Cattle Drive Bookmark | Western Classic Novel | Wild West | Call | Montana

It's a hell of a thing to watch a man die who didn't want to.
For every reader who has loved Lonesome Dove and carried it with them ever since.
For every reader who understood that this is not a Western. It is one of the greatest American novels ever written and it happens to be set on the open plain and it happens to involve a cattle drive and it happens to contain two of the most fully realized human beings in all of American fiction — Augustus McCrae who sees everything clearly and says it beautifully and Woodrow F. Call who sees everything clearly and says almost nothing at all — and between them they contain everything worth knowing about loyalty and loss and the particular cost of living by a code in a world that is moving past the code whether you move with it or not.
For every reader who finished this novel and sat very still for a long time before they could say anything about it.
This bookmark is for all of you. The drive is moving. The sky is on fire. The campfire is burning. The Hat Creek Cattle Company is heading to Montana.

✦ ABOUT THIS BOOKMARK
A richly illustrated scene of the Hat Creek Cattle Company cattle drive in full motion across the Texas plain — the drive as it looks at the golden hour when the sky is doing the thing that Texas skies do when they mean it, which is turn amber and crimson and deep blue simultaneously and make everything below them look simultaneously beautiful and temporary.
The sky at the top of the composition is the extraordinary Texas sky of the late afternoon — deep blue giving way to amber and gold and the dramatic cloudscape of a plains sky at the hour when the light is most generous and most honest, a single bright star visible above the clouds suggesting the evening star that Gus McCrae would notice and say something beautiful about.
The cattle herd fills the center of the composition — not an orderly neat herd but the sprawling living reality of three thousand longhorn cattle in full motion across the open plain, the longhorns in their warm amber and rust and cream, the dust they raise hanging golden in the afternoon light, the herd moving forward with the particular inevitability of something that cannot be stopped and is not trying to be.
Two riders on horseback are silhouetted at the rise above the herd — one slightly taller and more formally upright in the saddle and one more relaxed and easier in his seat, the two postures of Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae present against the blazing sky without depicting specific faces, the thirty year friendship visible in the proximity of the two figures and the particular way one is angled very slightly toward the other.
The Hat Creek Cattle Company signpost stands at the left edge of the composition — the weathered wooden sign that marks the enterprise, the trail to Montana indicated, the particular frontier signpost that places this drive in the specific world of the novel.
The campfire glows warm amber in the foreground of the lower composition — the small human warmth in the enormous landscape, the fire that has burned every night of the drive, the cast iron pot on the coals. Texas wildflowers — bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush — bloom in the foreground around the campfire with the particular indifference of wildflowers that bloom regardless of what great historical events are happening in their vicinity.
The tagline at the bottom is the most devastating line in the novel — spoken by Augustus McCrae, plain and specific and completely without decoration and absolutely unforgettable.

✦ BOOKMARK DETAILS
— Size: 2.15 inches wide by 6.75 inches tall
— Printed on premium card stock
— Full color illustration front with matte finish
— Arrives in a kraft envelope
— Ready to use in your copy of Lonesome Dove the moment it arrives — or in Dead Man's Walk or Comanche Moon or Streets of Laredo because this bookmark belongs in all of them

✦ PERFECT FOR
— Every reader who considers Lonesome Dove one of the greatest American novels ever written which it is
— Western literary fiction devotees who know the difference between a genre Western and a Pulitzer Prize winning American epic and love both but love this one most
— Readers who love the Pulitzer Prize winners and know this one deserved it completely
— Anyone who has finished this novel and been unable to explain to someone who has not read it why they are sitting very quietly looking at nothing
— The friend who put Lonesome Dove in your hands and changed your reading life permanently
— Book clubs reading Larry McMurtry — this novel generates conversations about friendship and loyalty and the American West and masculinity that go places most book club conversations never reach
— Western Americana lovers and American history readers who want literary merchandise honoring the frontier tradition with genuine knowledge and genuine love
— Gifts for the reader who loves big American novels and big American landscapes and the particular beauty of the open plain at golden hour
— Fans of the beloved 1989 CBS miniseries who return to the novel regularly
— Birthdays and holidays for the Western literary reader who deserves something as beautiful as the novel they love
— Treating yourself — Gus McCrae would tell you to treat yourself and he would be right and you know it

✦ THE TWO RIDERS
Two riders are silhouetted against the blazing Texas sky at the top of the cattle drive in this bookmark.
One sits slightly taller and more formally upright. One sits easier and more relaxed. They have been riding beside each other for thirty years. Neither of them says anything about what that means. Both of them know exactly what it means.
The friendship of Augustus McCrae and Woodrow F. Call is the greatest friendship in American Western fiction and one of the greatest in American fiction period. It is visible in this bookmark entirely through posture and proximity — the way one figure is very slightly angled toward the other, the way thirty years of riding side by side looks from a distance.
They are heading to Montana. The cattle are moving. The sky is on fire. Everything that is going to happen is already in motion.

✦ THE TAGLINE
It's a hell of a thing to watch a man die who didn't want to.
This is Augustus McCrae speaking. It is the plainest sentence in the novel. It is the most devastating sentence in the novel. It contains the entire moral weight of the frontier in eleven words — the violence and the waste of it and the particular grief of a man who has watched too much of it and who still has the capacity to be devastated by it which is what makes him Augustus McCrae and not someone else.
Every reader of this novel knows exactly when this line is spoken and exactly what it costs and exactly why it is the right line for this bookmark.

✦ THE WILDFLOWERS
Texas bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush bloom in the foreground of this bookmark around the campfire.
They bloom here because they bloom everywhere in Texas in the spring regardless of what else is happening. They bloomed when the drive passed through. They are blooming now. They will be blooming when the drive is a memory.
The wildflowers are the most indifferent and most beautiful element in the composition and they are exactly right.

✦ PAIRS BEAUTIFULLY WITH
Our Lonesome Dove evening camp bookmark — the drive in motion and the stillness around it, the cattle and the campfire, the day and the night. Both bookmarks together tell the complete story of the novel more fully than either one alone and make the perfect gift set for the devoted McMurtry reader who needs both the energy of the journey and the quiet of the fire.
See our shop for the Lonesome Dove evening camp bookmark and our complete American literary collection.

✦ SHIPPING
Ships within 3 to 5 business days. Arrives in a kraft envelope in a protective sleeve so your bookmark comes to you simply and beautifully — ready to use immediately. The drive is still moving. The sky is still on fire. The Hat Creek Cattle Company is still heading to Montana. The wildflowers are still blooming. Some things do not stop.

✦ ABOUT OUR SHOP
Every bookmark in our shop is designed and produced professionally by us — made with care in our own studio and printed on premium materials we stand behind completely. We are a small passionate operation and we treat every order like it matters because it does.
We are committed to five star service on every single order — from the moment you click to the moment your bookmark arrives at your door flat and perfect and ready to live inside your favorite book. If anything is ever less than exactly right please reach out and we will make it right immediately. We respond to every message promptly and we mean it — real people, real responses, no automated runaround.
Thank you for supporting a small independent bookmark maker. It means everything to us and we do not take it for granted. We hope this bookmark finds exactly the right book and exactly the right reader.

Michelle and Julie
The Luna and Loom 📚