Like Norwood Pratt and Mattie Ross, The Dog of the South’s Ray Midge has a sense of justice that extends to the terms on which it shall be administered. His wife Norma has ditched him for her old beau, Dupree, out on bail after sending threatening letters to the president, which—this being the late Sixties—has lent him some countercultural cool. Norma and Dupree have stolen Midge’s credit cards, “my good raincoat and a shotgun and perhaps some other articles. It was just like him to pick the .410—a boy’s first gun.” They’ve also exchanged Dupree’s rust-bucket Buick for Midge’s pristine Torino. Midge tracks their progress south from Memphis to Texas to Mexico by the addresses on the credit-card receipts. A lawyer named Jack Wilkie, who holds the note on Dupree’s bail bond, and a con artist named Dr. Symes, who owns the broken-down bus that serves as the novel’s namesake, join up for stints of the trip.
When Wilkie first catches up with Midge in Laredo, Texas, he’s angry that Midge didn’t share the intel about the credit receipts: they could have pooled resources since they’re after the same people. “I was going to tell you as soon as I got my car back,” Midge tells him. “I wanted to get my car without your help.” “What difference does it make as long as you get your car?” Wilkie wants to know. “It’s not the same thing,” Midge replies, a clear echo of Mattie Ross insisting to Cogburn and Ranger LaBoeuf that she will not be satisfied if her father’s killer is hung in Texas on a separate (and, for them, more lucrative) warrant; he must be tried for her father’s murder specifically, and on Arkansas soil.
The Dog of the South features some of the funniest passages in all of Portis. At one point, Symes describes to Midge his plans for developing an island off the coast of Louisiana that his mother owns and has designated a bird sanctuary. Symes intends to strong-arm her out of the deed so he can turn it into a Confederate theme park: