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. The color of the short wheat appeared soft and
rich, and the boundless fields stretched away monotonously. She had not
known there was so much flat land in the world, and she imagined it might
be a fine country for automobile roads. When she got back to her seat she
drew the blinds down and read her magazines. Then tiring of that, she went
back to the observation car.
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