Chapter 24
Face to Face With Mr. Kemble

Zack and Little Wolf went with me on horseback as far as Sacramento. We camped out for one night somewhere between Auburn and Folsom. We lay around the fire and talked until after midnight before I finally drifted off to sleep.

I left my horse at a livery in Sacramento and went on to San Francisco alone. Zack and Little Wolf said they’d keep busy and see the city and would meet me back at Miss Baxter’s Boarding House in three days. Miss Baxter could hardly believe it was us, and said she’d never have known Zack if he bumped into her on the sidewalk. What a feeling it was, the three of us—still kids inside, I reckon, but alone in the city and knowing we could handle ourselves. Well, Zack and Little Wolf could handle themselves, and I felt safe enough as long as I was with them!

Not until I was alone on the steamer floating down the Sacramento River did it begin to dawn on me what I was doing. I was on my way to the biggest city in the West—alone!

I’d climbed tall trees when I was little—terrified that I was going to fall, too frightened to look down, yet tingling with excitement as I kept climbing higher and higher . . . afraid, but glad to be afraid! And not so afraid that I didn’t want to get as high up as I could.

That’s how it felt as I looked out over the river and watched the shore glide past and felt the warm breeze on my face and in my hair. I was nervous, and thought that anyone who saw me would have noticed my knees shaking under my calico skirt. But I wouldn’t have wanted to be anyplace else.

I thought of traveling to San Francisco with Almeda exactly three years earlier. I was so dependent on her back then. It had been her trip about her business. She’d made the arrangements. She knew what to do and where to go. I had been just a little girl.

And now here I was, not only going to San Francisco alone, but going there on my own business, about something that concerned my life. It had been my decision to come, and I was on my own to figure out what to do. I had the name and address of a boardinghouse run by a friend of Mrs. Gianini’s, but that was all.

I still felt young, but I knew I was starting to grow up. I was going to San Francisco by myself and, as fearsome as it might be, I knew I could figure out what I should do. And if I couldn’t, then maybe it was time I learned. I had to grow up sometime. And maybe the best way to learn how to stand on your own two feet without your pa or ma helping you is to just go out and start walking on them without anyone’s help.

I thought too about how dependent I had been on Almeda spiritually. She had been the one who had first told me how God felt about us, and about how he wanted us to think and live and behave. I hadn’t known anything about God and his ways back then. When I think back to some of the questions I used to ask her, I can’t help but be embarrassed at how naive I was. But on the other hand, that’s how you grow and learn—by wondering, by asking, and by having someone you can look up to who can help you as you’re trying to figure things out. So I’m glad I wrote in my journal about some of those lengthy conversations Almeda and I had. I still go back and reread them now and then—the talk we’d had about what sin meant when Mrs. Gianini was working on the dresses, the talk we’d had right on that same Sacramento River steamer about faith, the Easter Sunday afternoon just after I turned seventeen when I’d prayed that God would make me into the person he wanted me to be, and the long talk on the way home about obeying. Every one of those talks remains so special in my memory, and makes me love Almeda all the more as a mother.

Now those truths she had given me were part of me. She had taught me, helped me, encouraged me, and loved me. But the most important thing she had done for me was to help me stand on my own spiritual feet. She had helped me to think for myself, helped me as I learned how to pray, and encouraged me gently as I grew.

I had been grappling with the whole prospect of what growing up meant, and about my future. But the fact that I was thinking about options, about writing, about what truth was, and about growing to be a woman. The fact that I was asking God about them, showed that maybe I was growing up after all—or at least starting to.

And now here I was on my way to San Francisco! I would never have imagined it just a few months ago. But now . . . who could tell what the future might hold.

If being so far away from home wasn’t enough to make my knees quake, the thought of facing the editor of one of California’s biggest newspapers sure was! The more I thought about it, the more foolish this whole thing seemed. Yet I still knew I had to go through with it, even if it meant I never saw another word of mine in Mr. Kemble’s newspaper . . . or any other newspaper! If growing as a Christian and being a “true” person had anything to do with becoming an adult, then I had to do this thing I had come to do, no matter how hard it might be. I’d never keep growing if I didn’t do the thing that was set before me.

Another idea had been running around in my mind since just before we got to Sacramento. The closer we got to the big city, the more I found myself thinking about it—and it had to do with the election back home between Almeda and Mr. Royce. By the time I walked into Mr. Kemble’s office the next day, I had figured out exactly what I wanted to say to him.

Of course, the conversation didn’t quite go the way I had planned it!

The lady in the Alta office seemed a little surprised when I asked to see Mr. Kemble. I don’t know why. I tried to look as professional as I knew how, and I had brought along my best clothes to wear. But I couldn’t hide my age.

She asked if he was expecting me. I said no. Then she asked my name, and I said he didn’t know me and that I wanted to wait to tell him my name in person.

