Chapter 82: Ascending Barlow Road

 

October 2, 1847. Reached the east gate of Barlow Road. $5 per wagon—more price gouging, but cheaper than paying for rafts. Jenny is sick, and her shoes have holes. Heavy rain all day.

 

Mac sat under a tarp beside the wagon. The rain had eased, but everything was wet. Jenny and William were in the wagon. He heard her coughing and the baby fretting. Why hadn’t she said she was ill? He couldn’t have done anything, but he wanted her to talk to him.

He finished writing and pulled his blanket around him. The ground was muddy, but he couldn’t fix that either. Everything was dirty. How much longer would this journey last? He thought they were about two weeks from Oregon City, but he wasn’t sure.

The man at the gate had shrugged when Mac asked how long the road would take. “Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“Rain. Snow. Strength of your teams. Weight you’re pulling. Whether you break an axle.” That wasn’t news—all along, their progress had depended on the weather, the animals, and the wagons.

Mac asked another question. “What’s the road like?”

The gatekeeper shrugged again. “Rough. Most trees felled, but if you get off the blazed trail, you’ll have to cut your own way through. Not much grass. Too many companies been there already this year.”

Mac sighed. They called it a road, but it wasn’t like the toll roads back East. The man explained that no one had maintained it since Sam Barlow hacked his way through the forest two years earlier. The emigrants would have to cope, whatever condition the road was in.

“Best lighten your loads before you head up,” the man continued.

Lighten their loads? Most families had been discarding belongings since they left the Platte. What was left to give up? Mac had few personal possessions, but he wasn’t planning to stay in Oregon. Jenny also hadn’t brought anything, though she had acquired clothes for herself and William along the way. But most emigrants had brought what they could from home to start their new life in the West.

Mac took the message back to his company. The men shook their heads when he told them to leave what they could behind. Later he saw Doc eyeing the rocking chair his wife had brought from Illinois.

“Going to leave it?” Mac asked.

Doc shook his head. “Brought it this far. Guess I’ll keep it, unless it falls off the wagon.”

Now, as Mac sat beside his fire, he wondered what perils still awaited them before they reached Oregon City.

The rain ended, but the next day dawned cool and cloudy. They filtered past the toll gate, each man paying for his wagons and livestock.

All day the travelers headed up a rolling grassy plain, laughing as they rode or walked. The route was clear, the trail easy, the rain gone. As they climbed, evergreens pressed in on the wagons, but the company had seen much worse. If this was as bad as Barlow Road got, they had made a good choice compared to rafting down the Columbia’s rapids.

Mac worried about Jenny’s health. She wasn’t any better. He rode Valiente beside her as she carried William on Poulette. “Shall I take William for a while?”

Jenny handed William to him. “You want the sling?”

“Can’t I just carry him?”

“If he doesn’t tire your arms. He gets heavy.”

Mac looked down at William. “This little mite?” He wasn’t even three weeks old. He couldn’t weigh more than seven or eight pounds. He was a boneless lump, at least when asleep. But Mac remembered when the baby had squirmed and cried while Mac talked with the men.

Jenny muffled a cough in her shawl.

“You feel any better?” Mac asked.

“It’s only a cold.”

“Have you talked to Doc?”

“I will tonight, if I’m not any better.”

Mac reminded himself to find the doctor when they stopped—Jenny wouldn’t do it on her own.

“Look! The mountain!” She pointed.

He glanced at a break in the clouds on the horizon. A snowcapped, sunlit peak rose symmetrically to a point high above the hills beneath it.

“Mount Hood,” he said. “That’s what we’re traveling around.”

“My stars!” she whispered. “It’s huge.”

They nooned at the base of a steep hill under a pine-scented forest canopy. After they ate, Mac led the wagons up to a small plateau, where another hill awaited. They skirted that mound, traveled to a small creek, and up the creek to a meadow large enough for the company to camp.

“Water’s down the hill,” Zeke said. “Not far. Lots of grass.”

“Not picked over like the gatekeeper said?” Mac asked.

Zeke shook his head.

“What’s our route look like?”

“Daniel and I didn’t get far. Gets steeper. We’ll set out early ahead of the wagons tomorrow.”

Mac found Doc treating one of the Pershing twins for a splinter in his toe.

“Why isn’t the boy wearing shoes?” Mac asked.

“Too small,” the lad said before the doctor could answer. “I gave ’em to Noah. They’s too big for him, but Esther stuffed rags in the toes.”

Doc sighed. “All the children need new shoes. Half are going barefoot, and the other half have blisters. Good thing we’re almost to Oregon City.”

