Chapter 6
Winter 1854–55

Without even thinking about it, Christmas dinner was becoming a kind of tradition. Maybe our Christmases stand out in my mind because each of the three was so different, and every time I remembered them it reminded me of how fast things had changed since we’d been in California, and how much the Lord had done for us.

This Christmas was no exception. It was the best ever!

Now we were two happy families, and Mrs. Parrish was there with us. I hadn’t been happier since her and Pa’s wedding day. All morning she and us three girls worked and sang away in the kitchen, baking pies and sweet potatoes and a big ham, while Pa was outside with Zack and Tad. Pa’d got Zack a new rifle for his very own, and Zack could hardly stand it, he was so excited. So as we were working, we heard the shots firing in the woods where Pa was giving him a lot of instructions about aiming, which Zack really didn’t need.

We loaded the food and some extra chairs into the wagon about noon, and took it up to Nick and Katie’s new place where we were going to eat. It was their first chance to show off the new cabin, and they’d invited a couple of other families, and of course the Stansberrys and the minister. Katie had been excited for days, planning and telling us she had a surprise for everyone.

We got there first, and soon the others began to gather. When Rev. Rutledge’s buggy drove up, Miss Stansberry was with him, alone, with the news about her brother. Hermon Stansberry had taken sick and wasn’t going to come. We all prayed for his health before sitting down to dinner, and Miss Stansberry took a nice basket of food back with her for him when the day was over.

But Katie’s announcement was the highlight of the whole day!

“I have some big news to tell you all,” she said, with a wider smile than I’d ever seen on her already wide mouth. “Some time along about the middle of next summer”—she looked at the five of us kids—“your Uncle Nick is going to stop being just an uncle and start being a pa himself!”

Mrs. Parrish was on her feet, exclaiming excitedly almost before the words had left Katie’s lips. She gave Katie a great hug, which was followed by the other women doing the same, while Becky tugged at my arm asking me what all the yelling was about. I whispered to her that Katie was going to have a little baby. “And it’ll be your cousin,” I said.

The men were slapping Uncle Nick on the shoulder and shaking hands. Then Uncle Nick went to the fireplace where he picked up a small box from on top of one of the stones, and started passing out cigars that he’d bought. The minister didn’t take one, but Uncle Nick shoved one into Zack’s hand with a laugh.

“It’s high time you tried it, Zack, my boy!” he said.

“Can I, Pa?” said Zack, expecting the usual answer.

Pa shrugged. “Maybe your Uncle Nick’s right, son. I guess if he’s finally old enough to be a pa, I reckon you’re old enough to try one of those things.”

Uncle Nick wasted no time. With a grin on his face, he struck a match and held it up to the end of the cigar that was now sticking six inches out of Zack’s mouth. Zack sucked in a couple times, got a few puffs going as the tobacco caught fire, and Uncle Nick cheered him on. Pa seemed to know what was going to come of it and just stood back watching, with a half grin on his face.

It didn’t take long. After only about an inch had burned off the end, Zack’s face began to turn pale. All of a sudden, amid what must have been an embarrassing roar of laughter for poor Zack, he handed the cigar back to Uncle Nick and bolted for the door and outside to get fresh air. In a minute or two Pa followed with a look on his face that seemed to say that he knew what Zack was going through, while Katie and Mrs. Parrish were talking about “these ridiculous rites of passage that men insist on putting each other through,” both with disgusted looks on their faces.

But even Zack’s getting sick from the cigar couldn’t spoil the impact of Katie’s announcement about the baby coming, and the other memories of the happy Christmas Day.

Alkali Jones was right. It was a rough winter—cold, wet, with lots of snow and frost. The stream got bigger than I’d ever seen it, and the men were saying that if the rains kept up, maybe they’d wash down lots of new gold from up in the mountains. It was so wet a time or two that we stayed at the house in town for two weeks each time. The stream was so full of water rushing by that Pa and Uncle Nick had to pull all their equipment out and couldn’t do much work. They worked some inside the mine, but with the cold and wet it was a miserable job. They gave that up, too, after a while, waiting for a break in the weather. But everybody was talking about the rain being good. It had been uncommonly dry, they said, for the last couple of winters, so the crops and pastures needed the rain, and the miners were glad for it, hoping it’d shake some new gold loose. Probably the only people who weren’t thankful for the rain were the children, who had to stay cooped up inside the schoolhouse all day long on the worst of the wet days.

Throughout the winter, I learned a lot about the freight and mining business and took several wagon rides with either Mr. Weber or Mrs. Parrish to deliver things that people had ordered. Mrs. Parrish always introduced me real proper-like to the people we were doing business with, saying, “Mr. So-and-So, I would like you to meet my daughter Corrie, who is helping me now in the business.” She had such a way of making me feel grown-up, like she respected and appreciated me! Soon I knew most of the roads for twenty or thirty miles around Miracle, and had been to nearly every little town or hamlet or gold camp around those parts. I’d never realized how many customers Mrs. Parrish had all over. Some of the places we went and people I met were pretty rough-looking. But she always marched right into wherever we had to go with her head high and without showing a bit of fear. That’s probably why the men came to respect her, because she could be as tough as they were if she had to. And that was something I would have to learn, too—if I planned on making my way alone in California.

That winter some of the town leaders got together and decided Miracle Springs ought to have a mayor. The town had grown a lot in the last two years, and was still growing some, with new families coming in. There was no election, it was just announced one day that a retired banker, recently come from the East, had agreed to act as mayor. He’d had experience in that sort of thing before. So Jason Vaissade became the first mayor of Miracle Springs.