The Searcher Read Online Free PDF

if I could return to that drab and unremarkable life I would. But you cannot undo what is done, and a bell once rung cannot be unrung.
    The story of how I found my fortune and used it to build a church and the town I called Redemption is a brutal and tragic one, yet there is divinity in it also. For God steered my enterprise, as He does all things, and led me to my treasure. But He did not do this with a map or a compass, He did it with tools of His own choosing: with a Bible and with a cross.
    The Bible came to me first. It was delivered into my possession by the hand of a dying priest, a Father Damon O’Brien, who had fled his native country under a cloud of persecution. I made hisacquaintance in Bannack, Montana, where he had been drawn, as had I, by the promise of gold, only to discover that it had all but run out. He was already close to death when our paths crossed. I was down on my luck and short on money and I took the bed next to his at a discount as no one else would have it, too fearful were they of the mad priest’s ravings and his violent terror of shadows that he could see but no one else could. He believed they were after stealing his Bible away, which he later told me in confidence would lead the bearer to a treasure that must finance the construction of a great church and town in the western desert.
    The foundation is here —he would say, clutching the large, battered book to his chest like it was his own child. Here is the seed that must be planted, for He is the true way and the light .
    The owner of the flophouse was too superstitious to turn the priest out onto the street, so he slipped me some extra coin to take care of the old man, keep him in drink, and, most important, keep him quiet. Being close to destitute, I took the money and mopped the priest’s sweats and brought him bread and coffee and whiskey and listened to him mutter about the visions he had seen and the riches that would flow from the ground and the great church he would build and how the Bible would act as his compass to lead him there.
    And when his time came, he told me with wide, staring eyes that he could hear the dark angels’ wings beating close by his bed, and he pressed that Bible into my hands and made me swear solemnly upon it that I would continue his mission and carry the book south.
    Carry His word into the wasteland , he said. Carry His word and also carry Him. For He will protect you and lead you to riches beyond your imagining .
    He also told me he had money hidden in a bag sewn into thelining of his coat, a little gold to seal the deal and help me on my way. I took his money and swore I would do as he asked and he signed the Bible over to me like he was signing his own death warrant, then fell into a sleep from which he never awoke.
    To my eternal shame, those promises I made to the dying priest were founded more on baser thoughts of the riches he spoke of than the higher ones of founding a church. For I believed he had lost his mind long before he let go of his life and all I heard in the clink of his gold was the sound of release from my own poverty.
    I used it to fund my passage west and I read that Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, in railroad diner cars, then mail coaches, and finally in the back of covered wagons all the way to the very edge of civilization in the southernmost parts of the Arizona territories. I expected it might contain a map or some written direction telling where to search for the fortune the priest had promised, but all I found was further evidence of the priest’s cracked mind, passages of scripture marked by his hand and other scrawlings that hinted at desert and fire and treasure, but gave no specific indication as to where any such riches might be found.
    During my lengthy travels and study of the book, and to keep it safe from thieving hands, I used it as my pillow when I slept. Soon the priest’s visions started leaking into my dreams. I saw the church in the