t."

As his arms moved toward her she answered all her doubts with "Sweet, so
sweet."

CHAPTER III

UNDER the rolling clouds of the prairie a moving mass of steel. An
irritable clank and rattle beneath a prolonged roar. The sharp scent of
oranges cutting the soggy smell of unbathed people and ancient baggage.

Towns as planless as a scattering of pasteboard boxes on an attic floor.
The stretch of faded gold stubble broken only by clumps of willows
encircling white houses and red barns.

No. 7, the way train, grumbling through Minnesota, imperceptibly
climbing the giant tableland that slopes in a thousand-mile rise from
hot Mississippi bottoms to the Rockies.

It is September, hot, very dusty.

There is no smug Pullman attached to the train, and the day coaches of
the East are replaced by free chair cars, with each seat cut into two
adjustable plush chairs, the head-rests covered with doubtful linen
towels. Halfway down the car is a semi-partition of carved oak columns,
but the aisle is of bare, splintery, grease-blackened wood. There is no
porter, no pillows, no provision for beds, but all today and all tonight
they will ride in this long steel box-farmers with perpetually tired
wives and children who seem all to be of the same age; workmen going to
new jobs; traveling salesmen with derbies and freshly shined shoes.

They are parched and cramped, the lines of their hands filled with
grime; they go to sleep curled in distorted attitudes, heads against the
window-panes or propped on rolled coats on seat-arms, and legs thrust
into the aisle. They do not read; apparently they do not think. They
wait. An early-wrinkled, young-old mother, moving as though her joints
were dry, opens a suit-case in which are seen creased blouses, a pair
of slippers worn through at the toes, a bottle of patent medicine, a tin
cup, a paper-covered book about dreams which the news-butcher has coaxed
her into buying. She brings out a graham cracker which she feeds to a
baby lying flat on a seat and wailing hopelessly. Most of the crumbs
drop on the red plush of the seat, and the woman sighs and tries to
brush them away, but they leap up impishly and fall back on the plush.

A soiled man and woman munch sandwiches and throw the crusts on the
floor. A large brick-colored Norwegian takes off his shoes, grunts in
relief, and props his feet in their thick gray socks against the seat in
front of him.

An old woman whose toothless mouth sh