Chapter 20
The Two Campaigns

Mr. Royce continued to be unopposed in the election for Miracle Springs mayor, which was scheduled for November 4, the same day as the presidential voting between Fremont and Buchanan. He gave a couple of speeches in town in June, but nobody paid much attention since he was the only one running. And after that, he didn’t do much else. About the only sign that would let a stranger know there was even an election going on was a banner in the window of the bank that said, “Royce for Mayor.”

Nobody liked the idea of Franklin Royce being mayor of Miracle Springs, but gradually they got used to it and the hubbub and complaining slowly died out. Out in the open, no one really said much. I guess what Almeda said was true—they didn’t want to get on Royce’s bad side for fear of what would happen. Royce didn’t have any “paper” against our claim (that’s what Pa called it), but Parrish Mine and Freight still had business dealings with the bank, so we had to be careful like everyone else.

One other thing quieted down all the initial worries, something that was a surprise to everybody. Mr. Royce started making himself agreeable. He didn’t give any more speeches, but he walked around town, smiling, shaking people’s hands, visiting in the stores. He even came into the freight office a time or two for a minute, saying he was checking up on his customers, seeing how they were doing, wondering if there was any way the bank could be of service to them. He was so polite and friendly you almost couldn’t help liking him!

The words “election” or “mayor” were never mentioned once. He never said a thing about asking people to vote for him. Of course, he didn’t need to—there was no one else they could vote for!

Mr. Royce knew, I suppose, that folks were suspicious, not only of him but of bankers in general. And he probably knew that he wasn’t the best liked man in Miracle Springs, and that people were nice to him only because they had to be since he was the banker.

That could hardly make a man feel too good about himself, knowing people had more fear than liking for him. I can’t imagine anyone finding it pleasant inside to know that people were afraid of him. But I figured that Mr. Royce decided he’d rather have people liking him as mayor than being afraid of him, so he had vowed to himself to change his ways and be nice from now on. Rev. Rutledge talked sometimes about giving people what he called “the benefit of the doubt”—thinking the best of them. Maybe that’s what I was trying to do with Mr. Royce.

When he’d come around, I’d watch his face real careful and look into his eyes to see if I could see the change. I like to watch people and try to imagine what they’re thinking. But I couldn’t see anything in Mr. Royce’s face. His mouth had a nice smile on it when he talked, but there was just no way to tell what he was thinking. His eyes didn’t seem to look exactly at you when he spoke. It was like he was looking just a little bit off to one side, and so the conversation back and forth was just a tiny bit crooked, though such a little bit that I doubt anyone else even noticed. I didn’t talk to him much myself, only to answer when he’d come into the office and say “How are you today, Corrie?” before going on to talk a minute with Almeda or Mr. Ashton. So maybe that crookedness was just something I noticed that he didn’t do with everyone else. But his eyes didn’t sparkle, they just kind of looked past me.

I watched other people, too, as they talked to him. I was real curious about this changed friendly Mr. Royce. Mr. Ashton seemed to be drawn into the banker’s friendly smile, and their words back and forth were jovial and lighthearted. Almeda, however, always seemed to be looking into those dark gray eyes of Mr. Royce’s as if she was trying to figure out the thoughts behind them too. She smiled and was very gracious, and their talk was polite. Her eyes didn’t sparkle at such times either. Despite the smile on her lips, her eyes remained serious and seemed to be turning over more thoughts inside than her words let on.

Even Pa and Uncle Nick gradually started speaking more kindly about their future mayor.

“We may as well get used to him,” said Pa one evening. “I never liked the man, an’ I’d rather see someone else run. But we’re stuck with him. He’s gonna be the mayor and he’s gonna be the banker, and it’s for sure we don’t want to be on the wrong side of his fence once he’s that important.”

“I reckon you’re right,” said Uncle Nick, “though I’ll still feel a sight better once I get the $450 I owe him for lumber paid back. I don’t like to be indebted to no man, least of all him. Politicians and bankers are both a mite too full of smiles to suit me!”

“I don’t trust the varmint nohow!” put in Alkali Jones. “Jest like I don’t trust ol’ Fremont neither. Anyone what’s been in California as long as me knows too much ’bout what Cap’n John’s really like! I ain’t gonna vote fer neither o’ the skunks!”

