Into the Long Dark Night (The Journals of Corrie Belle Hollister Book #6)

Michael Phillips

Description

The War Between the States has escalated into a full-scale conflict threatening to tear the nation apart. Having been invited by President Lincoln to come to Washington, D.C., to assist in his reelection campaign, Corrie finds herself a long way from home in a most unusual situation--a young woman from the Wild West, with little education and experience, in the seat of power at the nation's capital. While writing and reporting from the battlefields, Corrie unwittingly uncovers a plot that could change the country's course forever, but taking action will put her very life at risk.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 02 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493413485
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 1992 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 2018
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 Cataloging-in-Publication Data for the original edition is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-1348-5
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
To Sandy Loyd Bean
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
1. Getting Ready to Go East
2. Looking Back With Different Eyes
3. An Interesting Journey
4. Growing-Up Tears
5. Insides of Things
6. Caverns of Pain and Joy
7. Thinking about Marriage
8. North vs. South
9. A Conversation about Unity
10. Community of Peoples
11. A Different View of Marriage
12. The Sisters of Unity
13. Prayers of Dedication under an Oak Tree
14. The War Again!
15. Gettysburg
16. Arrival at the Scene of Battle
17. The Fateful Day—July 3, 1863
18. Pickett’s Charge up Cemetery Ridge
19. Caught in Battle!
20. Death in the Midst of the Tumult
21. Life in the Midst of Death
22. The Morning After
23. The Train Again
24. Washington, D.C.
25. A Lonely Day
26. Nighttime Thoughts
27. The White House Again
28. Marge Surratt
29. A Windy, Cleansing Walk
30. The President
31. Mr. Hay’s Big Plans
32. My First Assignment
33. A Tiring Agenda
34. Thoughts of Faraway Places
35. A Surprise Letter
36. Forgetfulness and Remembrance
37. Another Presidential Invitation
38. Gettysburg . . . Again
39. A Night to Remember
40. Following Grant into the Wilderness
41. Clara Barton
42. Lincoln vs. McClellan
43. Another Letter
44. Back in Washington
45. My Third Presidential Campaign
46. On the Campaign Trail
47. A Fateful Night
48. Voices in the Night
49. Midnight Flight
50. Uncertain Thoughts
51. Boxcar Accommodations
52. Culpeper . . . and South
53. Into the Wrong Camp!
54. Retracing My Steps
55. General Ulysses S. Grant
56. An Early Morning Fracas
57. A Frightening Plan
58. Into the Confederate Capital
59. Winder Supply
60. Kidnap
61. The Scheme Is Undone
Epilogue
Photographs
About the Author
Fiction by Michael Phillips
Back Ad
Back Cover

