When I finished, I stopped and stood still. I half expected him to yell at me, or throw me out of his office and say he never wanted to see me again.
There was a long silence. I don’t think he knew what to do with me either. He probably wanted to throw me out! But then again, I knew he wanted the article on Jessie Fremont!
Finally he spoke again.
“Where did you get this stuff?” he asked.
“My sources are confidential,” I answered. I’d been practicing that line all the way from Mariposa! Ankelita told me that’s what I ought to say if asked where I’d got my information.
“Nobody could know some of the things you say unless they knew the lady personally. You don’t know Jessie Fremont . . . do you, Hollister?” His voice was incredulous at the very thought, even though he knew I couldn’t possibly know her.
“Confidential,” I repeated. “I can tell you nothing about where any of this came from.”
He squirmed in his chair. I could tell he hated not being in control.
There was another long silence.
“All right . . . all right, Hollister, you win! I’ll print it. I don’t know how you got it, but it’s good, it’s original, and I want it.”
“And the matter of pay?” I said, still holding the rest of the pages.
“I told you before I would pay you a dollar an article . . . until you’ve proven yourself.”
“I think this is worth more than what I’ve sent you before.”
“So now it’s you who’s welching on a deal, eh, Hollister?” He chuckled.
“I never agreed to a dollar,” I said.
“Okay, you’re right, this is worth more. You’ve done some good work here. I’ll pay you two dollars for it.”
“I want eight dollars.”
“Eight dollars!”
I didn’t say anything.
“That’s highway robbery! I can’t pay that kind of money for a single article. If word got out that I’d paid a woman eight dollars, the men would be wanting sixteen for every little thing they brought me.”
“This has nothing to do with whether a man or woman wrote it. Somebody had to do the work to uncover this story, and whether it was a man or a woman, it seems to me the words would be worth the same. And I figure the words of this story are worth eight dollars. She might be our next first lady, and nobody else has some of this stuff I’ve written here.”
“You are a huckster, Hollister, a downright rogue! All right, I’ll give you four. I can’t pay a penny more!”
“I’m sure the Sacramento Union or maybe the Courier would like to take a look at it.”
“You can’t do that. You’re under contract to me—don’t forget, we have a three-article deal on the other election.”
“A deal you did not feel you needed to honor a couple weeks ago,” I said. “I’m under no obligation to the Alta; I simply wanted to offer the story to you first.”
I reached for the page five still lying on his desk.
“Good day, Mr. Kemble,” I said, and again turned to go. This time I made it almost to the door before I again heard his voice. Even as he said it I could tell from the grating tone that it killed him to give in to the demands of a woman.
“Six” came his voice behind me.
I stopped, and slowly turned around. He was standing behind his desk, both hands resting upon it, sort of leaning toward me, his face glaring.
I stood where I was and returned his stare. Two seconds went by, then five. It seemed like an eternity that we stood there, looking deeply into each other’s eyes. Whether it was a struggle of wills, or a contest of stubbornness, I don’t know. But in that moment, I was thankful for Ma and her Belle blood!
Finally I spoke. My voice was very soft, but very determined. I had made up my mind even before I’d entered his office, and I wasn’t about to back down now.
“Mr. Kemble, I said I wanted eight dollars. I believe the article is worth eight dollars. And if you want it for the Alta, you are going to have to pay eight dollars. Otherwise I am going to walk out this door and take what I have to one of your competitors.”
Several more seconds went by.
Finally Mr. Kemble sat down and exhaled a long sigh.
“All right, you win. Eight dollars.” His voice sounded tired. I could hardly believe it—I had beaten him.
“I’d like the money today,” I said.
“Do you never stop, Hollister?” he asked in disbelief. “Don’t you trust me for payment?”
“You told me yourself, Mr. Kemble, that the newspaper business was a tough business. I’m just following your advice. You also told me that if I thought it was unfair I could take my articles elsewhere. It seems that your own advice would apply to you too. If you do not like my terms, you do not have to accept them. I’m simply saying, my terms for this article are eight dollars in advance, and then you may have my article on Jessie Benton Fremont.”
He sighed again.
“Go see the cashier,” he said. “Tell him I’m authorizing payment for an article. He’ll check with me, and then you’ll have your payment.”
I turned and left his office and did as he said. An hour later I was walking back up the street to Miss Bean’s. I felt like shouting at the top of my lungs.
I had done it!
Chapter 36
Last Night Alone on the Trail
Two nights later I was camping between Auburn and Colfax beside a blazing fire. I’d be home the next day.
I’d spent the previous night with Miss Baxter in Sacramento, and I could have slept this night in Auburn. But somehow I felt that I wanted to finish off this adventure alone, by myself, beside a campfire I had built, sleeping under the stars. I suppose it was a dangerous thing for a young woman to do. After all, even if Buck Krebbs was gone, there were a thousand more just like him, and California was still no tame land.
