Amethyst Read Online Free PDF

“I’m fine.”
    “Sho you are.” He nodded, his eyes twinkling. “It get easier. Just remember to hang on to the seat backs when you walk the aisles.”
    Since she had taken a seat right behind the ladies’ necessary, she hadn’t had to walk far. And the walls were close together.
    “Thank you.”
    “When we be out of de mountains, it gets easier.”
    She nodded. He might think it easier, but thoughts were relative. She watched him move down the aisle, swaying with the rocking of the train. Rigid as an oak plank would be more the way she described her own movements.
    Rigid was a word she often used to describe her father—especially his opinions. She thought back to their discussion. With December already here, she’d suggested she go west in the spring, but he was adamant—she needed to find Joel now and bring him home in time for Christmas. When she reminded him she needed money for a ticket, he rode into town and returned twenty dollars richer.
    She never asked where he got the money. That along with what she’d hoarded in a flat tin stuffed in her mattress allowed her to buy a round-trip ticket to Medora in Dakotah Territory. She would buy Joel’s ticket after she found him. All she knew was that Medora was located somewhere west of Fargo, which was west of St. Paul in Minnesota. She had found them on a map she studied at the schoolhouse.
    She closed her eyes and leaned back against the seat. The night before she left for Harrisburg to catch the train, she’d taken the family Bible up to her room and, with a lamp on the bedside table, opened it to read the family history on her mother’s side. Only her father’s parents were included from his side. Beside each of her children’s names her mother had written in her painstakingly precise hand, Deceased and the date. Except for Colleen’s and Patrick’s. And now Patrick was gone too.
    “Ah, Mother, so much death in your life. I don’t know how you managed.” Leaving the front pages, she thumbed through the Bible, stopping here and there to read passages or to admire the pictures. Her mother’s family must have had money to own a Bible like this one. Pictures, maps, fancy capital letters at the chapter heads. She read bits and pieces and, in flipping pages, found a lock of hair in a bit of tissue. Whose? She held the tissue to the light, but the ink on it had faded so as to be illegible. Several ribbons marked pages, and she read carefully to see what had caught a reader’s fancy some time before. Psalm 23, Psalm 139, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Paul’s letter to the Philippians. She turned the last page, and the light caught two round ridges in the back cover. She smoothed the circles with the tip of her finger, figuring something round had indented the heavy paper lining the leather cover.
    Something round and hard lay under the backing. Using a darning needle from her sewing basket, she lifted the paper with great care. How had no one else found this? Did no one ever read the Bible? She pulled out a paper-wrapped packet and laid it on the table, folding back one side of the paper to expose half of two gold coins. As if lifting the Holy Grail, she folded back the remaining paper to reveal two twenty-dollar gold pieces. Her breath caught in her throat. Who? Why? She picked up one of the coins and bit down on it. Her slight teeth marks proved what she thought. Gold, real gold.
    When she lifted both coins from the paper, she saw the writing underneath. For you, my daughter, for when you are desperate. Your loving mother . Colleen lifted the paper closer to the light. It was indeed her own mother’s handwriting. When had she come upon such largess or, most likely, how had she scrimped and hoarded to amass such a fortune?
    One thing for certain, her father had never searched the family Bible. And while he confessed to being a believer, one would not discern such faith by his actions.
    Colleen had taken the Bible with her and sewed the coins into the