noon
In the still air , after the morning breeze had been burnt out , the heat from the engine was a torment about her feet ; and if there was another car ahead , the trail of dust sifted into her throat . Unless there was traffic to keep her awake , she nodded at the wheel ; she was merely a part of a machine that ran on without seeming to make any impression on the prairie 's endlessness . Over and over there were the same manipulations : slow for down hill , careful of sand at the bottom , letting her out on a smooth stretch , waving to a lonely farmwife in her small , baked dooryard , slow to pass a hay-wagon , gas for up the next hill , and repeat the round all over again . But she was joyous till noon ; and with mid-afternoon a new strength came which , as rose crept above the golden haze of dust , deepened into serene meditation . And she was finding the one secret of long-distance driving -- namely , driving ; keeping on , thinking by fifty-mile units , not by the ten-mile stretches of Long Island runs ; and not fretting over anything whatever . She seemed charmed ; if she had a puncture -- why , she put on the spare . If she ran out of gas -- why , any passing driver would lend her a gallon .