I’m not so sure they never acted on it. I got a definite menage-a-trois vibe from them.
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There was definitely a strong physical chemistry going on there between all three of them, but I do not think they ever acted on it – they merely pushed over stumps and frantically baked pies to relieve the sexual tension. 
I think the menage-a-trois vibe led to two plot developments:
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It allowed Joe the freedom to make the decision to go into town to face Fletcher: “It helps a man to know that if anything happens to him, his family will be in better hands than his own” (p.113).
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It was the impetus for Shane’s departure. He would have been forgiven, perhaps even praised, by the townspeople for killing Wilson. But he knew he could never act on his love for Marian (and/or Joe, lol) and had to remove himself from temptation – as revealed in the conversation between Shane and Marian:
“You’ve been worrying about something else, too.”
“You’re a mighty discerning woman, Marian.”
“And you’ve been thinking that maybe you’ll be moving on.”
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I also had that menage-a-trois sense but figured I was just superimposing current culture on an historical text. Glad to know I wasn’t alone!
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Oh my gosh. Menage-a-trois never entered my mind. Frantically shaking my head to remove the thought. 
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Brain slowly clearing (see above). Just for fun:
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I knew there was smouldering between Shane and Miriam, I’m kind of loving the idea of smoldering between Shane and Joseph. It’s definitely there between the lines.
John Larison sure knows how to describe a book so you want to read it. Thanks @ignatius !
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It is not accidental that the only time Shane uses a gun he does something that he believes reflects so poorly on who he is that it calls into question whether or not he is really a man.
Expounding on that thought:
The hero saves the community - Shane kills Wilson - but he uses means the community can’t live with. There’s no going back from a killing, Shane tells Joey, and rides away. The forces of anarchy are contained, is the way Jim Kitses (Horizons West) puts it, but the hero himself is a force of that anarchy. Shane uses murder to rescue the farmers, and he in turn has to go into exile. What he’s done makes him different. It’s the right thing to do, but he pays a blood price. SleuthSayers: Jack Schaefer and Shane
In his later years, author Jack Schaefer no longer saw Shane’s actions as necessarily “the right thing to do.” Instead, he more clearly saw and regretted how the homesteaders contributed to the demise of the open range and the unsettled West.
In a May 1984 Albuquerque Tribune article, Schaefer is quoted as saying, “Shane was helping civilization, and civilization is a blight.” Shane Comes Back
In the movie (but not in the book), the bad guy cattle baron is permitted a speech that makes him almost sympathetic:
We made a safe range out of this.
Some of us died doing it, but we made it.
Then people move in who never had to raw-hide it through the old days.
They fence off my range and fence me off from water.
Some of them plough ditches, take out irrigation water.
So the creek runs dry sometimes and I gotta move my stock because of it.
And you say we have no right to the range.
The men that did the work and ran the risks have no rights?
I take you for a fair man, Starrett.
I’m not belittling what you did, but you didn’t find this country.
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Reading through these comments it took me a minute to realize the movie version of “Shane” renamed Bob as Joey.
I thought I might be in the minority here about my “meh” reaction to the books, but I see that’s not true. No doubt there are books I loved when I was much younger that I’d have a similar reaction to now if I read them again. I don’t seek out Westerns to read, but did enjoy “Lonesome Dove.”
@CBBBlinker, returning to a book that you loved when young can be a risky venture. My daughter and I have been reading some classics together (hence why she just finished True Grit). We read The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, and though still great, I definitely saw flaws that I missed back in the 70’s. It was kind of a bittersweet read because I wanted it to still be as perfect as it was when I was 15.
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Mattie is a funny mix of mature and naive. She knows how to handle finances, can survive physical hardship, and is able to maintain the upper hand in verbal sparring with adults. She tells Rooster Cogburn, “I have left off crying, and giggling as well” (p. 87). But she still has a small part of her in childhood, e.g., at the campfire with Rooster and LeBoeuf:
I said, “Would you two like to hear the story of The Midnight Caller? One of you will have to be ‘The Caller.’ I will tell you what to say. I will do all the other parts myself.”
No interest from Rooster or LeBoeuf, of course. She might have had better luck with “Never Have I Ever.” 
I would also add this about Mattie: First person narration can be unreliable. Is she embellishing? Is she conveying an impression to us that is the same as others see her? There is one outside “source document” that seems to confirm what the reader has surmised about Mattie’s personality: the letter from Lawyer J. Noble Daggett. He seems both fond of her and exasperated. The letter contains a bit of foreshadowing: “I am not scolding you but I am saying your headstrong ways will lead you into a tight corner one day” (p. 78).
