Augustus McCrae

Character Analysis

A Lot of Conversation, A Little Less Action

There are two archetypal cowboys—the strong, silent type and the lazy drunkard. Augustus McCrae is a mix of the two. A man with "a voice like no other" (86.46), he loves to talk and argue more than anything, which makes him the primary source of entertainment for the Hat Creek Cattle Company in the sleepy town of Lonesome Dove. If you can even call it a town.

Gus is clearly bored in Lonesome Dove, and he has to entertain himself somehow. He does that by baking the best biscuits that side of the Rio Grande and talking. A lot. He treads that fine line between being full of himself and simply being an entertainer. We say full of himself because, you know, "He was not overly religious, but he did consider himself to be a fair prophet and liked to study the styles of his predecessors" (4.8). A prophet? Um, sure.

On the other hand, Gus is actually right about things most of the time—but that's mainly because he has realistic expectations.

The men look up to Gus because, frankly, he's the smartest man in Lonesome Dove. Of course, that's sort of like being the prettiest person in a leper colony. And despite his intelligence, Gus isn't very good at sharing it.

"It was another of Gus's failings—he considered himself a great educator, and yet he rarely told anyone anything they needed to know." (22.61)

Gus mainly relies on his gift of gab for jokes, arguments, and entertainment value—not for getting other people up to speed on things.

Home on the Range

Home is where the heart is, even for a cowboy, and Gus's heart is with Clara Allen in Ogallala, Nebraska. It's an unrequited love, but it's a romance that simmers rather than boils. After all, Gus and Clara are adults who, for their time, are over the hill.

Even though the Wild West is huge, this is a novel, so of course Gus and Clara cross paths again. Clara's husband Bob is dying, and even though Gus has caught the eye of Lorena, a young prostitute with a heart of gold, Gus still makes a pass at Clara.

But she turns him down. For one, she's married, but for another, she doesn't want to share Gus with his partner, Captain Call. No, they're not in a polygamous triad, but Gus's loyalty to his best friend is just as strong, and maybe even stronger, than his love for Clara. She worries that Gus would drop her in a second for his bromance—and she might be right.

Gus plans to return to Nebraska after reaching his destination in Montana. Maybe he's doing that to marry Lorena, but we bet he hopes Clara will have changed her mind by then. Gus "believed in giving creatures a little time to think" (1.7). He's talking about animals, but he could extend the same logic to humans, too. Perhaps they both need time to think.

Half the Man He Used to Be

Gus may love to talk, but what sets him apart from other bigmouths is the fact that he can walk the walk. And by walk the walk, we mean shoot a gun with deadly accuracy. If anyone were to kidnap us or put us in danger, we'd want Augustus McCrae watching our back.

Throughout Lonesome Dove, Gus wrangles horses and cattle, rescues Lorena from a maniac, battles Indians and outlaws, and wins every fight, even when he's severely outnumbered. And it never seems to get to him. As an ex-Texas Ranger, fighting is his life. If he's ever depressed afterward, it's not the violence that bothers him:

"Even desperate battle was lacking in something if there was no one to discuss it with." (56.11)

Unfortunately, Gus wins every battle except the last one. That's why it's, you know, his last one. It's like the old saying, "It's always in the last place you look." Of course it is: you don't keep looking after you've found it. The last place Gus looks is Montana, scouting ahead with Pea Eye when they're ambushed by Indians. Gus is mortally wounded in the skirmish.

Gus manages to reach a town and a doctor, but the only course of action is to amputate both of his legs. Yeah, well, Gus chooses to die instead of being what he considers half a man.

Call tries to talk him out of it, saying, "You don't like to do nothing but sit on the porch and drink whiskey anyway. It don't take legs to do that" (96.70). Which is true. But we understand where Gus is coming from. As we said, the best part of his big talk is that he can back it up—and he can't back it up without legs. Call accuses him of "goddamn vanity" (96.80), but we think Call's just angry at this point, angry about losing his friend.

Gus and Call were like two halves of a whole, and Gus does his best to make Call complete after his own death. He sends Call on the mission back to Lonesome Dove. It might be the best place for Call to settle down, though we'll never know exactly why Gus asked him to make the journey. As one of the cowboys ponders, "I wonder what he'd have to say about being dead. […] Gus always had something to say about everything" (97.94).

Ghosts must not exist, because if anyone would keep talking after death, it's Gus McCrae.