The Campaign Heats Up
I tried hard to enjoy the city the next day. Miss Bean told me some things I ought to see, and I walked around a little, and took one cab. But I was afraid I’d run into Robin O’Flaridy around every corner. So it was with a great sigh of relief that I boarded the steamer the next morning back to Sacramento. And I was so glad to see Zack and Little Wolf later that afternoon that I gave them bigger hugs than I ever had before.
“What’s that for?” asked an embarrassed Zack as he half returned my embrace.
“Just to remind me how much I love you,” I answered. He was satisfied, in the boyish sort of way that avoids talking about such things, and I wasn’t inclined to explain any further.
Little Wolf hugged me back, smiled, and pretended to give my face a little slap. Even though we were two days from Miracle Springs, I already felt like I was home! Without people to love, you can get awfully lonely in a big hurry!
Back in Miracle, the mayor’s campaign had started to heat up. While I had been gone, Almeda had gotten the box of completed handbills back from the printer in Sacramento—one thousand copies printed on bright colored paper. Already Tad and Becky and Emily had been putting them around town, and Almeda had begun to call on some of the leading townsfolk, both to take them a handbill and to explain what she was doing and why. With the excitement over seeing the handbill, and then telling Pa and Almeda about my trip and the incident with Robin O’Flaridy, it was late in the evening before I remembered my most important news of all.
“But guess what?” I said. “Mr. Kemble said he’d print three articles on the election if I’d write them!”
“The state election?”
“No—Miracle Springs . . . you and Mr. Royce.”
“That is something—and three! My goodness, you are turning into a genuine newswoman, Corrie!”
“For pay?” asked Pa.
“More or less,” I answered. “A dollar each.”
“Three dollars!” exclaimed Almeda. “They paid you four times that just two weeks ago for that countryside article.”
“That was before he found out I was a girl.”
“Why—why, that is the most despicable, low—”
“Now hold on to your breeches, Almeda,” said Pa. “Don’t get all riled. You know how the world is. If Corrie’s gonna try to do a man’s job, she’s gonna have to expect this kind—”
“A man’s job! Drummond Hollister, not you too! Corrie can write just as well as any man her age, and better than some a lot older, and there’s no reason she shouldn’t be paid according to her ability.”
“Maybe you’re right, but then I figure that’s Corrie’s decision, not yours or mine. And if she doesn’t want to write an article for a measly eight bits, she don’t have to. And if she does, then it ain’t nothing for you or I to stick our noses into.”
Pa’s practicality silenced Almeda for a minute, then she smiled broadly. “Well it’s a start, Corrie.” She paused. “I’m really proud of you. Proud of your courage in standing up to a powerful man like Mr. Kemble, but even more proud of your honesty, your integrity.” She reached over and squeezed my hand. “Proud to have a young woman like you as my daughter.”
I thanked her, inside thinking how much I would like to have known what Robin O’Flaridy made for each of his articles.
With the handbill circulating and Almeda making visits to people, the whole feeling of the mayor’s campaign changed. People had been talking earlier, but I think it was mostly from interest’s sake, almost curiosity. Just the fact that Miracle Springs was going to have an election was an event in itself. Having two of the town’s most well-known people in it against each other made it all the more a topic of interest and conversation.
But now the initial novelty had worn off, and people were starting to ask more serious questions about the election. Which one of the two, Royce or Hollister, would actually make the best mayor? Who would do the most for Miracle Springs?
Almeda’s visits and the handbill got people to thinking about more than they had at first, and wondering if maybe she just might be a better person to vote for than the banker. But she was a woman, and having a woman for mayor just wasn’t done. And Royce was not only a man—he was the banker, and he still had financial power in one way or another over just about everybody around Miracle.
After several days Mr. Royce made another call at the freight office. This time none of us had seen him coming down the street, so when he walked in it took us by surprise.
“Almeda,” he said, “I’d like to talk with you for a minute.”
His voice was more serious than the last time he’d come into the office. He was trying to smile as he said the words, but you could tell he had more than just lighthearted conversation in his thoughts.
“Certainly. What is on your mind, Franklin?”
“In private?” he suggested.
Almeda nodded, then led him around the counter and into her small office. But when they went inside she made no attempt to close the door, and he did not particularly keep his voice down.
There was a pause while they both sat down. Mr. Ashton and I looked at each other sort of apprehensively and kept about our work as quietly as we could.
“Are you really sure you want to do this, Almeda?” asked Royce.
“Do what—you mean the election?”
“Yes, of course that’s what I mean. What’s the purpose? You’re doing nothing but getting people stirred up and confused. And what good can it possibly do in the end?”
“The last time you were in, Franklin, you welcomed me to the race and said you congratulated my intrepid decision, as I believe you so eloquently phrased it.” I could almost see Almeda smiling faintly as she said the words.
“That was then,” he replied, a little quickly. “I had no idea you were going to take the thing so seriously. I thought perhaps it was a ploy to help your sagging business.”
