Lonesome Dove is an adventure from beginning to end, it's a journeys from Lonesome Dove, Texas to Montana on a cattle drive. Lonesome Dove is the title of the story, but the greatest part of the plot takes place away from it. Therefore, it comes to represent loss and regret for what is lost and also represents that life is a circle when Call comes back there in the end. Lonosome Dove is a Texas town near the Mexican border and longtime home of the Hat Creek Cattle Company. Sporting little more than a general store and a saloon called the Dry Bean, it is the town where former Texas rangers Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae have semi settled. Lonesome Dove is a quiet little town with one prostitute named Lorena who operates out of the only saloon.…show more content… Clara's husband is an invalid, having been kicked in the head by a horse. Elmira gives birth to a son, but abandons the child with Clara and goes to Ogallala in search of Dee Boot. She finds Dee Boot in jail, where he is shortly hanged for a murder. Two weeks later, Sheriff Johnson also arrives at Clara's house and sees his abandoned son. Later in Ogallala Sheriff Johnson encounters Elmira, who is still recovering from childbirth. That night, Elmira secretly departs east for St. Louis with the two buffalo hunters, but all three are soon killed by the Sioux. Sheriff Johnson returns to Clara's house and is offered a job. Clara, having lost her own three sons to pneumonia, is quite fond of Johnson's newborn son, and names him…show more content… Impoverished Indians soon steal a dozen of their horses for food. Gus, Call, and Deets ride after the horse thieves to retrieve the horses. Call frightens the Indians away with a gunshot. Deets takes pity on a blind Indian child left behind, and goes to assist him. Another Indian mistakes his intentions and impales Deets with a spear. He is mortally wounded and dies in Gus's and Call's arms a few moments later.
Deets is buried, then the party continues on across the Powder River, Montana Territory. Meanwhile, Clara's husband finally dies and is buried as well. Leaving the main group to scout ahead with Pea Eye Parker, Gus decides to pursue some buffalo, but is chased by mounted Indians and is badly wounded in his right leg. While trying to get back to the herd for help, an exhausted Pea Eye is guided by the ghost of Deets, whereas Gus is found by a stranger and taken 40 miles away to Miles City,