“And a big difference that’s gonna make, Alkali!” said Pa, laughing. “Fremont’s gonna carry California so big they might as well take Buchanan off the ballot, and Royce don’t need nobody’s but his own vote to win.”

“It’s the preenciple o’ the thing, I tell ya, an’ I ain’t gonna vote fer neither o’ ’em!”

Pa chuckled to himself, but said nothing more.

“Well if I could vote,” said Katie, who had been following the conversation with interest, “I would vote for anybody, just to have my say in what happens. You men are lucky, Alkali, to be able to vote. You shouldn’t throw the chance away just because you don’t like the candidates.”

“Aw, but Drum’s right. What blame difference is it gonna make anyhow who we votes fer, or even iffen we votes at all?”

“It’s the American way, Alkali,” said Pa, smiling, and giving his friend a poke in the ribs. “When you came out West it was just a wilderness. Now we’re a state and our man’s running for the White House, and we got our duty as citizens to do. Come on, Alkali, you got to get into the right spirit for this election!”

I couldn’t tell at first how serious Pa was, but when I saw him throw Uncle Nick a quick wink, I knew. I think he meant the words but was using them to make Mr. Jones squirm a little.

When they’d get to talking about Mr. Royce, Pa was pretty kindly disposed toward him and seemed willing to forget about the past. Uncle Nick was more cautious, but not as critical as they had both once been, though he did say one time, “It’s easy for you to forgive him, Drum. You don’t owe him a dime. Why, you got four thousand dollars in his bank! But me, I gotta still worry some, till I get that house all paid for.”

Pa only laughed. He’d worked hard in the mine these last two years, getting enough to add on to the house, and save money besides. Since they’d both got married, Pa and Uncle Nick had kept their earnings separate, and as much as Uncle Nick had settled down, he still wasn’t half the worker Pa was. And Zack had by now begun to make a pretty big difference in the Hollister share of the output of the mine. I didn’t know how Pa’s and Almeda’s money was being handled now that they were married—the Mine and Freight Company, that is. That’s something they never talked about to me.

All through the conversation about Royce and Fremont and the elections, Almeda remained silent, although I don’t think it had anything to do with the money. I could tell she was listening to every word and was very interested in what was being said—that much was plain from one look at her face. Just as clear was that she was thinking real hard. But what she was thinking about, she didn’t let on so much as one little peep.

The weeks of summer went by. Royce kept up his pleasantness campaign. The leaves on a few of the birch trees started thinking about turning yellow. Both Mr. Singleton’s Gazette and Mr. Kemble’s Alta were full of the Fremont-Buchanan election, and there wasn’t much room left for an aspiring girl-writer from a little foothills gold town. I hadn’t seen anything of mine in either paper since May, though I kept writing. Mr. Kemble was still looking at two more articles I’d sent him—one called “Summer in the Foothills of Gold Country,” and the other one of what he called his “human interest” stories about Miss Stansberry and the school, and especially about how she had learned to use her lameness as a strength instead of a weakness.

The Summer-in-the-Foothills one was mostly about the beauty of the countryside and how summer was such a special season. I had the idea out walking one day, watching Pa and Uncle Nick and Zack and Mr. Jones all working away in the stream and mine from where I was standing up on a hill behind the house. I had been thinking how much I loved the countryside God had made, and when I saw them laboring away after little pieces of gold, the realization came to me that the land itself was really the treasure, not the gold. The “real gold”—that’s what I called it in the article—was the land and its people, not just the nuggets that they were digging out of the streams and rivers. Someday, I said, there might not be any gold left, but there would still be this wonderful land, and there would still be people to love and cherish the land, and that was more lasting than any riches any miner could ever dig out of even the wealthiest mine. So the article had one of those “double meanings,” because I meant the word “gold” in the title to stand for the wealth of the land itself.

Anyway, I figured Mr. Kemble would be sending it back to me some time real soon. But I hoped the article on Miss Stansberry might get published. And in the meantime, the papers were full of editorials about the election and reprints from papers out East and articles about the slavery question and where the two presidential candidates stood on that and all kinds of issues. There were also other elections going on for California’s senators and representatives in Washington. So much was happening so fast. Everything was growing. Sacramento had just been made the capital of all of California two years before in 1854. Now that we were so close to the center of politics, the elections for state offices had gotten everybody’s attention too, and even a time or two men came through making speeches and telling everybody to vote for them, though half the time no one had ever heard of them.