Chapter 36
Last Night Alone on the Trail

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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 now 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.