Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call are former captains in the Texas Rangers, who are now the joint owners of a livestock trading firm in the remote Texas border town of Lonesome Dove.
Gus, as he's commonly known, is affable, kind-hearted, talkative, and lazy to the point of eccentric. In contrast, Woodrow - who is referred to by everyone as "The Captain" - is a stern workaholic who believes that everybody should give it their all, and is disdainful of men who drink and gamble their lives away. Which you'd think would put the two at loggerheads. Gus is more interested in wine, women, and song than a hard day's work, but he is also twice widowed and pining for his old flame Clara Allen. Meanwhile, Call is in denial of a liaison he had with a prostitute which produced a child called Newt. When the boy's mother died, the pair took him in, but Call is reluctant to acknowledge that he is Newt's father (an open secret to everybody else).
Like Miles and Jack in Sideways, everything you hate in one character you admire in the other. Personally, I can't stand Call, but I like Gus serving as his foil.
In an odd twist, it's Call who ends up having bigger dreams, and leads the firm on an epic cattle drive from Texas to Montana. It's Gus who needs convincing, being told that Clara is living in Nebraska, on the route they'll be taking. During the journey, Gus is shown to deeply care for Lorena Wood, the town's prostitute who is making her way to San Francisco. When she gets kidnapped by a renegade, Gus ends up saving her, and tries to care for her afterwards. Call also demonstrates a compassionate side (not to mention a berserker rage) when he witnesses a US Army scout assault Newt.
I'm going to spoil it now, to discuss how their flaws end up being their undoing. Gus takes a few arrows to the knee (I'll never look at that meme the same way), and has to have his leg amputated. But by that point the infection has spread to his other leg, meaning that one needs to be amputated too. While he relished the idea of walking around on a crutch, he doesn't like the idea of having no legs, and refuses to allow his other leg to be amputated despite knowing his life depends on it. He asks Woodrow to take him back to Texas to be buried in a place where he used to have picnics with Clara. Woodrow obliges out of a long-lasting loyalty, leaving Newt in charge of the ranch they set up, even giving him his prized horse and watch, but he doesn't admit that he's the boy's father. He also ignores the advice of Clara to have Gus buried on her property.
It's because of this that I gave up on Streets of Laredo. It proves that they're a duo who need each other.
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