It took Norah the better part of fifty miles and Trip’s pocketknife to work her way into the package. He wasn’t happy about the wait. “You’re not very long on patience today,” she said to him. He stopped drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “Just anxious to know what’s in there.” Norah reached in and pulled out a small book, setting it on the dash. Then, remembering the contents of the last packet, she held the bottom of her T-shirt out with one hand and dumped the rest of the contents into it. “Hmmmm.” “That doesn’t sound promising.” “Actually it is. The book,” she said, retrieving it from the dashboard. The title and name of the author were on the cover, along with a small gold rectangle showing a man sitting on what looked like bales of cotton overlooking a river, with a steamship in the background. “It’s a copy of Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain. The copyright is 1883, which probably means it’s a first edition. “There’s also an ancient photo of a Conestoga wagon, a small bronze statue of”—she brought it close so she could read the tiny lettering on the base—“Lewis and Clark, and a string of pearls.”
