I couldn't get my hand on Comanche Moon (it seems to be lost in the library system), so I jumped right to the last installment of the Lonesome Dove series.

The old Captain Call is hired by the railway to eliminate a young Mexican train robber equipped with a long-range rifle. The old man never noticed he grew old, and that he was hired for his reputation alone. His companions, whether reluctant (a Bostonian accountant sent by the railway to check on expenses, a lawman too blinded by the idea of ranging with the famous Captain to realize he doesn’t like ranging at all, and Pea Eye, involved out of a costly loyalty), or indifferent (Awesome Shoes, the scout, working for pay, with no clear allegiance), slowly get to the same conclusion.

Following other tracks, characters (some met earlier in LD) cross paths : the prostitute turned school teacher looking for her husband, a former brief love interest of Gus and Call, the pyromaniac murderer Mox Mox, among others.

Something builds up around the Captain and the killers : these three are remnants of the old West. Some join in hope of experiencing the old times, but this is a fluke, an anomaly, and it fails, predictably. Lorena is the only lucid one, and she tries to get Pea eye out of it.

There is nothing new in the tragedies (men pay for their sins of pride, women pay for loving wrongly and/or the wrong person). Nonetheless, it is a pleasant read.