But I wanted to do it. By the time I rode back into Miracle Springs tomorrow, I would have spent eleven days alone. It was like nothing I’d ever done before. I’d gone off chasing a dream—in search of a story I didn’t even know existed. I had found it, written it, and sold it for eight dollars! I’d met some interesting people. I’d taken care of myself. I’d faced some scary situations and come through them. I was eleven days older, but I felt about eleven years older! Something inside me had changed. I had learned some things about myself, about what I was capable of. And this seemed the fitting way for me to spend my last night.
I had also learned to pray in some new ways, and to depend on God more than I’d ever had to before. And now I knew a little more about what that verse in the Bible really meant about God guiding our steps. He had really guided mine!
I guess I felt I had grown up a little bit. Well . . . grown up a lot. Especially standing there staring back at Mr. Kemble and saying if he didn’t pay me the eight dollars, I was leaving. I had met a lady who knew the man who might be the country’s next President. The next first lady had read one of my articles, and now I’d written an article about her. Why, I practically had an invitation to the White House! I felt like I’d gone halfway around the world in those eleven days. I’d talked about and thought about some big and important things. And now here I was going back to little Miracle Springs in the foothills of the California gold country. Yet another part of me had been opened to a bigger and wider world, and I knew I’d never be the same again.
I could be a writer now; I already was a writer. Maybe I’d do other things. Maybe I would teach or keep working for the Freight Company. But at least I knew I could do it. I could go into the office of an editor of a California newspaper and put my pages down on the desk and say, “There’s a story that Corrie Belle Hollister wrote, Mister. I wrote it, and folks are going to want to read it!”
So I sat there staring into my little fire, eating dried venison and hardtack and some apples Miss Baxter gave me. I felt peaceful inside. Peaceful and thoughtful and even a little melancholy. This had been an adventure, but n
ow it was over. I knew I’d face disappointments in the future, and probably write a lot more articles that wouldn’t get printed. And there would probably be times Mr. Kemble would win and would stare me back into a corner and make me give in and do it his way.
But I would always have the memory of this journey, of feeling a story calling out to me though I didn’t even know what it was, of going out and uncovering it. Next time I’d have more courage to ask questions and to knock on doors and to search and try to uncover something. I was lucky this time, meeting Ankelita Carter. But I had met her because I struck out and tried something scary. Maybe next time, though it would be different, God would lead me to someone else, to a different set of circumstances that would take me in the direction of the story I was after.
There were no sounds around me but the crackling of the fire and the crickets in the woods. I hoped no wild animals came. I was especially afraid of bears and snakes, and I didn’t even have a gun—only a small knife.
But God would protect me and take care of me. He had so far. Why would this night be any different?
Maybe that’s one reason I wanted to spend the last night alone like this on the trail. I had been nervous and anxious plenty of times in the last ten days. Yet I hadn’t been in any situation that was downright “dangerous.” I wasn’t really in any danger now. But I wanted to prove to myself that if I had to, if I was out tracking a story again sometime, and I did have to fend for myself—up in the mountains, or down in the valley where there was no town—I could do it. Maybe someday I’d even travel farther from home, or back East—or maybe I would go to the White House someday. Wherever I went, I wanted to know that even if I was all alone, I could stand on my own two feet and say to God, “Well, it’s just the two of us, Lord. And that’s plenty to handle just about anything that comes along!”
My eyes were fixed on the bright orange coals of the fire, and I found myself praying quietly as I sat there.
“Lord, I am grateful to you for doing like you promised, and for guiding my footsteps on this trip. I don’t know whether I trusted you very well or not. I tried to, but then sometimes it’s hard to remember. Yet you just kept taking care of me, anyway. And, Lord, I thank you, too, for the article, and for all the ways you have been helping my writing this last year. You showed me a while back that trusting you is the way you give us the desires of our hearts. But you’ve let me be a writer too! You’ve given me that dream, Lord, and I am so thankful to you! Help me to write just like you want me to. And teach me to trust you more! I really do want to, God. I want to do just what you want me to do, and I want to be just exactly the person you want Corrie Hollister to be.”
I drew in a deep breath. I felt so peaceful. God had been good to me!
The night air was getting chilly. I lay down and pulled my blankets tight around me. And still staring into the fire, the sounds of the crickets in my ears, I gradually fell asleep.
Chapter 37
Home Again
I’d left Miracle on a Monday. It was now Friday afternoon, a week and a half later, the 29th of August. I wondered if Almeda would be at the office, but I was actually relieved when she wasn’t. I wanted to see everyone at once.
I can hardly describe the feelings I had inside as I went around the last turn in the road and the house came into view. I felt as if I’d gone to a foreign country and was now returning after many years. Yet it had only been eleven days!
Almost immediately Becky saw me. But instead of coming to meet me, she turned around and ran inside, then out again, then up the creek, screaming at the top of her twelve-year-old lungs, “Corrie’s here! Corrie’s home . . . it’s Corrie . . . Corrie’s back!”
