A traveling woman was a rare enough sight to unsettle frontier hosts.

Evidence

My landlady apologized for the very exquisite little bedroom which she gave me by saying “it was not quite as she would like it, but she had never had a lady in her house before.” The young “lady” who waited at breakfast said, “I’ve been thinking about you, and I’m certain sure you’re an authoress.” — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 206

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: A woman traveler whose arrival is so anomalous that a landlady admits she’s never housed a ‘lady’ and a waitress deduces her profession — a ready-made scene of identity-as-spectacle on the frontier.
• FICTION: The small moment of being clocked as a curiosity could seed a western-set story about how women outsiders are read and misread.