Memories of Gold Read Online Free Page B

Miserables.
    At six o’clock, an hour or more before the saloon would be busy enough for the ladies to enter, Josie came in from her afternoon spent purchasing cloth and ordering new dresses from the town seamstress with a few of the other girls. She took off her sunhat, set down her parasol, and began ripping open packages of ribbons and rouge. Mary glanced up, smiled and shook her head slightly before continuing with her studies.
    Though Josie was her best friend in the house and they always got along well, Mary didn’t understand why she allowed every nickel and scrap of gold she got from the men to fall right into the hands of the shopkeepers along Main Street, never saving anything for longer than a week.
    To make things worse, Josie had a child, a young girl named Alice. Josie had come to the saloon when Alice was just a fatherless baby. A woman in town took care of the girl, and Josie had to scrimp at the end of each week to get the money to pay her. There had even been a few times when she had needed to borrow money from Mary for an emergency, paying her back after the next big weekend.
    Although dresses for work, tutoring, books, and Emma’s care were necessary expenses for Mary, much of the rest of her earnings stayed hidden under the floorboard, and every few weeks she would take what she had accumulated to Shasta’s only bank and deposit it into her account, where she had over six hundred dollars saved up. If she could get the amount up to a thousand, she could consider what to do next and possibly even open up her own little shop in town—the thought of running her own business intrigued her, even though she had no idea what she could sell. Maybe then she would be able to care for her sister herself. For the time being, though, she had to wait.
    Once Josie finished opening the last package and putting away the final items, a brooch and a comb with turquoise embellishments, she interrupted Mary’s reverie. “Mary, we should go eat supper before our night begins. Daisy’s making ham and corn bread, and another slice of her dry ham is liable to kill me. How about we go down to Lee’s and get some Hangtown Fry?”
    Mary wrinkled her nose. Hangtown Fry was a dish made of bacon, eggs, and oysters scrambled together. “I can’t for the life of me understand why you and the other girls like that mess, but I’ll go with you.”
    Mary normally wouldn’t spend her money to dine out when she got free fare at the saloon, but her time with Emma still hung over her head like a cloud, and a supper away would be a pleasant change. Besides, Josie was right: Daisy’s ham was often horrid, bless her heart.
    Josie giggled and clapped her hands, and she rushed out to tell Daisy where they were going as Mary removed a little more of her hard-earned gold. She was glad Josie was in a good mood; her daughter had been sick the week before, and the extra expense and worry had taken some of the life out of her for a while. Not to mention her own illness, whatever it was.
    Mary had no idea what exactly was wrong with Josie, but she was hesitant to ask. Her friend had tried to hide it, but she’d been pale and tired for several days, and occasional bouts of coughing made it hard for her to sleep at night. Josie brushed it off as the same cold her daughter had gotten, but her health hadn’t seemed to improve any. She was happy to see Josie’s spirits lifted.
    They walked out into the evening, the setting sun painting the clouds pink against the darkening sky, and made their way to the edge of Chinatown. Lee’s restaurant straddled the edges of Shasta and the village the Chinese immigrants had created, allowing him to gain white customers without the two races intermingling too much, which often caused trouble.
    The tiny restaurant was crowded as always, but the two girls found a place to sit and ordered their meals, then discussed the events of the day. Mary knew not to babble too much about the books she was reading—Josie