It follows pretty closely but the novel, of course, gives more detail and has a different ending. Here is a chapter by chapter breakdown of the novel:
The first chapter takes us to the belfry of the church as McCabe watches for Butler, the Kid, & the half Breed so it takes us right to the final showdown at the git go its raining & its windy he hears shots comming from his place. He lights a cigar & waits.
Chapter 2 gives us the intro of McCabe to the town of Presbyterian Church four years before (the original title of the film was to be "The Presbyterian Church Wager") He rode up to it from Bearpaw (a company town, he didn't like company towns) he liked small towns because he could set up the biggest game and didn't have to cut anyone in. He rides up past canvas tents always a signal of a new camp & up to Sheehan's Hotel & Saloon just like in the film. The film here follows the book closely, McCabe's conversation "You don't know nothing about me, and I don't know you. Lets make this a nickle game..." is right out of the novel.
But then we get more info direct info than we get in the film, Sheehan introduces himself and says he owns the place and McCabe says he's "John McCabe" Sheehan asks "You ain't Pudgy McCabe?" and McCabe nods. "The gunfighter?" McCabe answers "that will beat any other opinion. Sheehan, "You the one that killed Bill Roundtree"? McCabe, "the very same".
Then Sheehan says as in the film "That man's got a big rep boys, he's got a big rep".
We find out that after Sheehan asks "you don't look pudgy to me" that McCabe says he's "been in this country a long time, enough to thin any man out".
As the chapter continues we find out that they mine zinc in Presbyterian Church, with two pretty good deposits up in the hills, and that the local miners prospect for new strikes whenever they can. McCabe & Sheehan strike a bargain & McCabe begins to run a 12 hour game every day at Sheehan's. The town grew Germans & Swedes came to work the steady deposits and Chinese also came to work the ore. The town grew enough to build a second saloon and McCabe built it. Sheehan felt that McCabe had tricked him and went about telling the town folk that McCabe would fail, and he would have if it wasn't for the opium McCabe sold the Chinese, McCabe figured that they would get it anyway, and he became an interpreter and protector for the Chinese.
Then McCabe advertised that he was going to build a genuine whore house and Mrs. Constance Miller comes to Presbyterian Church. Mrs. Millers is described as "...a pretty woman. About 31, slim, not exactly small. She had eyebrows that accented the blueness of her eyes, high cheekbones, and a finely cut nose. Her face was narrow her throat long. The body in the tight dress was small and her breasts seemed to be small too, but from the way they moved as she leaned back they weren't nothing but hers". She wears a wedding band that she takes it off and plays with when she's nervous but she tells McCabe that she's never been married. She wore the ring because it gave her a respectable tone.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller strike a 50/50 bargain on the house and a carpenter from Bearpaw comes up and builds it from a drawing based on a picture she saw in an Eastern magazine, a heavy building with frills on the eaves. In the book she uses the line "You ought to use something besides that cheap Jockey Club Cologne, if you want to make out your a dude". thats used in the film.
Chapter 3 starts with the relationship between McCabe & Mrs. Miller and what the towns people speculated about them & how Mr. Elliot the preacher looked down upon them. McCabe spent more time in Mrs. Millers bedroom than anyone else and they begin to develop a sometimes rocky relationship despite neither of them wanting to at first. Constance Miller tells McCabe her sad life story and the times that they fight over things ends with her calling him a "son of a bitch" and her going on a "toot" for a week at a time. Now the film portrays her as an opium addict rather than an alcoholic. Wether this was an editorial decision when the book was published that changed back to its original manuscript when the book was filmed, would be interesting to find out. McCabe falls in love with Constance despite all and in this chapter we have his bringing her flowers, his soliloquy in the film about him having "poetry in me" and the line about "couldn't you one time be sweet when there wasn't no money around".
We also learn about McCabe the gunfighter, he uses in the book a specially tuned Colt Peacemaker that has a stronger spring and no trigger, so that he just thumbs back the hammer and lets go to shoot. We also read about him being a great shot. In the film his status as a gunman is always left ambiguous.
Chapter 4, we begin to learn that the Snake River Mining Company wants to buy out the town cheap. We get various rumors and such from the different townsfolk, a railspur will be built, the company will hire as many men as it takes to kill everyone and take the town over and that they own the courts and that you can't fight them. Sheehan begins to turn from just being McCabe's competion to a threat with his decision to sell out to the company when they make their move. He starts to advise the townfolk & the miners to also sell out. The townfolk begin to look at McCabe as their protection.
Chapter 5, Constance & McCabe fight about the position McCabe is in vs the Mining Company, she wants him to be smart & sell out. The Company man arrives in Presbyterian Church with Sheehan. The Company man, Sheehan & McCabe have a business meeting at the Hotel about the buy out. McCabe turns down the Company offer.
Chapter 6, Constance & McCabe again fight this time about his turning down the company offer. Constance worried wants him to see a lawyer in Bearpaw.
