Absent men mean the woman traveler must handle and saddle her own horse.

Evidence

There was a pleasant, friendly woman, but the men were all away, a thing I always regret, as it gives me half an hour’s work at the horse before I can write to you. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 182

Categorization

• SHARE: A one-line window into the practical labor of a woman traveling alone in the 1870s West — the unglamorous half-hour before the letter.