Glory Read Online Free Page B

words.”
    “Why . . . it’s a Bible. Haven’t you seen a Bible before?” Mary asked and then dissolved into a fit ofwheezing and coughing. Glory noticed that Mary coughed more as the sun went down. She seemed to have a powerful affliction.
    “Don’t reckon I have. . . . Poppy had something like it that he’d found on the trail.” She looked away. “Couldn’t neither one of us read.”
    Patience looked shocked. “I thought everyone knew about the Bible and read it.”
    “Well, I didn’t. And I ain’t read it,” Glory admitted softly.
    Harper’s head popped out of her bedroll. “You can’t read? Even I can read. Some.”
    Ruth leaned closer to Glory. “Don’t pay any attention to Harper. I’d rather hear someone read the beautiful words that God has given us than read them myself.”
    “Dawn comes early,” Jackson called. “Time to turn in.” He doused the lantern, and the girls settled down for the night.
    Poppy had said that same thing every night before blowing out the lamp. “Time to turn in.” The familiar phrase reminded her of her loss as she rolled into her blankets. She lay on her back and stared up at the stars and wished that she could have Poppy back. Knowing that she couldn’t, she wished she were already in “town” starting her new life.
    “Good night,” Patience whispered.
    Rolling to her side, Glory smiled. “Good night.”
    For the first time in weeks, she wasn’t alone, and it felt good. So very good. And she’d learned a few things this day. Not all people were as bad as Amos; and if she tried, she could walk a long, long way.
    Oh, Poppy, I wish I was back home in my own bed and you were sleeping across the room. Her eyes stung, and she rubbed them. The wind must have kicked up some dust. She coughed, mumbling under her breath.
    Jackson’s gentle voice drifted to her. “Go to sleep, Glory.”
    “Yes, sir. Thank you for giving me a ride. I’m much obliged.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    If nothing else, Poppy had taught her manners, but she suspected there was a lot Poppy hadn’t, or couldn’t have, taught her.
    Closing her eyes, she listened to the fire crackle and burn lower. It was good that she’d run away. If Amos had followed her, maybe he’d given up by now and gone back to wherever he’d come from.
    And it was good that this wagonload of girls and Jackson had come along when they had. Real good. She didn’t feel so alone now.
    She fell asleep thinking how nice it felt to be with people—people who talked and laughed and knew about places called “town.”

Chapter Three
    The sun was below the tops of the trees when the prairie schooner rolled into Squatter’s Bend the following evening.
    Glory was dumbfounded by the bustling activity; she couldn’t do anything but stare openmouthed at the wide, dusty street and all of the funny-looking buildings. She’d only gone with Poppy when she was a young child, before she could be left alone at the shanty. She didn’t remember the buildings being so tall and odd looking, as if they were more of an afterthought than an honest-to-goodness intention.
    Mary leaned over to tap Glory’s mouth shut. “You’ll catch a fly. Haven’t you ever seen people before?”
    “I’ve seen a few, but never this many in one place.”
    Glory couldn’t get enough of the strange sights. She wasreminded of the picture Poppy had of all those men standing at a graveside, all those women crying. She had thought it was really something and had stared at those bawling folks for hours on end. But gawking at a picture full of people had been nothing like the spectacle playing out before her today. In her eyes, Squatter’s Bend bested a burying scene any day of the week.
    If she and Poppy spotted a passing wagon twice a year, they were lucky, leastways she’d thought so. Then there’d only been a ma and pa and a few young’uns in it, never this many people and never all bunched in one place. Fact was, she hadn’t known there were