Chapter 1 Getting Ready to Go East

W here you bound for, Miss?” a voice rasped beside me.
I glanced up nervously. “Oh . . . the East Coast,” I said. He must have gotten aboard at the last little town we stopped at. I hadn’t even seen him sit down.
“Long ways for a young girl like yourself to be going,” the man said. “You alone?”
I nodded. His question reminded me again just what an incredible thing this whole adventure was. I had ridden in the train around Sacramento a few times. But it was nothing compared to this huge, fast modern train and the locomotive pulling it.
I was about an hour east of St. Joseph, Missouri, now, and I was still pretty awestruck that I was halfway across the country and on my way to Washington, D.C.
It had been twenty-one days since I had left my family in Miracle Springs and boarded the Wells Fargo stagecoach bound for Salt Lake City. Then I changed to the Holladay Overland Mail and Stage. We mostly followed the Oregon and Mormon trails from there, over the Rockies and through Wyoming, down through Nebraska, and finally to the Missouri River and St. Joseph. After a night in a St. Joseph boardinghouse, this morning I had boarded the train to St. Louis.
I still couldn’t believe it was actually happening. I was alone, on a train bound for St. Louis, Columbus, Ohio, through the Cumberland Gap of eastern Pennsylvania, and finally Washington, D.C., and the East Coast! And—the most unbelievable thing of all—in my bag I was carrying a letter from the President of the United States. Abraham Lincoln himself had invited me to visit the White House, and to help him with the war effort against the Confederacy.
For a long time I thought I was dreaming. But it was all real, and here I was!
It was a long way for me to be going alone—the man was right about that. I glanced over at him and smiled. He had a kind face and was well-dressed, although his raspy voice reminded me of Alkali Jones.
“Well, I work for the railroad, Miss,” he said. “I’m not going far, just to the next stop. But if you have any trouble, or need anything, you be sure to talk to the conductor. We’re here to help you any way we can.”
I thanked him, and we chatted for a few minutes more. Then he excused himself and went to talk to the conductor.
I gazed out the window, listening to the rhythmic sound of the steel wheels thrumming underneath me, and thought about the months since receiving Mr. Lincoln’s letter. That had been the week just before Christmas last year, after I’d come back from Sacramento. At first I was so mixed up about Cal—feeling angry, foolish, stupid, and immature. I wanted to go out and chase him down and get back the Union’s money, and make sure he wasn’t able to tell his uncle or anyone else something that would hurt the northern cause. A lot of my initial thoughts weren’t altogether rational!
But Pa soon talked some sense into me. It was winter, and I couldn’t go just yet, not unless I wanted to risk getting snowed in somewhere on the stageline, and neither Pa nor Almeda liked that idea much. Not unless I wanted to take the Butterfield Overland stage that went through the South, as Cal had done. But I didn’t want to travel through the Confederacy. There was a lot of fighting going on by now down in the region of the country the Butterfield went through—not so much during the winter months, but I didn’t want to take any chances!
In the end we all decided it would be best for me to wait until spring and take the Wells Fargo and Holladay route. In the meantime, I wrote a letter to Mr. Lincoln, thanking him for his kindness and telling him I’d be proud to take him up on his offer to visit. I said I hoped to be there sometime in late June 1863.
Besides the weather, I also had to wait several months because the first book of my journals got published in January. The whole family was so excited—especially me!
Mr. Kemble had already talked by telegraph to Mr. MacPherson. In spite of all that was happening, there had already been considerable interest in the book in the East, and he wanted me to get started gathering up material from my journals to make into a second book.
None of us could believe it! I hardly had a chance to get used to the notion of being an author, and now Mr. Kemble and I had to get working on another book. I had enough stuff written in all my diaries and journals, that much was for sure. But I couldn’t quite understand the idea of putting into a book what I’d written down just for myself—I still had a hard time figuring out why anyone would be interested in any of it. Of course the story of how the five of us kids got to California, and how we found Pa, might interest folks, especially because it happened in the middle of the gold rush. But the other, more personal writing—well, I didn’t know.
“What parts of my journals do you want?” I had asked Mr. Kemble. “There’s nothing much that seems like it’d make a book.”
“Your pa’s trouble with Buck Krebbs and him writing back east for Katie and Becky getting kidnapped and rescued—you don’t think that’s plenty exciting?”
“Sure, I guess so,” I answered. “I guess I was wondering more about my private thoughts.”
“Put some of that in, too. It’s all interesting. It’s all interesting, Corrie.”
With his help, we got it all written down in a form that he thought would make a good book, and sent it off to Mr. MacPherson in Chicago. Even while we were doing that, mail started coming to me from people who had read the first book about our trip west and finding Pa, and that encouraged me about the work Mr. Kemble and I were doing.
So for all these reasons, the first several months of 1863 were busy ones before I could be ready to leave for the East.
By the time I stepped onto that Wells Fargo stagecoach in the second week of May, one book about California with my name on it was being read, according to Mr. Kemble and some of the mail, all across the country, and another one was on the way. I found myself wondering if I’d someday write another book about what was happening now in the East for the people back in California.
C hapter 2 Looking Back With Different Eyes

E ven after the excitement of seeing the book get published and anticipating getting to visit Mr. Lincoln, still it might have been a foolhardy thing to do, heading across the country alone in the middle of all the fighting that was going on!
That just wasn’t the kind of thing most ordinary young women did. But I don’t suppose most folks would accuse me of being “ordinary”—in how I thought about things or in what I did.
Pa and Almeda both tried to talk me out of going more than once between Christmas and the middle of May when I left. I even talked myself out of it a time or two.
But they both had enough of the adventurer’s blood in them to understand why I had to go. Pa and Uncle Nick had gotten into trouble, but they had their share of wanderlust when they were young, too. And after Mr. Parrish had died, Almeda had the drive and determination to do som