Lonesome Dove, Volume 1 by Larry McMurtry

AUGUSTUS WAS A LITTLE put out with himself for doing such a poor job of tracking. He had gambled on Blue Duck heading west, when in fact he had crossed the Red and gone straight north. It was the kind of gamble Call would never take. Call would have tracked all the way, or let Deets track. The country near the Canadian was rough and broken, and he dropped south to where the plains flattened out. He wanted to spare his horse as much as possible.

He rode east all morning, a bad feeling in his heart. He had meant to catch Blue Duck within a day, but he hadn't. The renegade had out-traveled him. It would have been rough on Lorie, such traveling. He should have borrowed Call's mare, but the thought hadn't occurred to him until too late. By this time Lorie could be dead, or ruined. He had helped recover several captives from the Comanches in his rangering days, and often the recovery came too late if the captives were women. Usually their minds were gone and they were only interested in dying, which they mostly did once they got back to people who would let them die.