The first volume in the Lonesome Dove prequels with August Macrae and Woodrow Call as teenagers (I think) in the Texas Rangers. The characters, some of whom were real people, mostly walk through the Llano Estacado and the Chihuahuan Desert where they have the opportunity to witness one deus ex machina event after another. The author has the old problem of needing to eliminate most of the characters without losing too many important ones. He uses an interesting technique that I call retroactive character development. So most of the plot naturally is about the main characters, but occasionally we have to be reminded that there are another 12 or 50 or 100 characters along for the ride. We can't know too much about them, but sometimes when they are killed off (like the poor crew member in the red shirt on Star Trek [a phenomenon that I was unaware of as a kid, because I watched TV in black and white!]), the author will throw in a curious fact about them in the same sentence as the announcement of their death. Like, and this is not a quote from the book, "Finally Lucas Smith died, he had always liked to kill toads", when we have not heard mention of Mr. Smith previously. It does have a comic effect. ( )

Not quite Lonesome Dove, but still, it's Larry McMurtry! Lonesome Dove is one of my top ten books of all time, and I have finally been catching up reading the other books in this series. Dead Man's Walk is the 3rd book written, but is actually chronologically the 1st in this series. In it we see a young Augustus McCrae and a young Woodrow Call as they were in the mid 1800's. The time line for this book is approximately 1850 and Gus and Call are young Texas Rangers trying to make their way in the very wild west of Texas and Mexico. As with all McMurtry's books, the characters are key to the story. The big whore Matilda Roberts, the frightening Comanche chief Buffalo Hump and the famous Apache killer Gomez, along with many other unforgettable characters. The boys face all kinds of dangers on their trek to Santa Fe where there are rumours that there is gold to be picked up from the streets. They face dangers and extremely bad weather the whole way and are finally captured by a contingent from the Mexican army. This ragtag bunch of Rangers are forced to walk 200 miles through the most forbidding environment in the world with tornados, snow storms, no food or water and nasty Indians tailing them the whole way.This is the Old West like you've never read about. The best thing about this book is that it brought the backstory of Gus and Call to life for me. As if these characters aren't already like real life people in my imagination. Call and Gus are engraved on my brain. My only disappointment is that I have only one book left to read in this tetralogy and that is Comanche Moon. I am reading them in the order that they were written. I listened to this on audiobook, read by Jack Garrett, who does a remarkable job of bringing these characters to life. ( )

In 1842, young Texas Rangers Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call are introduced quickly and brutally to the rangering life on their first expedition, in which they are stalked by the Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump. After a narrow escape, the rangers return to civilization, only to quickly join an expedition to capture and annex Santa Fe, part of New Mexico (the part east of the Rio Grande) for Texas. The expedition, led by pirate and soldier of fortune, Caleb Cobb, is ultimately a failure; of the 200 initial adventurers, only about 40 survive, falling to starvation, bears, and Indians, only to be swiftly arrested by the Mexican authorities. Those survivors are forced to march the Jornada del Muerto ("Dead Man's Walk") to El Paso, and many, Mexican and Texan alike, die along the journey. The Texas contingent is reduced to ten persons when the captives panic after they observe cavalry drilling and are slaughtered in a blood lust as they flee. At their destination, the ten are forced to gamble for their lives by drawing a bean from a jar - a white bean signals life, a black bean death. Call and McCrae are among the five survivors. The last Rangers then return to Texas, escorting a Scottish woman and her son, who have also been held captive by the Mexicans, as well as an African woman the Comanches fear as she is thought to be a feared dark woman on a white horse who will ensure the Comanches’ downfall.

Like a discount Blood Meridian, except our heroes get soundly thrashed for 2/3rds of the book. Nothing really wrong with it, some good western bleakness, but nothing really special either. Also suffers from being a prequel which takes a lot of the tension out of the life or death struggle when you know who's got a date with destiny in an earlier (later) book. ( )

This was a great read if you accept it for what it is. I definitely didn't see the ending coming, Finished on the the birthday trip to the coast at La Push. ( )