Frontier travel days alternate sublime scenery with squalid, shared lodging.

Evidence

I left Deer Valley at ten the next morning on a glorious day, with rich atmospheric coloring, had to spend three hours sitting on a barrel in a forge after I had ridden twelve miles, waiting while twenty-four oxen were shod, and then rode on twenty-three miles through streams and canyons of great beauty till I reached a grocery store, where I had to share a room with a large family and three teamsters; and being almost suffocated by the curtain partition, got up at four, before any one was stirring, saddled Birdie, and rode away in the darkness, leaving my money on the table! — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 202

Categorization

• FICTION: The suffocating curtain partition, three teamsters, and the forgotten money on the table is a ready-made opening scene of exhaustion and trust.
• STORYSTEM: A traveler who leaves her money on the table in the dark could carry a story about reputation in a transient roadside economy.