ow 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 them away. Yet serene above their foulness swam a pure and quiet
light, such as the East never sees; they might be bathing in the air of
creation's first morning. Beneath sun and stars their days and nights
were immaculate and wonderful.

Medicine Bow was my firs