Once, roused by a jerk, she lay awake in the darkness while the thought came to her that she and all her fellow passengers were really at the mercy of the engineer.

Who was he, and did he stand at his throttle keen and vigilant, thinking of the lives intrusted to him?
Such thoughts vaguely annoyed Carley, and she dismissed them.
A long half-day wait in Chicago was a tedious preliminary to the second part of her journey.

But at last she found herself aboard the California Limited, and went to bed with a relief quite a stranger to her.

The glare of the sun under the curtain awakened her.

Propped up on her pillows, she looked out at apparently endless green fields or pastures, dotted now and then with little farmhouses and tree-skirted villages.
This country, she thought, must be the prairie land she remembered lay west of the Mississippi.
Later, in the dining car, the steward smilingly answered her question: "This is Kansas, and those green fields out there are the wheat that feeds the nation." Carley was not impressed.