The Virginian | Page 7

to be easy with a large stranger, who
instead of shooting at your heels had very civilly handed you a letter.
"You're from old Virginia, I take it?" I began.
He answered slowly, "Then you have taken it correct, seh."
A slight chill passed over my easiness, but I went cheerily on with a
further inquiry. "Find many oddities out here like Uncle Hughey?"
"Yes, seh, there is a right smart of oddities around. They come in on
every train."
At this point I dropped my method of easiness.
"I wish that trunks came on the train," said I. And I told him my
predicament.
It was not to be expected that he would be greatly moved at my loss;
but he took it with no comment whatever. "We'll wait in town for it,"

said he, always perfectly civil.
Now, what I had seen of "town" was, to my newly arrived eyes,
altogether horrible. If I could possibly sleep at the Judge's ranch, I
preferred to do so.
"Is it too far to drive there to-night?" I inquired.
He looked at me in a puzzled manner.
"For this valise," I explained, "contains all that I immediately need; in
fact, I could do without my trunk for a day or two, if it is not
convenient to send. So if we could arrive there not too late by starting
at once--" I paused.
"It's two hundred and sixty-three miles," said the Virginian.
To my loud ejaculation he made no answer, but surveyed me a moment
longer, and then said, "Supper will be about ready now." He took my
valise, and I followed his steps toward the eating-house in silence. I
was dazed.
As we went, I read my host's letter--a brief hospitable message. He was
very sorry not to meet me himself. He had been getting ready to drive
over, when the surveyor appeared and detained him. Therefore in his
stead he was sending a trustworthy man to town, who would look after
me and drive me over. They were looking forward to my visit with
much pleasure. This was all.
Yes, I was dazed. How did they count distance in this country? You
spoke in a neighborly fashion about driving over to town, and it
meant--I did not know yet how many days. And what would be meant
by the term "dropping in," I wondered. And how many miles would be
considered really far? I abstained from further questioning the
"trustworthy man." My questions had not fared excessively well. He
did not propose making me dance, to be sure: that would scarcely be
trustworthy. But neither did he propose to have me familiar with him.
Why was this? What had I done to elicit that veiled and skilful sarcasm

about oddities coming in on every train? Having been sent to look after
me, he would do so, would even carry my valise; but I could not be
jocular with him. This handsome, ungrammatical son of the soil had set
between us the bar of his cold and perfect civility. No polished person
could have done it better. What was the matter? I looked at him, and
suddenly it came to me. If he had tried familiarity with me the first two
minutes of our acquaintance, I should have resented it; by what right,
then, had I tried it with him? It smacked of patronizing: on this
occasion he had come off the better gentleman of the two. Here in flesh
and blood was a truth which I had long believed in words, but never
met before. The creature we call a GENTLEMAN lies deep in the
hearts of thousands that are born without chance to master the outward
graces of the type.
Between the station and the eating-house I did a deal of straight
thinking. But my thoughts were destined presently to be drowned in
amazement at the rare personage into whose society fate had thrown
me.
Town, as they called it, pleased me the less, the longer I saw it. But
until our language stretches itself and takes in a new word of closer fit,
town will have to do for the name of such a place as was Medicine Bow.
I have seen and slept in many like it since. Scattered wide, they littered
the frontier from the Columbia to the Rio Grande, from the Missouri to
the Sierras. They lay stark, dotted over a planet of treeless dust, like
soiled packs of cards. Each was similar to the next, as one old five-spot
of clubs resembles another. Houses, empty bottles, and garbage, they
were forever of the same shapeless pattern. More forlorn they were
than stale bones. They seemed to have been strewn there by the wind
and to be waiting till the wind should come again and blow