Comanche Moon (Book 2), Larry McMurty

Comanche Moon, the second book in the Lonesome Dove quartet, follows Rangers Gus and Call in their bitter struggle to protect the advancing West frontier, courageously determined to defend their territory and their way of life from the defiant Comanches. 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 Scull’s 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 town’s most notorious woman is desperate to settle down with him and become respectable. When Scull’s 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