We weren’t finished with the bittersweet cucumber slaw before the man sitting one table over at the sushi restaurant started muttering.

I didn’t catch the first part, but the second half of his complaint rang clear as a bluebird winter day here in north-west Montana: “… gays and lesbians everywhere.”

Immediately, my face burned crimson.

At my table sat four such people – my wife and I, and a couple of women we know who had just gotten engaged. We were out on the town in Whitefish to celebrate their love, starting with a sushi dinner. Next to us, by sheer chance – this isn’t entirely common around here – was a table with some gay men we didn’t know who remained blissfully unaware of the mutterer.

My mind flicked and whirred like a film projector warming up. How should I respond? Should I bother responding at all? Was this somehow my fault? Should I be ashamed? Did I even hear that correctly?

But within seconds, I settled on the answer I already knew I would, the one I’d learned from my Montana upbringing: I was going to stand up to this guy.

Framed in the blush of my face, my eyes caught his.

“Is there a problem?” I asked, hoping he didn’t hear the slight tremor in my voice.

This was my renegade cowboy moment, the one I’d been preparing for my whole life watching men like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood chew on cigarillos, sneer at obstacles, and then grunt one-liners about them as they rode away, alone and victorious.

I wanted to be tough, hardnosed, to bend this situation to my will by not giving in to the emotions flaring inside me, my heart beating against my chest like a fly against the window glass on a sunny day.

This was no time for flies. Instead, I aimed for the cowboy characteristics I’d idealized as a kid: to find power in being cold and unforgiving and stalwart. Perhaps I’d stand alone, but that wouldn’t matter anyway – a cowboy takes care of his own problems standing on his own two feet.

After I spoke to him, he refused to meet my eyes, choosing instead to stare at the table and say no, there was no problem. A thrill of pleasure shot down my spine when I saw the color rising in his cheeks too. The woman sitting across from him, ostensibly his wife judging by the rings and the way she shook her head, looked mortified.

My brain did shuttle runs in my skull as I tried to remember what was supposed to come next. Should I continue to stare him down like an alpha wolf to a weak male entering its territory? Was I supposed to fight him now? How did those cowboys handle this, again?

Luckily for everyone involved, I didn’t have to decide. Our server stopped by our table and, seeing the growing distress, asked what went wrong. When I told her about the man, I was prepared to stick to my guns, waiting for what I assumed was the inevitable – he would call me a liar or worse, and his posturing would have more weight than my concerns because, by the chance of being born a boy, he’s closer to image of renegade cowboy by default. I’d seen it happen to me and other women, and I had promised myself that I’d never abandon my guns just because a man’s were taken more seriously.

Turns out I didn’t need them at all.

Our server apologized for experiencing this on her watch, saying that as a person of color she understood, because she’d had her share of customers thinking of her in automatic stereotypes. She left our table, and I saw her speak with another member of the staff, a manager type, who then spoke quietly to the muttering man.

Meanwhile other servers poured out of the kitchen, telling us they loved us, bringing us champagne and toasting to our friends’ engagement.

All the proclamations were made in loud, certain terms, causing enough of a scene to have a good chunk of the patrons turn to watch. Suddenly, the idea of being a lone rock in a sea of touchy-feely chaos felt less attractive, less natural.

A different tradition, one dating back to before this was Montana, was taking over the cardboard façade of cowboy masculinity. This is a beautiful place, but the land suffers no fools. Living here in modern times can be a struggle against the elements, let alone when the earliest of the indigenous tribes called it home.

Neighbors, then, have become a lifeline. A little more than a million people share more than 147,700 square miles in Montana, allowing for those wide, open spaces immortalized in song, but also making it difficult to reach out in times of struggle. Those stoic movie cowboys, the ones with steely eyes and hands strong enough to pull a fencepost straight out of the ground, do exist here, and they know who their neighbors are. They probably even hold on to a spare key to their neighbor’s house, if it’s the kind of place where people bother to lock their doors.

That night at the sushi restaurant, while I thought I was trying to cowboy up, others saw a neighbor in distress and responded. The outpouring of support and thoughtfulness brought many Montanans’ values of respect, independence, and community into sharper focus for me.

The man left the restaurant before us, without incident. As we stood to leave, the adrenaline that had prepared me to confront him was draining from my limbs, leaving them heavy. We drove the 15-mile stretch of highway home, and I knew my understanding of the renegade cowboy had shifted.

You can go out and ride the fences, solve problems on your own and even live self-sufficiently in a place where your neighbors can’t hear you shout.

But unless you’ve got people or a purpose to stand up with and for, you’re all hat and no cattle.