“If there’s anything to buy there. And if anyone has any money left.” Mac shook his head. “Several families spent their last dollars on the toll. Some got through with barter or credit.”

“What you need?” the doctor asked.

“Would you take a look at Jenny? She’s been coughing.”

Doc patted the Pershing boy on the head and sent him off. He took a hollow, wooden tube out of his medical bag, then followed Mac.

As they walked, the doctor asked, “You thought any more about marrying her?”

“She made the decision,” Mac said. “That’s the end of it.”

Doc sat Jenny down on a log. He put one end of the wooden tube against her chest and the other against his ear, then listened to her breathe. “Not pneumonia,” he said. “At least, not yet. Keep your clothes and head dry.”

“Then let’s hope it doesn’t rain,” Jenny said smiling.

“Don’t laugh, girl. A chill in these mountains can turn to pneumonia quick.”

Jenny’s face blanched.

“I’ll keep her in the wagon tomorrow,” Mac said.

“It’s getting steep,” Jenny said. “What if the oxen can’t pull William and me?”

“You ride until they can’t,” Mac said.

A heavy downpour awoke the company in the morning. Rain fell in sheets and streamed from the trees. The gurgling creek below their camp now foamed over the rocks.

Mac sat under the tarp, huddled in his coat, with William napping beside him. He wrote while Jenny fixed a cold breakfast.

 

October 4, 1847. Our first day on Barlow Road was easy enough, but the trail is becoming steep. Rain again today. Zeke and Joel have left camp to scout.

 

He heard a shout and looked up. Joel trotted into camp, water dripping off the brim of his hat.

“What’s wrong?” Mac called.

“Fallen tree across the trail.” Joel pulled his horse to a stop and dismounted. “Need men to move it.”

“Have some breakfast,” Jenny offered. She handed Joel a biscuit with a slice of meat in the middle.

Joel nodded his thanks, then said to Mac. “Road gets rough right above here. Can’t hardly tell where it’s been cleared.”

“Can the wagons make it?”

“I think so. But we’ll need men ahead to saw up the trees blocking the trail.”

“Will two men be enough?”

Joel shrugged. “We’ll see.”

“Take Daniel and Tanner. If we need more, Abercrombie and I’ll join you.”

“All right.” Joel crammed the last of the biscuit in his mouth and remounted. He tipped his hat at Jenny, which sent a rivulet of water onto his horse’s withers.

The morning route paralleled the creek bed. The road was so narrow trees brushed the sides of the wagons as they squeaked along over stumps of felled pines. Mac rode at the head of the wagons and stopped to inspect a freshly sawn pine in the middle of the trail. The trunk was six feet in diameter. The portion that had blocked the trail had been sawed into rounds a foot high and pulled off the road. The rounds bore the marks of the chains needed to haul them.

“Big tree,” Pershing said, as he rode up beside Mac.

“Biggest damn trees I’ve ever seen,” Mac said.

Pershing chewed on his pipe stem. “Hope we don’t have to clear many more.”

But within an hour, they had passed another stump as large as the first, and caught up to the scouts who were sawing yet another tree blocking the path.

“What’s it look like ahead?” Mac asked Zeke.

Zeke stopped sawing and mopped his brow. He was soaked to the skin. “Ain’t gone any farther,” he said. “We’ve stopped each time we’ve found a log to clear.”

The travelers made slow progress through the day, stopping frequently to clear trees. Mac gave up trying to keep scouts ahead of the wagons and set every able-bodied man to sawing and hauling.

In midafternoon he paused for a drink at his wagon. Jenny and William were inside. Jenny handed him a towel as he drank a dipperful of water from the barrel.

“Staying dry?” he asked.

“It’s fine in the wagon,” she said. “Will we have to cut down trees all the way to Oregon City?”

“Don’t know.” Mac sighed. “Nothing has been what we expected so far. Guess we got off easy yesterday.”

Jenny coughed.

“You still sick?” Mac asked.

“Mrs. Tuller brought me some syrup to clear my chest.”

“I need to get back to work. Take care of yourself.”

When dusk hid the clouds from view, Mac called a halt. “Not much space to camp,” he told the men, “But we have water and shrubs for the animals to eat. This is as good as we’ll find today.”

“How much farther to the summit?” Abercrombie asked.

Mac shrugged. “We’ve spent all our time felling trees, so we haven’t done any scouting. The pines are too dense to see ahead.”

“We oughta be scouting,” Abercrombie insisted, spitting a dark stream of tobacco juice.

“Then you can scout tomorrow.” Mac was too weary to argue.

Before he slept he wrote:

 

October 4, 1847, evening. Only made eight miles. Chopped trees all day. Abercrombie fights me at every step.