Ruby Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Here, I didn’t spill any.”
    “Good.” Ruby tapped some of the powder into the cup and stirred, then drank it down, making a face at the bitterness.
    “Icky, huh? I don’t like medicine either.” Opal looked out the window. “It sure is taking us a long time to get to Dakota Territory.”
    Ruby would have laughed at both the comment and the doleful look on Opal’s face if she had felt up to it. “We are moving very fast. It wasn’t that long ago that the only way west was by horse-drawn wagons. And it took months then, not days. Take out your history book and read the next chapter so we can talk about it. Write down the words you don’t understand. Perhaps if I sleep for a time, I will wake up feeling better.” She stared sternly at her sister. “And don’t you get out of that seat except to use the necessary, and then come straight back. You hear me?”
    Opal nodded, her arms locked across her chest and lower lip thrust out enough to attract the coal dust that floated so freely through the air.
    “Opal?”
    “I heard you.”
    “And you will mind?”
    A nod.
    “Good. I am trusting you.” Ruby stood and wrapped the blanket all around her, then using her arm as a pillow, folded herself into the two seats and closed her eyes. She heard the door open and felt the cool draught on her face, but opening her eyes took more effort than she could summon.
    “How is your sister?” The conductor’s voice echoed through her fog.
    “Not so good.”
    “You’d best be taking good care of her, eh?”
    “I know.”
    “You need to heat something up, you can do so on the stove.”
    “I will tell her.”
    “And the coffeepot is always on.”
    And like mud, totally undrinkable . Ruby fell asleep on that thought.
    The conductor’s voice announcing another stop woke her. She had no idea how much later. Seeing her reflection in the window told her that night had fallen. Several people were lined up with their baggage, ready to disembark.
    She glanced at the other seat to see it empty, the quilt rumpled as though Opal had been there and left in a hurry.
    Surely she is in the necessary . The thought made Ruby realize she needed to go there also, so she sat up carefully, grateful that the pounding in her head had ceased.
    Opal was not in the necessary.
    Ruby stared into the wavy mirror. She looked bad enough to scare small children. Huge purple swaths circled under her eyes, her hair hung in disarray with tendrils hanging and pointing every which way, and her cheeks held sufficient pallor to indicate incipient death throes. She rinsed her mouth out with water, dampened her fingers to tuck and smooth the errant strands of hair, and patted her cheeks to force back some semblance of color into her face, other than that of her red nose.
    Now to locate her missing sister.
    She thrust open the door and exited, missing a fatal crash with a cigar-smoking gentleman by a mere hairsbreadth.
    “Excuse me, miss.” He stepped back and pressed himself against the train wall to allow her passage.
    “I . . . I’m sorry. Pardon me.” She knew her face now bore sufficient color. The heat of it fairly radiated in front of her.
    She swayed her way back to her seat to find Opal huddled under the opposite quilt.
    “Are you all right, Opal, dear?”
    A nod moved the part of the quilt nearest the armrest at the wall. At least she thought it to be a nod. “Has something happened I should know about?”
    “Indeed, it has,” said a voice just to the right and behind her.
    Ruby turned to find a red-faced man whose midsection stuck out far beyond the foot-long cigar clamped between fleshy lips. The man’s eyebrows formed a straight line above a bulbous nose, slightly flattened at the end, that reminded her more of a pig’s snout than a human feature.
    Ruby felt the first real laugh since they had left the Brandons’ begin in her midsection and work its way upward. She covered it with the closest thing to a ladylike cough that she could