Horseman, Pass By

Horseman, Pass By is a 1961 western novel by American author Larry McMurtry. Set in Texas in 1954, as America was still feeling the wake of World War II, it chronicles the life of a young man, Lonnie Bannon, who lives on a cattle ranch. The ranch is owned by his grandfather, Homer Bannon, whose evil stepson, Hud, commits deplorable crimes that deeply disturb the ranch family’s chance at happiness. The novel’s title is a reference to a poem by William Butler Yeats, “Under Ben Bulben,” in which the poet remarks, “Cast a cold eye / On life, on death. / Horseman, pass by.” The novel resonates with the poem’s themes of mortality, ambivalence, and rural life. Published when McMurtry was only twenty-five, Horseman, Pass By is, nonetheless, one of the most famous western novels of the mid-twentieth century.

The novel begins by introducing life on the Bannon ranch. Lonnie, age seventeen, lives with his grandfather, Homer, grandmother, Jewel, and uncle, Hud. Hud excels at the duties tied to the cowboy trade but has no compassion or empathy for others. The family also includes an assistant cowboy, Jesse, and an African-American cook, Halmea. Hud is extremely unkind to Halmea, but Lonnie strives to show her kindness knowing that her life is not that happy.

One day, a young cow dies. Lonnie and Hud investigate and find that it died from foot and mouth disease. The disease is contagious, quickly infecting the entire herd. The ranchers lead the cattle to the edge of a pit, shooting them into the hole one by one, and bury the entire herd. Not long after, Hud rapes Halmea. Traumatized and distraught, she quits working for the Bannon ranch. Enraged at Hud, Lonnie joins Halmea when she fires her gun at him. However, while Halmea shoots to kill, Lonnie merely hopes to frighten him out of repeating the act. Lonnie goes into town to watch his friend, Hermy, ride in the rodeo. Hermy suffers a nearly fatal injury when a bull stomps on his chest, shattering all of his ribs and causing internal trauma. Lonnie returns to the ranch just as Hud returns.



Along the edge of a highway, Lonnie and Hud find Homer seriously injured. He tells them that he fell off the porch and went to seek help. Lonnie desperately tries to find help but finds no one is nearby. When Lonnie returns to Hud and Homer, Hud has shot and killed Homer. Hud defends his murder, arguing that Homer had no chance of recovering and needed to be put out of his misery. At Homer’s funeral, Lonnie refuses to help Hud bury Homer. Grieving, he goes to the back of the church alone, mourning the unfair and tragic loss of his grandfather.

In the novel’s epilogue, narrated by Lonnie, he says that he left Homer’s funeral early to visit Hermy, still recovering from his severe wounds. He gets a ride from a man who used to know Homer. The man asks Lonnie how Homer is doing; Lonnie does not tell him what happened. The driver rambles about the same few things that everyone in Texas seems to care about, including livestock and bull riding. Lonnie says that the ignorant and insensitive-seeming man is just like most people in Texas.

A tragic coming-of-age novel, Horseman, Pass By suggests that virtues such as kindness and compassion were sorely lacking, and even scorned, in mid-twentieth century Texas.