Once outside, however, the feasibility of asking our road as we came to it did not seem very practical, so I went to Brentano’s to buy some maps. They showed me a large one of the United States with four routes crossing it, equally black and straight and inviting. I promptly decided upon the one through the Allegheny Mountains to Pittsburgh and St. Louis when two women I knew came in, one of them Mrs. O., a conspicuous hostess in the New York social world, and a Californian by birth. “The very person I need,” I thought. “She knows the country thoroughly and her idea of comfort and mine would be the same.”
“Can you tell me,” I asked her, “which is the best road to California?”
Without hesitating she answered: “The Union Pacific.”
“No, I mean motor road.”
Compared with her expression the worst skeptics I had encountered were enthusiasts. “Motor road to California!” She looked at me pityingly. “There isn’t any.”
“Nonsense! There are four beautiful ones and if you read the accounts of those who have crossed them you will find it impossible to make a choice of the beauties and comforts of each.”
She looked steadily into my face as though to force calmness to my poor deluded mind. “You!” she said. “A woman like you to undertake such a trip! Why, you couldn’t live through it! I have crossed the continent one hundred and sixty odd times. I know every stick and stone of the way. You don’t know what you are undertaking.”
“It can’t be difficult; the Lincoln Highway goes straight across.”
“In an imaginary line like the equator!” She pointed at the map that was opened on the counter. “Once you get beyond the Mississippi the roads are trails of mud and sand. This district along here by the Platte River is wild and dangerous; full of the most terrible people, outlaws and ‘bad men’ who would think nothing of killing you if they were drunk and felt like it. There isn’t any hotel. Tell me, where do you think you are going to stop? These are not towns; they are only names on a map, or at best two shacks and a saloon! This place North Platte why, you couldn’t stay in a place like that!”