Following up on fidelity in Lonesome Dove, on the flip side, there are commitments that are not necessarily so commendable:
* The fellas tend to embody the slogan, “to thine own self be true”. Call keeps quiet even on things that should be mentioned, Gus tells us, because he “ain’t much of a mentioner”.
* The commitment to one’s friends and one’s self interferes with the ability to commit to one place and one woman and family. This is Clara’s final blast against Gus and Call, and it’s a sharp one.
* Related to this is the fact that although Clara’s charge applies to them differently (Gus is out for fun and rest, and Call is out for work and activity, yet both of them stick with each other), self-commitment is the great trump in both cases. Workaholism and whores both eventually rob you of things you love, whether a life with Clara “and a passel of kids” (Gus) or acknowledging your son (Call).
Those alternatives are of course difficult–the book does not pretend that life with Clara would have been a bowl of cherries. The various terroristic sociopaths scattered throughout have effectively left society and healthy social norms, and Bol and Elmira and Po have left (or killed!) their spouses for similar reasons: that sort of long-suffering commitment and connection (the cowboys would call it “entanglement”) not only flies in the face of fun and freedom and self-actualization, it’s pretty dang brutal at times.
Gus or Call attempting a committed life could perhaps be compared to a mustang taming itself. It’s not natural, and it sure wouldn’t look pretty.
Go At A Walking Pace 
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