Josiah's Treasure Read Free

superstitious to commit it to paper. “Then I’ll make down payments on the equipment we need—first and foremost the lithograph press—take you and the others to see the space, and begin tidying and organizing. In a week, the first of our supplies should arrive. We can start to move in then.”
    “That’s so exciting, I think I’m gonna burst!”
    “Please don’t, because I need you whole,” Sarah teased.
    The cable car clanged up the road, and they hurried across the cobbles.
    “I predict Whittier and Company Custom Design Studio will be a roaring success,” Minnie proclaimed with a dramatic waveof her forefinger. “Because if anyone can do it, you can, Miss Sarah.”
    “If anyone can do it,
we
can.” Sarah squeezed the girl’s arm. “Remember that.”
    Minnie giggled and Sarah joined in, the sound of their carefree laughter snatched by the breeze swirling along the street, carried off with the fog lifting into the blue, blue skies. Their spirits lighter than a bubble floating.
    And hopefully not
, thought Sarah with a shiver,
just as fragile.

Two
    “A ccording to the city directory,” the hotel clerk spread his fingers across the pages of the book and pointed, the freckles dotting the backs of his hands looking like splashes of orange paint, “he’s listed as having an address on Jones Street, sir.”
    Daniel squinted at the entry, upside-down from his vantage point across the waist-high desk. There he was. After all the months Daniel had searched, he’d finally located the man. In a San Francisco directory, owned by every hotel in the city, plain as could be.
    “This directory’s over a year old, though. We haven’t received the latest, so I can’t guarantee the address is still current,” the clerk added, apologetic for any shortcomings exhibited by the Occidental Hotel. “Might have moved on by now. Folks around here come and go like ants on a hill.”
    “It’ll do for a start.”
    Slowly, Daniel spun the directory on the smooth walnut surface until the entry was right-side up. He traced the print with his thumb as if the contact of his skin on paper would verify the reality of what his eyes saw. The noises of the hotel—the chatter of guests lounging on the plump furniture, the tinkle of the piano meant to entertain them, the rattle of the elevator arriving on the ground floor—became a distant buzz. All Daniel noticed, his entire concentration, was focused on two words.
Josiah Cady
, in wavy typeset. He was still alive. Daniel had started to wonder.
    I’ve found you at last, Josiah.
Dear old Pa. The scoundrel who had gone to strike it rich in the gold fields never to return or ever send a dime home, leaving his family without the proper means to survive. Daniel felt heat surge, and he curled his fist atop the open book. He had found him, just as Daniel had promised his mother on her deathbed he would, had promised his sisters. An answer to a prayer, if he ever prayed. Which he didn’t. Not any longer.
    “You’ve come a long way to unearth the fellow,” observed the clerk, filling the dead silence. He glanced at Daniel’s fist then shot a nervous look at his fellow clerk, helping another guest at the far end of the main reception desk. “All the way from Chicago, eh?”
    Daniel uncurled his hand and willed himself to relax. He would save his anger for when he met Josiah face-to-face. “Yep.”
    The clerk exhaled his tension and smiled. “One of the fellows who work the dining room says the train can get here from Illinois in just five days. Is that so, Mr. Cady?”
    “I can’t tell you, because I didn’t come directly.” No, he’d been traveling since October, poking through every godforsaken mining town between here and the Rocky Mountains, across wind-swept wastelands and craggy snowcapped mountains, searching for traces of the man who had been more in love with gold than with his family. “Where is this address on Jones Street?”
    The clerk released a low whistle.