The second book in the Lonesome Dove quartet, Comanche Moon, which follows on from Dead Mans Walk, follows Rangers Gus and Call in their bitter struggle to protect the advancing West frontier against the defiant Comanches, courageously determined to defend their territory and their way of life. It showcases Larry McMurtrys strong affinity for the landscape and its inhabitants with a deeply felt lyrical intensity. On the wild Texas frontier where barbarism and civilization come in many forms, Rangers Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call are pitched into the long, bitter, bloody fighting under the command of Captain Inish Scull. When Sculls favourite horse is stolen by the Comanches, he decides to track him down, leaving Gus and Call in charge. However, on their return to Austin, Gus is greeted by the news that his sweetheart is to marry another man and Call finds that the towns most notorious woman is desperate to settle down with him and become respectable. When Sculls wealthy wife demands that her errant husband be brought home, with feelings akin to relief the two men set off once more into the vast, untamed plains.