Within seconds people were pouring through the door of the house, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Pa and Uncle Nick and Mr. Jones running down from the mine. By then my eyes were full of tears; everybody was hugging and laughing and shouting and asking questions, and I could hardly tell who was who. I was so happy, yet I couldn’t stop crying even at the same time as I was laughing and smiling and trying to talk. And I don’t even remember getting off my horse, but there I was surrounded by the people I loved so much, arms and hands and voices all coming at me at once. Every once in a while I’d hear a voice I knew—Katie’s one minute, then Alkali Jones’s high hee, hee, hee, and of course all my sisters and brothers shouting at once. The only two voices I don’t remember hearing were the two whose sound I loved more than all the others. But Pa and Almeda and I got a chance to visit quietly alone later. The three of us stayed up and talked around the fire way past midnight, and I told them everything.
“I’ve got to tell you, Corrie,” said Almeda when I was through, “we were mighty concerned about you.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re starting to remind me of myself, girl!” said Pa with a smile. “Maybe it ain’t just the Belle blood, but some of the Hollister too. Tarnation, but I’d like to see you in ten years! You’re gonna be some woman, that’s all I got to say.”
I could tell that in spite of Almeda’s concern, Pa was proud of me. I suppose he’d figured I was a mite timid—which I was!—for a daughter of his. So I think he liked what I’d done. He’d been acting a little different toward me all evening—not just treating me like I was older and wasn’t a little girl anymore, but also more like a son who had done something brave. Being gone a few days wasn’t all that courageous a thing. But because it was me, timid little Corrie Belle, I think it gave Pa kind of a special feeling to see his daughter do it. Zack acted different, too, as if I’d proved my right to be the oldest Hollister.
Once the article on Jessie Fremont appeared in the August 30 issue of the Daily Alta—on the second page with a big bold caption over three columns, with my name right under the title!—my life would never be the same again. Whether I liked it or not, ever after that I was a reporter, a writer, and much would change as a result. How many times I must have read those words over: “The Real Jessie Benton Fremont . . . by Corrie Belle Hollister.” I was so thankful inside, so thankful to God. More and more, as I reflected back on those eleven days, I realized that none of it would have happened had he not been guiding my steps just as he promised. Even though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, and even though I hadn’t even been thinking of him through some of it, he had been there all the time, going along the path just in front of me.
As I read over the article and the caption and my name underneath, I couldn’t help wondering if I shouldn’t have used my full given name, Cornelia. But when I later suggested it to Mr. Kemble, he said, “Too late, Corrie. Folks know you now. And once you’re writing with one name, you can’t change it any more than you can change horses in mid-river, as the saying goes. No, you stick with Corrie. It’s a good name, and folks are starting to recognize it.”
The excitement of my trip and the article died down, especially after church on Sunday when everybody asked me all about it, and then the following Monday I went into the office with Almeda and spent a regular day working in town.
I’d almost forgotten about the Miracle Springs election. Almeda hadn’t said much about it since my return, but all of a sudden the church service on Sunday seemed to stir it up again, even more than before. People came up to me afterward, welcoming me home, asking me about the trip and what I’d done, and most everybody said something about my interviewing them earlier about the mayor’s election. Sometimes it was just a little comment, like, “I been thinking about that conversation we had,” or they might say, “I might like t’ talk t’ you again, Corrie, if yer still gonna do interviewin’ about it.”
Most of the folks were quiet about it, as if they didn’t want anyone to hear them talking to me. And Mr. Royce acted pretty friendly at the service too, like I reckon a fellow ought to be if he’s trying to make people vote for him. He was greeting the men and their wives and shaking hands. And he even came up to me and gave me a light slap on the shoulder and said “Good to have you back
, Corrie!” before he went on to visit someone else.
But in the background amid all the hubbub of the after-church visiting, lots of people seemed as if they wanted to talk to me again about the election. My getting back to town seemed to stir up people’s thinking in a new way.
All day Monday my mind was on the interview article, going over what I’d done and things people had told me and thinking of how to go about starting to write the article. There were only two months left before the election, so I couldn’t delay too long. On Tuesday, the Alta came with my article in it, which set my mind running in a hundred directions at once! So it wasn’t until Wednesday that I really settled myself down enough to think about the interviews and article again. That morning I gathered my papers together and put them in my satchel to take with me into town to work. I hoped to see some of the people who’d talked to me at church. There were still a few people in town I hadn’t interviewed yet. As I went through my notes and quotes from what people had told me before and started to consider actually beginning to write the article in a way that Mr. Kemble’d like, I found myself getting enthusiastic about it again.
But that very evening something happened that suddenly changed my thoughts not only about the article I wanted to write but about the whole mayor’s election.
Chapter 38
Threats
Not long after Almeda and I got back home from town, we heard a single-horse carriage approach outside and then slow to a stop. Pa went to the window, and when he turned back inside, his face wore a look of question and significance.
“Franklin Royce” was all he said, half in statement, half in question.
We all looked at one another, but the knock on the door came before we had the chance to wonder fully what the visit could possibly be about.
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