Then the Rockies began to ice up along the spring horizon beyond the shoot-’em-up town of Denver. Uncle Henry had never seen such a sight. He declared himself bewiligered at their height. “They surely do remind me of the Great Kels of Oz,” agreed Dorothy, “though the Kels looked less bossy, somehow.” She tried to ignore the glance Uncle Henry shared with Aunt Em.

Some of the passes being snowed over, even in early April, the train made slower progress than the timetable had promised. Aunt Em fretted that their hotel room would be given away. Uncle Henry replied with an attempt at savoir faire. “I’l wire ahead at the next opportunity, Em. Hush yourself and enjoy the nation.”

What a charade, that they were accustomed to taking fancified holidays. They had little extra money for emergencies, Dorothy knew. They were spending their savings.

The train chuffed along valeys noisy with rushing waters, inched across trestles as if testing them for purchase. It lolygagged up slopes. One cloudy afternoon it maneuvered through so many switchbacks that the travelers lost al notion of east and west. In her seat, Dorothy hummed a little. Once she thought she saw a castle on a ridge, but it was only a tricky rock formation.

“But I never before saw a rock that looked like a castle,” said Aunt Em brightly.

You never saw a castle, thought Dorothy, and tried not to be disappointed.

They worried their way through Nevada and its brownish springtime and at last came down into Californ- eye-ay through a napland of orchards and vineyards. When the train paused outside Sacramento to take on tinder, Dorothy saw a white peacock strutting along next to the tracks like a general surveying his troops. It paused at her window and fanned out its impossible stitchery. She could have sworn it was a White Peacock and that it would speak. But Toto began to yap out the open window, and the Bird kept its own counsel.

Finaly the train shrugged and chuffed into San Francisco, a city so big and filthy and confounding that Uncle Henry dared to murmur, “This beats your old Emerald City, I’l warrant.”

“Henry,” said his wife. “Pursed lips are kind lips.”

They found their hotel. The clerk was nice enough, a clean young man whose lips weren’t so much pursed as rubied. He forgave their delay but could no longer supply them with a room only one flight up, as they’d been promised. Aunt Em refused to try Mr. Otis’s hydraulic elevator so they had to climb five flights. They carried their own bags to avoid having to tip.

That night they ate Kaiser rols they’d bought at the train station. Al the next day they stayed in the hotel’s penitentialy severe room, as Aunt Em recovered from the taxation to her nerves caused by the swaying of railway cars. She could not tolerate being left alone in a hotel chamber on their first day, not when it felt as if the whole building was rocking and bucking as the train had done.