A Tale of Choosing the Right Place to Call Home
The prairie wind sighed low and arid, bearing the smell of sagebrush and the sound of rain in the distance. Cole “Dusty” Harlan pulled back on his chestnut mare’s reins at the crest of a blistering ridge and narrowed his eyes into the valley below. Three bent streets, a leaning saloon, and a cluster of cabins crouched there as if worn out. The town didn’t even rate a name, but a weathered sign on the main road declared it “Prospect Hollow.
Dusty had been on the trail a week, sleeping beneath hard stars and subsisting on beans boiled in mesquite fires. A real bed sounded like heaven. But something in his belly—a warning that had built itself up over years of drifting—kept him astride high.
Old trappers along the trail had left him a saying that lingered like a burr in his mind:
“Never construct a life in which respect is in short supply, honest labor is nowhere to be found, friendship is empty, or education is allowed to wither away.”
He’d laughed the first time he’d heard it beside the fire at a crackling campsite, but the more experienced he became, the more the saying rang true. Dusty pushed his hat down and urged his horse toward town, interested to know if Prospect Hollow would live up to that old saying.
A Town Without Honor
The town street was still, too still for an early evening. A few of the men stood against the saloon’s twisted porch rail, eyes as level as a rattlesnake’s. No neighborly waves, no warm smiles—just the slow calculating look of people who’d pilfer your boots if you blinked.
Dusty doffed his hat out of habit. No one tipped it back. A loose board squeaked beneath his foot as he tied his mare to the hitching post and climbed down. He knew the men were watching him, their silence more oppressive than a gun belt.
A town that has no respect for you, he decided, will scorch you faster than a noon sun.
Honor was the first test. Prospect Hollow had already failed.
No Honest Work to Be Had
Within the saloon, the air was heavy with whiskey and stale smoke. Dusty went to the bar and asked for a cup of coffee—hot, if they had it, black if they did not.
“Coffee?” said the barkeep with a laugh that exhibited more whiskey stains than teeth. “Ain’t had beans in weeks. You lookin’ for work, stranger?”
“Maybe,” replied Dusty. “Freight, ranching, anything regular.”
The man wiped down the counter with a dirty rag. “Ain’t nobody here doing no real work unless you include poker or robbin’.”
Dusty took a sip of the warm water the barkeep pushed his way and looked around. There were two card games going on, players staring at each other like coyotes around a carcass. No work. No ranchers looking for drovers. Just grift and gambling.
A land without means reduced good men to thieves. Dusty had worked too hard to remain so. He placed the cup on the tray and exited.
Friends Harder to Find Than Rain
Outside again, twilight fell like a dusty shroud. He walked down the narrow street, looking for some token of camaraderie—a smiling stable lad, a benevolent shopkeeper, a young child running after a hoop. There was nothing. Only doors shutting fast and windows drawn.
Out here, a friend who was good might be the difference between a warm hearth and a cold grave. But eyes looking from Prospect Hollow’s dark windows had no welcome. If there were honest souls here, they burrowed like prairie dogs when hawks fly by.
A fellow might survive loneliness on the trail, but to live where friendship took no hold was a death that was slow. Dusty’s determination firmed.
A Land Where Learning Had Died
Still, he double-checked one thing. Every healthy town, he felt, should have a school or at least a tiny library—a space where curiosity could run about.
Dusty rode the length of the main street and discovered only a weathered church with a padlock on the door. No schoolhouse, no bookshop, not even a bulletin board with a scrap of news. Kids here, if there were any, would be raised with nothing but saloon chatter and dust for learning.
“A town that starves the mind,” Dusty grumbled, “starves the soul.”
Missing the Pillars of Community
The campfire proverb came back to him whole: Never remain where there is no healer, no wise elder, no river to keep the land green.
A tired stable hand told Dusty if there was a doctor in the area. The fellow spat and shook his head. “Nearest doc’s fifty miles east. Sheriff’s a drunkard. River went dry two summers ago.
That did it. No medicine, no law, no clean water. Only dry wells and drier hearts.
Night of Reckoning
Dusty took his mare to the town border and sat on a turned-over bucket as dusk deepened to purple. He was hungry for supper but his heart was already turning away.
He recalled his mentor, aged Jeremiah Pike, who had remarked, “A man’s first home is his horse, second is his conscience. Don’t betray either by tying up where the soul can’t breathe.”
Prospect Hollow provided shelter, but not life. Dusty saddled up. The moon had come out, silver and keen, when he rode back out onto the open prairie.
Lessons from the Saddle
By morning, the town was a haze behind him. The open range lay broad and clean, studded with sage and the hint of distant rivers. Dusty felt unencumbered, as if leaving the town had cast off a burden he hadn’t known he bore.
As the sun painted the mesas copper and gold, he spoke to the vacant landscape, stating the bald facts the night had taught him:
- Demand Respect. Rest only where there is respect for other people, neighbor or stranger.
- Demand Honest Labor. A town with no honest occupation will consume a man’s integrity.
- Form Friends. Friendship is as essential as bread.
- Appreciate Knowledge. A town without books or schools dulls the mind.
- Seek Society. Physicians, leaders, running water—these are the essential elements of any settlement.
These were not idle words for cowboys. Dusty knew they’d be good for any soul—picking a pioneer homestead or a contemporary city apartment.
A Message Across Time
Weeks later, Dusty rode into a busy river town. Children giggled outside a tiny schoolhouse, and shopkeepers yelled greetings as he rode by. A blacksmith pounded iron, the beat steady and strong. A doctor’s sign hung above a neat office.
He smiled. This was a place where a man could plant roots without fear of them withering.
When a wide-eyed youngster asked if he’d ever seen Prospect Hollow, Dusty tipped his hat and said, “I rode through. Didn’t stay. Remember this, kid: don’t just find a town. Find a life worth living.”
The boy grinned and ran back to his friends, their laughter ringing clear against the river’s song.
Frontier Wisdom for Contemporary Times
Dusty’s trail might have been in the 1880s, but the teaching rides as true today. When deciding on a new city or a new job, ask yourself:
- Does this place have respect for people?
- Can I make an honest living?
- Will I have true friends?
- Is there space to learn and grow?
- Are there healers, leaders, and the necessities of life?
If the response to any of them is no, recall the drifter who relied on his intuition and kept moving. At times the most courageous decision isn’t staying—it’s departing ahead of time before the dust settles.
Closing Campfire
That evening, camped under a great expanse of stars, Dusty steeped coffee black enough to savor the trail itself. He lifted the tin cup to the heavens and spoke softly, “Here’s to the places worth living—and to the courage to keep riding until you find one.”
The fire popped, the prairie wind moaned, and the old cowboy slept soundly, knowing he had heard wisdom older than the West itself.sdom older than the West itself.
