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
bag," 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 bag, and I followed his
steps toward the eating-house in silence. I was surprised.
James Drury, The Virginian |
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 place 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 astonished.
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 bag; but I could not be jovial 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 suggested 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 desolated, 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 sad
they were than old 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 first, and I took its dimensions, twenty-nine buildings in all,—one coal shute,
one water tank, the station, one store, two eating-houses, one billiard hall,
two tool-houses, one feed stable, and twelve others that for one reason and
another I shall not name. Yet this wretched shell of squalor spent thought upon
appearances; many houses in it wore a false front to seem as if they were two
stories high. There they stood, rearing their pitiful masquerade amid a fringe
of old tin cans, while at their very doors began a world of crystal light, a
land without end, a space across which Noah and Adam might come straight from
Genesis. Into that space went wandering a road, over a hill and down out of
sight, and up again smaller in the distance, and down once more, and up once
more, straining the eyes, and so away...
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historias. Llamános al 0387-4249159. 4400 Salta. Argentina
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