In contrast, the narrator of Shane is considerably less eccentric. Unlike Mattie, he’s a background character who observes the action rather than fully participates in it. That makes him (to me) a bit bland. Looking back as a grown man, he understands more of what went on, but he still seems to see the world through rose-colored Shane lovin’ glasses. I’m not sure Mattie would even have liked Shane. I’d say she wasn’t inclined to attribute “grit” to soft-spoken men of slight build who prefer to leave their gun rolled up in a blanket on a shelf. However, being a good Presbyterian spinster, she probably would have endorsed the ordering of soda pop.
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I think farm kids those days had pretty hard lives. Childhood is pretty much an invention of the upper classes.
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Yes, and an awful child mortality rate – over 20% from what I’ve read. That reminds me: Did anyone ever read The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings? The boy in that book, Jody Baxter, is a lot like Bob Starrett and the era is the same (1870s). The mother is stern and not particularly affectionate with Jody. We learn in the course of the novel that it’s because she lost six children before him and won’t allow herself to love him too much.
They are both essentially bounty hunters, out to either apprehend or kill a criminal for profit. But Rooster has a keener eye as regards human nature and a personal code that he adheres to. It’s a little delayed in rising to the surface, but it’s there. For example, when LaBoeuf spanks Mattie with the switch, Rooster puts an end to it.
Rooster raised his voice and said, “Put that switch down, LaBoeuf! Do you hear me talking to you?”
LaBoeuf stopped and looked at him. Then he said, “I am going ahead with what I started.”
Rooster pulled his cedar-handled revolver and cocked it with his thumb and threw down on LaBoeuf. He said, “It will be the biggest mistake you ever made, you Texas brush-popper.”
I don’t believe for a minute that this interaction was because Rooster has any particular respect for women – and maybe not even for Mattie yet, at that point in the story. Rather, it mirrors what we see when Rooster rebukes the boys for torturing the mule. It’s not what LaBoeuf or the boys do (he himself does worse to Little Blackie when saving Mattie); it’s whether or not it’s warranted. He’ll do unconscionable things for survival, but not for sport.
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I agree Rooster is basically at heart a good man, even if he’s in a profession that encourages bad acts. Le Boeuf doesn’t really have too many redeeming characters, except charm.
Shane of course, is all moody and mysterious and ultimately I think more interesting than either of them.
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Mattie and Rooster have such presence that LaBoeuf falls short in comparison. However, he sticks to the end, and when push comes to shove, he acts. Mattie and Rooster would not have come out okay without him.
Shane, on the other hand, has a clearer understanding of himself than any of the other three. He knows who he has been (though we don’t) and who he wants to be. Unfortunately, the “here and now” work against him. When he picks up his gun to defend the Starrett family, he loses the man “he wants to be.” He has an awareness of what his choice will cost him, but sees no way around that choice. And, yes, @mathmom, Shane is more interesting than either Rooster or LaBoeuf. I don’t get the impression that either man spends much time on introspection.
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She’s polite to Cole Younger because he saved Rooster’s life during “the fight at Lone Jack,” when “Cole Younger crawled out under a hail of fire and pulled me back.” Frank James, on the other hand, is just a mean, good-for-nothing criminal, so she doesn’t give him the time of day. It appears that she remembers every detail of her conversations with Rooster, and these memories still affect her behavior and opinions decades later.
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I think Moon’s comment pretty much sums up the degreee of “honor among thieves” in True Grit:
“Quincy was always square with me,” said Moon. “He never played me false until he killed me.”
As far as the treatment of Mattie goes, Lucky Ned Pepper seems to have some standards:
“Tom will not harm you. Do you understand that, Tom? If any harm comes to this child you do not get paid.”
But then he rides away trusting that Tom will obey, so he’s not real invested in what happens to Mattie. Still, there is never any serious concern or rising tension about Mattie’s physical safety – no mention or fear of sexual assault, not even any innuendo, despite her time with a pretty unholy group of men. I’m glad it was so, but was it realistic?
Re bad guys and their “codes,” only Chris in Shane seems to have mixed feelings about his role (and eventually comes 'round completely to the Starrett side). The others–Fletcher, Red Marlin, Wilson–are a little more one-dimensional.
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In one of those quirks of coincidence, in True Grit the question of whether or not Rooster rode with William Quantrill comes up more than once. He skirts the answer. I happened to read a biography of Harry Truman, Plain Speaking: an Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman, around the same time. Interestingly, Truman also spoke of Quantrill. He basically said that victors write history and the fact that pro-Union forces didn’t act any more honorably seems forgotten. Raids and looting seemed the order of the day. Neither the Confederate Army nor the Union Army wanted to cede Independence, Missouri (in Jackson County) to the other one.
https://civilwaronthewesternborder.org/encyclopedia/first-battle-independence
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I read a couple more reviews of the movie Shane and they talked about how much you see the events through the eyes of the boy. Which is interesting, because I think that’s harder to do in a movie, than in a book, but I got to thinking about how different Shane would be if you hadn’t had the child narrator who obviously, understands more about what was going on now, but still never saw everything. Would Shane have acted differently if Joe had not been so taken with him? Would he have even stayed?