Chapter 7, McCabe heads to Bearpaw to see the lawyer (in the film he's shown trying to find the company man and reconsider the offer before seeing the lawyer) on the way he's on guard for bushwhackers. The lawyer in the book has practically the whole chapter, the gist of it is that he wants McCabe to sign out a warrent against Sheehan & file a suit against the company. The purpose is to have McCabe as a martyr, a rebel who took a stand, one man who was able to stand against the company. The warrants & suit is so the company can't deny he ever existed. When McCabe asks the lawyer what do you think is going to happen the lawyer replies "I told you you are going to die... everybody does, achieve more dignity doing it than you have any right to expect".
Chapter 8, Here arrives the threat in the form of the Cowboy who turns out is just looking for the whore house, the Carradine part in the film. He has with him a banjo which he tries to pluck out "Golden Slippers".
Chapter 9, Is the arrival of the hired killers, Butler, the half breed & the Kid.. We get the first confrontation in McCabe's saloon, which is a standoff McCabe has a revolver on them the whole time. (in the film we get the confrontation in Sheehan's, and the Butler line "that man never killed anyone") Here end of the standoff has McCabe declaring to Butler "that kid can put down any times he wants....but the second he does I guarantee you a new explitive deleted.
Chapter 10, The killers impress the town for a week with gun play. Constance & McCabe's relationship is again dealt with. And we get the wager sequence of which the original working title of the screen play was based on. Unarmed Sheehan, Butler The kid & the Half Breed with a crowd of townies enter McCabe's Saloon. Sheehan declares "Boys, There'll be a new day and a new way of doing things in this town, and you better get on the right side now." McCabe answers "I wouldn't put too much money on that". Sheehan answers "I suppose you think you'll come out alive". McCabe declares "odds are 15 to 1 against me". So they make a bet on McCabe's life.
Chapter 11, Here finally Constance & McCabe finally admit to each other that they are in love and they make love.
Chapter 12, During the night McCabe has a dream and in this dream we get the Bill Roundtree story.
Chapter 13, Rain falling hard 3AM, McCabe wakes up gets his clothes and quietly leaves Constance's bedroom. He goes over to his saloons kitchen and here he has a three raw egg & whiskey breakfast, the first time that is mentioned in the book. In his office he finds the lawyer (who has come up from Bearpaw) sleeping at his desk, he wakes him him up and tell him to leave but before he does he signs the papers the lawyer has brought. McCabe arms himself with his revolver and a second regular revolver that he keeps in a brace holster that he won in a poker game. Then McCabe heads to the livery stable to get a ladder to put his plan in action. The ladder he takes to the church so he can get up into the steeple to watch for the killers.
Chapter 14, we are back to where we left off after the first chapter, the killers leave McCabe's saloon and split up. Once McCabe sees where they are going he puts he plan in action. He follows behind the kid as he makes his way up the street, careful to try and stay upon hard ground when he gets within range he aims at the kid his boot finds a soft spot in the mud and when he pulls up his foot the boot makes a sucking sound that that kid hears. He whirls around with both guns blazing but McCabe 's shot is true and he falls, but not before he hits McCabe in the thigh. McCabe bleeding runs to the General Store and sits in barber's chair near the back with a clear shot to the front of the store.
Butler comes around the corner and sees the dying kid he tries to get the kid to tell him where McCabe is hiding but the kid just wants a doctor. McCabe can't get a good shot at Butler and Butler moves off down the street while the Breed comes up the street from the other end. McCabe is watching across the street using the shop windows reflection and sees the breed. The breed walks up right in front of the General Stores window distracted by the dying Kid instead of watching for McCabe. McCabe shoots him and he jerks backwards and falls into the plate glass.
Butler runs back sees that McCabe was in the General Store and he cuts through an alley to the back of the store just in time to shoot the limping McCabe in the back. McCabe, trying to get to cover behind a zinc ore wagon falls into a ditch filled with water on the far side of the wagon. He's fighting to stay conscious as he's loosing blood. Butler waits but decides he wants to get to McCabe before he dies so that Butler can see it ( the fear) in McCabe's eyes that Butler is about to kill him. But Mccabe is waiting too. Butler gets the fist bullet in his neck the next in the chest, the forth shot went into his side, the fifth through his temple.
Mrs. Miller holding her skirt with one hand and McCabe's shotgun in the other comes around the corner and sees Butlers Body. She runs to the ditch and reaches McCabe and she comforts him as he dies, his last words to her were "Tell them for me ...I loved you".
Mrs. Miller hears something, it was Sheehan he was calling Butlers name. She cocks both barrels on the shotgun, and here are the last lines of the novel "she leaned against the wagon wheel with the shotgun in the folds of her skirt. She though she should wait until Sheehan got real close. The wind shifted entirely into her face and she heard the cowboy as she waited. He was playing Golden Slippers on his banjo again".
The End.
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