“My business is not sagging. We are managing just fine.”
“Nevertheless, you have taken it beyond the casual point, Almeda, and I simply suggest that it is time you paused to consider the implications. People are talking and, quite frankly, some of the talk has negative features to it that are not going to help my reputation and business if they persist.”
“And therefore you want me to withdraw?” asked Almeda. She wasn’t smiling now, that much I knew.
“Be reasonable, Almeda,” Mr. Royce said. “You’ve had the excitement of the campaign. You’ve thrust yourself into the center of attention. People respect you. It cannot help but heighten your image as a businesswoman. But now it’s time for you to face the realistic facts. No town is going to elect a woman mayor, and the longer you continue, the more the potential damage to my reputation and my business. And if I’m going to be the next mayor of Miracle Springs, both the bank and my image in the people’s thoughts need to be solid. And all this is not to mention the lasting impression your loss will leave. Right now you are riding high in the public mind. But after the election, your image, and perhaps even the reputation of your business itself, will be tarnished and you will be seen as a loser. All I’m attempting to convey to you in the most reasonable manner I can—from one business person to another, from one friend to another—is that it is time you stand aside and let Miracle Springs move forward without all this dissention and strife your being part of the election is causing—for your own good, Almeda.”
A long silence followed.
“So then, Franklin, you consider the outcome of the election a foregone conclusion?” said Almeda at length.
“I didn’t think there was ever any doubt about that,” said Mr. Royce, with the hint of a laugh.
“Maybe not as far as you’re concerned,” replied Almeda. “But I didn’t join this race to help my business or my reputation, as you call it, or anything else. I joined it to make every effort to win.”
“Surely you can’t be serious?” Royce sounded genuinely surprised.
“Of course I’m serious. I wouldn’t do something of this magnitude for frivolous or self-seeking motives. If you think I care about what people think of me, Franklin, then you do not know me very well.”
There was another pause.
“Well, if you’re determined to see it out to the bitter end,” Mr. Royce finally said, “I wish you’d at least discontinue the distribution of this brochure of yours, and visiting people—a good many of them my friends, Almeda—and stirring everybody up and spreading talk about me that isn’t true.”
“Franklin, I have not said a single word about you to a soul! I’m surprised you would think I would stoop to such measures.”
“People are talking, Almeda. How can it be from anything other than your stirring them up against me?”
“I tell you, I am doing no such thing. I have never even hinted anything about you. I have only been talking to people about what I feel I would be able to offer Miracle Springs as its mayor.”
After the pause which followed, Mr. Royce’s tone cooled. He apparently realized he was not going to dissuade Almeda from anything she had her mind made up on.
“You can’t win, Almeda,” he said. “The thing’s simply impossible.”
“We’ll see,” she replied.
“You’re wasting time and money.”
“You may be right.”
“You’re determined to go ahead with it?”
“I am.”
“Will you stop making calls on my friends and customers?”
“They are my friends, too, Franklin. You are free to call on them yourself.”
“In other words, you will not stop?”
“No.”
“Will you withdraw the brochure?”
“I will not. Again, Franklin, you are free to circulate one of your own.”
The next sound was that of Mr. Royce’s chair scooting back on the wood floor as he rose to his feet. “At least it appears we understand each other,” he said.
“So it would appear,” repeated Almeda.
“Good day, Mrs. Hollister,” said the banker, and the next moment he reappeared from the office and walked briskly to the street door and out, not acknowledging me or Mr. Ashton in any way as he passed. We both pretended to be busy with the papers and files in front of us.
Two or three minutes later Almeda came out of the office. Her face was red with anger.
“That pompous, egotistical man!” was all she could say before she started sputtering and pacing around the office like a caged animal. “The nerve . . . to say that I stood no chance whatsoever! To ask me to withdraw from the race, because—because of his reputation! His reputation—ha! Calls on his friends! I doubt he even has that many friends around town—everyone is too afraid of him! What harm could I do his reputation!”
She walked around the office another time or two, then burst out again:
“I’ve got to get out of here!” She looked at the two of us. “I’m going for a ride. I’ll be back in about an hour.”
With that she left the room with as much grace as she could manage. When Mr. Ashton and I heard a yell and hoofbeats galloping away down the street a couple minutes later, we looked at each other and laughed. It was plain her horse was in for a time of it!
Almeda didn’t pull out of the mayor’s race, which continued to get livelier and livelier as we got into the month of August.
Mr. Royce paid no more visits to the Parrish Mine and Freight Company office.
Chapter 28
I Try My Hand at Something New
I wanted to get right to work on my first article about the election. It was early August, and there were only about thirteen weeks to go.
I began by just trying to tell the five w’s of the situation. I figured the first article needed to be a straight “news” kind of story that told folks about the election and what was unusual about it. Then for the next two I’d maybe try to write what Mr. Kemble called “human interest” things about the election and the two candidates, and maybe even about Miracle Springs itself.
I started off writing down the facts like I had for the poster about Ulysses S. Grant that Almeda had put up.