That kind of annoyed her, and she told me to sit down and wait, which I did. It was a long wait, and I think maybe she hoped I’d get tired and go away. But I kept sitting there, and finally she got up and went somewhere out of my sight. When she came back a minute or two later, she said, “Mr. Kemble will see you now, young lady,” and she led me down a hall to the editor’s office.

The instant I walked in the door, a panic seized me, and I forgot everything I’d intended to say!

There sat the man I took to be Mr. Kemble behind a big desk, looking up at me with a half gruff expression that said, I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, but I’m busy. So get on with your business and say what you have to say before I throw you out! Before he had a chance to say anything, all of a sudden I was talking, hardly knowing what was coming out of my mouth.

“Mr. Kemble,” I said.

“That’s right,” answered the man.

I walked forward and stood in front of his desk.

“My name is—”

My throat went dry suddenly and I couldn’t get out the words.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Miss . . . Miss whoever-you-are. You don’t need to be afraid to tell me your name.”

“That’s just it, sir. When I tell you my name, you may say you never want to see me again.”

“I doubt that. But come on—out with it. I haven’t got all day.”

I tried again. “My name is—C.B. Hollister. Corrie Belle Hollister.

“What? You’re C.B. Hollister? I don’t believe it!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kemble. I never meant to not be truthful . . . it was just something that happened at first, and then I never had the courage to say anything once you started calling me mister in your letters.”

I was shaking from nervousness and fear and from wondering what he would do. But at least I had said it.

“You’re just a kid,” he said at length. “And a girl, besides!”

“But I want to be a newspaper writer,” I said, though my voice was trembling. “I am sorry,” I apologized again, “and that’s why I came here to see you, to tell you the truth about who I was, and so that the rest of any articles I write can have my full name on them, so that everybody else will know too.”

Mr. Kemble leaned back in his chair, thinking for a moment.

“You came all the way to San Francisco for that?” he asked. “Just to see me and set the record straight on this C.B. business?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hmm,” he mumbled. “That shows some spunk—I like that.” He paused again. “But as to your doing any more writing for the Alta . . . most of my reporters are older, and—”

“I’m nineteen,” I said. “Halfway to being twenty.”

He chuckled. “That’s hardly old in this business!”

“You said folks liked reading what I wrote,” I ventured cautiously. “They didn’t care how old I was . . . or that I was a young lady instead of an old man.”

He leaned forward and eyed me hard for a minute. Now I was afraid I’d said too much!

All of a sudden he threw his head back and laughed. “You do have spunk, young Miss Hollister! And you’re not afraid to say what’s on your mind,” he added more seriously, “or to come a hundred and fifty miles to make something right, even if it’s for something you shouldn’t have done in the first place. I like that. Those are good qualities for a writer—spunk and courage. So tell me, what’s on your mind to write about now—same kind of human interest stuff our former friend C.B. Hollister’s been sending me?”

He smiled at his own humor, but I had my answer ready. I’d been thinking about it all the way from Sacramento.

“I want to write about the election in Miracle Springs,” I said. “I’d like to write three articles on it.”

He laughed again. “The election’s being covered by more experienced reporters than there are gold miners in the Mother Lode. If Fremont ever so much as sets foot in the state, there will be a hundred writers waiting. You’d never get near him!”

“I don’t mean that election,” I said. “I mean the Miracle Springs election—for mayor.”

“What could my readers possibly care about that?”

“They’d be interested because a woman is running against the town’s banker. You’ve heard of Parrish Mine and Freight Company.”

“That’s right,” he said. “Run by Almeda Parrish—fine woman, from what I hear. And you say she’s running against the town banker?”

I nodded.

“What’s his name?”

“Franklin Royce.”

He let out a low whistle. “I’ve heard of him too. A slick operator, and with plenty of dough. And you think you can write something my readers will be interested in?”

“You mentioned your women readers liking my articles—don’t you think they’ll want to read about a businesswoman in politics?”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he said thoughtfully, nodding his head slowly. “The thing is unheard of—though everything’s new in California these days.”

After a minute of silence he went on. “Now you understand, Miss Hollister, that if I agree to print something of yours about this election—well, for that matter, anything of yours in the future—”

“Three stories on the election,” I reminded him.

“Whatever—whether it’s the Royce-Parrish story or something else—you understand that I can’t pay you near what I did before. Women only fetch a third or a half a man’s wages, and a girl who isn’t even twenty yet . . . let me see—I doubt I’ll be able to give you over a dollar an article.”

A dollar! I shouted inside. Whether it was my mother Agatha Belle Hollister or my stepmother Almeda Parrish Hollister rising up inside me—or some of both of them!—what Pa called my Belle blood started to get riled. Why should the exact words that might have been worth three or four dollars a week ago be worth only one dollar now? Because he had found out that I was a lady instead of a man, and a young lady besides? It didn’t seem at all fair!

But before either of us said another word, the door of Mr. Kemble’s office opened behind me.