Place in the Sun (The Journals of Corrie Belle Hollister Book #4) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Michael Phillips

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176 pages

English

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At almost twenty-one, Corrie has overcome the tragedies of her youth and made a name for herself as a journalist. Facing new challenges in Miracle Springs, including a secret that could tear apart her close-knit family, she must find a way to accept that sometimes the Lord uses difficult circumstances for good.

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 février 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441230782
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0173€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 1991 by Michael Phillips
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948553
ISBN 978-1-4412-3078-2
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Dedication
To Michael Oliver Cochran
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
1. Election Day
2. Patrick Shaw’s Problem
3. Almeda’s Decision
4. My First Interview
5. Talk Heats Up
6. Campaign Speechmaking
7. Royce’s Rebuttal
8. Power
9. The Article
10. The Rumor
11. Fighting Mad
12. Repercussions
13. Fighting Fire with Fire
14. Patrick Shaw’s Solution
15. Into the Hornet’s Nest
16. Pa Plays Poker—Eyeball to Eyeball
17. The Doc’s Visit and Pa’s Scare
18. A Few More Cards Get Played
19. Woman to Woman
20. Almeda Confides
21. Franklin Royce Surprises Everybody
22. Two Opposite Moods
23. The Committee Gets Together Again
24. What an Idea!
25. Devising a Strategy
26. Election Results
27. Looking Past the Election
28. Dirty Politics
29. Preparations for the Holidays
30. A Christmas Day to Remember!
31. The Feast
32. Katie’s Outburst
33. A Talk About God’s Timing
34. Praying for Katie
35. Deep Pain Surfaces
36. Almeda’s Story
37. Encounter with a Shopkeeper
38. Encounter with the Father
39. The Town Council
40. Pa’s First Big Decision
41. Uncle Nick Learns to Pray
42. Spring Picnic
43. Unexpected Labor
44. Bitter Words
45. Remorse and Confusion
46. The Angels Singing
47. God’s Little Community
48. New Life
49. Twenty-One
About the Author
Books by Michael Phillips
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Back Cover
Chapter 1 Election Day

P a 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 . . .
Chapter 2 Patrick Shaw’s Problem

A fter I got back from my adventure in Sonora six weeks earlier, I was certainly surprised by Almeda’s unexpected news.
I had just filed my story on the Fremont-Buchanan race with Mr. Kemble at the Alta . After that and Derrick Gregory and the double-dealings of that ne’er-do-well Robin O’Flaridy, I sometimes wonder if anything could surprise me! But I’ll have to say I was sure excited when I got home and Almeda said, “You’ll never believe it, Corrie, but your father and I are going to have a baby!” An adventure, a baby, and two elections were almost more than I could handle!
Three or four days after I returned from Sonora, we got the first inkling that Franklin Royce, the town banker, was up to his old mischief. One afternoon Patrick Shaw rode up to the house. One look at his face, and you could tell right off that he was in some kind of trouble.
Neither Pa or Almeda had to say anything to get him talk ing, or ask what the trouble was. It was out of his mouth the instant he lit off his horse.
“He’s gonna run us off our place, Drum!” he said. “But me and Chloe and the kids, we ain’t got no place else to go. What am I gonna do, Drum? I don’t know nothing but ranching, and with a family and the gold drying up everywhere, I can’t pack up and try to find some new claim!”
“Hold on, Pat,” said Pa. “What in tarnation are you talking about?”
“He’s fixing to run us out, just like I told ya!”
“Who?”
“Who else—Royce! There it is—look for yerself!”
He thrust a piece of paper he’d been holding in Pa’s direction. Pa took it and scanned it over quickly. He then handed it to Almeda.
“He says we got thirty days to get out!” Mr. Shaw’s face went red, then white. If he hadn’t been a man, he probably would have started crying.
Almeda read the paper over, taking longer than Pa, her forehead crinkling in a frown.
“It might as well be an eviction notice,” she said finally, looking up at the two men. “And if I know Franklin, it’s no doubt iron-clad and completely legal.”
“What happened, Pat?” Pa asked. “How’d you get into this fix?”
“Well, it ain’t no secret my claim’s just about played out. I wasn’t lucky enough to have any of your vein run across to my side of the hill. Though I suspect Royce thought it did, the way he’s been after my place.”
“What do you mean?” asked Almeda.
“Why, he’s come out offering to buy the place three or four times the last couple of years.”
“And so now he figures he’ll get your place without paying a cent for it!” said Pa, the heat rising in his voice.
“A few of my cattle got that blamed infection last spring when my pond had the dead skunk in it. It spread around the herd, and I wound up losing thirty or forty head. I missed a good sale I was gonna make, and so couldn’t make a few payments to the bank.”
“How many?”
“Four.”
“So how much you do owe him—how far behind are you now?”
“I pay him a hundred sixty-seven a month.”
“So you’re—let’s see . . . what, about six, seven hundred behind,” said Pa, scratching his head. “I’ll help you with it, Pat. I can loan you that much.”
“No good, Drum! I already thought of that. I knew you’d help if you could, so when Royce delivered me that there paper, I said to him, ‘I’ll get you the six sixty-eight—that’s how much he said I was in arrears, is what he called it. I told him I’d get it to him in a few days, because I knew you’d help me if you could. But he said it wouldn’t help. He said now that I defaulted, the whole loan was due immediately, and that if I didn’t come up with the whole thing in thirty days, the claim and the house and the whole two hundred-fifty acres and what cattle I got left—he said it’d all be his.”
“How much is your loan, Mr. Shaw?” Almeda asked. “What do you still owe the bank?”
“Seventeen thousand something.”
Pa let out a sigh and a low whistle. “Well, that’s a bundle all right, Pat,” he said. “I’m afraid there ain’t much I can do to help with that . Nick and I couldn’t scrape together more than three or four thousand between us.”
“What about me, Drummond Hollister?” said Almeda, pretending to get in a huff.