The mining town of Miracle Springs, sixty-five miles northeast of Sacramento, will hold its first mayor’s election in November of this year. The local election will be held at the same time as the general election for President and other offices. But what has the people of Miracle Springs all roused up isn’t just that they’re having their first election, but who’s running in it!
Then I talked about Mr. Royce and Almeda being two of the town’s leading citizens, about the bank and the Freight Company and how everyone for miles around depended on both of them for different parts of their livelihoods. But of course the fact of Almeda being a woman couldn’t help but be the main thing that would make folks interested in the election—and in my articles.
The Miracle Springs mayor’s election is one of the most unusual elections in all of California this year because a woman, who herself cannot even vote, is running against one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the community. It is not known whether a woman has ever before run for such a high position as mayor in the United States, but Mrs. Hollister must certainly be considered one of the first. One might say she is a pioneer in a state full of pioneers. And if she wins, the rest of the state—if not the entire country—will be watching her, just as it is now watching the most famous Californian of all, John Charles Fremont.
I was planning to write a little bit about both of their businesses and how they both came to Miracle Springs, and then finish off the article with the last of the w’s—a quote from both Mr. Royce and Almeda about “why” each had decided to run for mayor.
But before I got quite finished with the first article, an idea came to me that I just couldn’t wait to get started on. I started putting together what I’d need for the second article, and so I got delayed a while getting the first one finished and in the mail to Mr. Kemble.
My idea was this: I’d go around to people around Miracle Springs, in private without either Mr. Royce or Almeda knowing what I was doing, and I’d ask them questions about what they thought of the election. I’d ask them their reaction to the two candidates, about what things would probably decide who they voted for, about whether they had business dealings with either candidate, and what difference that made. I would ask what they thought a mayor of Miracle Springs ought to do, what they thought was going to be the future of the community, what they themselves were most concerned about. I might even ask them who they planned to vote for.
It was such an exciting idea, I could hardly wait to get started!
If I could, I would get quotes, but if people wanted me not to use their names, I would promise not to. I’d just tell everyone I wanted to get an idea how the whole town and its people were feeling about the election but without giving away any secrets or making it awkward for anyone.
Mostly, since they were the ones who could vote, I figured I’d talk to all the men I knew, and then to those I didn’t know. And then another idea came to me! I could interview women too. Even though they couldn’t vote, it would be interesting to get their opinions—especially since, according to Mr. Kemble’s letter, it was the women readers of the paper who liked the kinds of things I had been writing. And I could ask the men (the married ones, at least!) if they might vote any different on account of what their wives thought.
What a great “human interest” article I could write if the women all put enough pressure on their husbands that they actually voted for Almeda! Even though the women couldn’t vote, might it be possible that they could still influence the outcome? Or were there even enough women around Miracle Springs to make a difference? If the women started putting that kind of pressure on their husbands, what might the unmarried men do? There were still more unmarried men around than families. And what might Mr. Royce do?
I didn’t know the answers to all my own questions. In fact, I kept thinking up new quest
ions. And I figured the only way to find out some of these things was to get out and start talking to people and getting their ideas.
This would make a great article! It’d show Mr. Kemble I could write an article of news and human interest. And one worth more than $1!
The first people I talked to weren’t the kind you could get a fair opinion from—they were all people who were friends of Almeda’s—Pa, Uncle Nick, Katie, Mr. Ashton, Marcus Weber. But I had to begin someplace, so those were the folks I started with. I hadn’t ever done anything quite like this before, so I had to learn how to ask questions and write down what people told me.
Gradually I started to talk to other people—the Shaws and Hermon Stansberry gave me some interesting ideas, so did Mrs. DeWater, though her husband didn’t say much. Rev. Rutledge was visiting Mr. and Miss Stansberry when I called on them, and so I got to talk to all three of them at once. The minister tried to be gracious toward both sides. Though obviously he had always felt fondly toward Almeda, he said some nice things about Mr. Royce too. Miss Stansberry took the woman’s point of view completely, just like Katie had.
So far most of the people I’d talked to favored Almeda. But I knew to be fair I had to get the opinions of Mr. Royce’s friends too. It would probably be harder than I thought to write an article that fairly represented both sides and all the people in the town!
But even as I interviewed people, I knew I had to get my first article finished up and in the mail. I went back to it, added the few parts that had been missing, rewrote it all, and then put it in the mail to Mr. Kemble. Then I got right back to visiting people, asking them questions, and writing down as much as I could about what they thought.
Chapter 29
I Get Angry
By this time there were daily stage runs from Sacramento up the valley and into the foothills. Mail usually took two or three days from Miracle Springs to San Francisco. And we’d get San Francisco newspapers most of time just two days late. They’d get the issue right off to Sacramento on the morning steamer up the river, or across the Bay and onto the train line that was now running between the two cities. Then the next day the papers would be taken by stage up the main routes to the north, which usually took a day and a half by the time it reached Miracle.
On the Trail of the Truth Page 16