Lonesome Dove: Gus Crosses the Brazos River

Gus tracks Lorena and crosses the Clear Fork of the Brazos River.

That afternoon he crossed the Clear Fork of the Brazos and passed a half-built cabin, abandoned and empty. It was a vivid enough reminder of the power of the Comanches — their massacres caused plenty of settlers to retreat while they still had legs to retreat on. Call and he had watched through the Fifties as the line of the frontier advanced only to collapse soon after. The men and women who came up the Trinity and the Brazos were no strangers to hardship — but hardship was one thing, terror another. The land was spacious and theirs for the taking, but land couldn't cancel out fear — a fact that Call never understood. It annoyed him that the whites gave up and retreated.

Photo: the NAVASOTA CURRENT

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