Chapter 1
Election Day

Pa walked out of the schoolhouse with a big smile on his face.

He took the stairs two at a time and ran over to where the rest of us were standing by the wagon. “Well, I reckon that’s that,” he said, still smiling. “Now all we gotta do is wait!”

Of course, since the rest of us were under twenty-one, we couldn’t have voted, anyway—at least not Zack or Tad. But neither could Almeda, even though she was the one who got everybody for miles around interested in the political future of Miracle Springs by jumping into the mayor’s race against Franklin Royce. People soon enough found out that she didn’t consider being a woman to be a handicap to anything she wanted to do!

And so she stood there waiting with the rest of us while Pa went into the schoolhouse with the other men and voted. When he rejoined her, their eyes met, and they gave each other a special smile. I was well on my way past nineteen to twenty, and I’d been through a lot of growing up experiences in the last couple of years, so I was beginning to understand a little about what it felt like to be an adult. But even as the oldest of the young Hollister generation, I could have only but a bare glimpse into all that look between Pa and Almeda must have meant. If the Lord ever saw fit, maybe I would know one day what it felt to care about someone so deeply in that special way. For today, however, I was content to observe the love between the two persons I called Father and Mother.

A moment later Uncle Nick emerged from the schoolhouse, and came down the steps and across the grass to join his wife Katie and fifteen-month-old son Erich, who were both with us.

“Well, Drum,” he said, giving Pa a slap on the back, “we come a ways from the New York days, I’ll say that!”

Pa laughed. “Who’d have thought when we headed west we’d be standing here in California one day as family men again—and you with a wife and a son!”

“Or doing what we was just doing in there!” Uncle Nick added. “I reckon that’s just about the craziest, most unexpected thing I ever done in my life! If only my Pa, old grandpa Belle, and Aggie could see us now!”

A brief cloud passed over Pa’s face. He and I had both had to fight the same inner battle over memories of Ma. We had both come to terms with her death—not without tears—and were now at peace, both with the past and the present.

As to the future—who could tell?

A lot would depend on what Rev. Rutledge and the government man from Sacramento found out when they added up all the votes later that day. For the moment, Pa and Uncle Nick had cast their ballots in the long-anticipated election for mayor of Miracle Springs, and in the Fremont-Buchanan presidential voting. I couldn’t have known it yet, but my own personal future was as bound up in the latter election as the former. I had already invested a lot in the Fremont cause, and I couldn’t help but feel involved in its outcome—almost as involved as in the local election for mayor.

But for the moment, the future would have to wait a spell. As Pa had said, there was nothing else to do but wait.

We piled in our two wagons. Pa gave the reins a snap, and off we rumbled back to our home on the claim on Miracle Springs Creek. Pa and Almeda sat up front. In the back I sat with my lanky seventeen-year-old brother Zack, who was a good five inches taller than me, thirteen-year-old Becky, and eleven-year-old Tad. Emily, now fifteen, rode with Uncle Nick and Katie, carrying her little nephew.

That was election day, November 4, 1856. A day to remember!

But there’d been so much that had happened leading up to the voting, I reckon I ought to back up a bit and tell you about it . . .