judgment to appreciate how lucky a thing it was. Those that survived grew up told the story all across the West [… about] what a dead pistol shot Jake Spoon was, though any many who had fought with him through the years would know that he was no shot at all with a pistol and only a fair shot with a rifle.
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Dan Suggs Character Timeline in Lonesome Dove
The timeline below shows where the character Dan Suggs appears in Lonesome Dove. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 64
It’s in Dallas that Jake meets Dan, Ed, and Roy Suggs, a “hard-looking crew of brothers” who like drinking and gambling and...
(full context)
Dan clearly wants to recruit Jake to join one of his criminal schemes. Over the course...
(full context)
Chapter 68
Jake doesn’t feel like he has much of a choice about joining the Suggs brothers: Dan has heard gossip about how July Johnson and a little girl got the better of...
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Jake, Dan, Ed, Roy, and Frog Lip ride north without further incident. And then one day, Dan...
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Chapter 71
...then a brothel. He feels hopeful that his luck is about to improve. But then, Dan Suggs catches sight of three men driving a remuda of horses. One of them is...
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...what’s happening. He fires a few shots blindly. When it’s over, Wilbarger has escaped, although Dan claims he put three bullets into him. His men—Chick and another one Jake doesn’t know—are...
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Chapter 72
...Call and Gus that he suspects the horse thieves who attacked him were led by Dan Suggs. He leaves his two books and his horse to Gus. Once he's dead, the...
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Chapter 74
...is certain that Jake is with the horse thieves. Late in the afternoon, they find Dan, Roy, Ed, and Jake sitting by a creek and getting drunk on whiskey stolen from...
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...take long for Call, Gus, and Deets, to move in, disarm, and bind Ed, Jake, Dan, and Roy. Ed and Roy can’t believe that their big brother Dan got himself—and them—caught....
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...mother’s friend and his old hero. He offers to lead Jake’s horse to the tree. Dan makes a racist comment about not wanting a Black man—Deets—to hang him, but no one...
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...all three—and the murdered salesman—but marking only Jake’s grave. They leave a sign pinned to Dan’s shirt identifying him as a horse thief and a murderer.
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