Chapter 1: An Oregon Cabin

 

What have I done? What have I done?

The words reverberated in Mac’s head to the beat of Valiente’s hooves as he rode away from the cabin. It was barely light on Friday morning, March 3, 1848. A low Oregon fog sifted between tall evergreens bordering the wagon path ahead.

Mac had been awake twenty-four hours. At dawn on Thursday, he’d ridden to Samuel Abercrombie’s claim to help with the barn raising. All day he lifted lumber and pounded nails, until his back was stiff and his palms blistered.

When the barn walls and rafters were in place, the men ate their fill of Abercrombie’s food and drank enough whiskey to soothe their aching muscles. Then Mac headed home, accompanied by his friend Zeke Pershing. They arrived at Mac’s cabin, where a light burned in the window.

“You’re a lucky man, Caleb McDougall,” Zeke said to Mac. “Your wife and son are waiting for you.”

Mac almost blurted out the truth. That Jenny wasn’t his wife. That William wasn’t his son, though the baby bore his name. But he caught himself, realizing alcohol dulled his brain, and merely grunted.

“See you next time,” Zeke said, then rode off with a quick wave.

Alone and inebriated, Mac stared at the cabin window, watching the lamplight inside flicker. The past year had not gone as expected. He’d left Boston in early 1847, bound for Oregon. He traveled to escape his parents and seek adventure in the West. He needed a wife to join a wagon train with an experienced captain. So he asked Jenny, who’d been alone in the world and pregnant, to pretend to be his wife.

They’d made a good team on the six-month journey, he thought, smiling. Jenny did her part and then some, handling the wagon after Mac took over as company captain. Zeke Pershing and others helped, but Jenny managed well on her own.

Mac staggered when he dismounted outside the barn, then he lit a lantern and stabled his stallion Valiente in the stall next to Jenny’s mare. The mare was pregnant with what he suspected was Valiente’s foal.

As Mac removed the saddle and bridle from the horse and wiped him down, he murmured, “Shall we head back East, boy? Spring is almost here. Can’t stay much longer.”

No, he couldn’t stay. Not alone in the cabin with Jenny—their only chaperon a five-month-old baby.

He’d built the cabin for Jenny last autumn after they’d arrived in Oregon City in mid-October. Jenny deserved a home after toiling on the wagon train. Mac always planned to return to Boston in the spring. He would have to face his parents sometime.

Dousing the light to return to the cabin, Mac noticed a gray knit bootie on the barn floor. He picked it up and stuffed it in his pocket. “Jenny will wonder where this has been,” he told the horses.

He paused in the barn doorway before heading to the cabin. To Jenny.

It had been hard to live with her all winter. She wasn’t his wife or lover, but sometimes he dreamed he was as lucky as Zeke and the rest of the world thought he was. Sometimes he dreamed of Jenny’s blue eyes, the golden glints in her brown hair, and her gentle hands when she’d bathed his fevered brow.

She’d been an obligation when he first met her, maybe an atonement for his sins in Boston. But after living with her daily and watching her croon to William as she rocked and nursed the baby, all he could think about were the soft curves of her mouth, her breasts, her hips.

Mac spent as much time as possible away from the cabin through the winter. When word of the Indian massacre at the Whitman Mission reached Oregon City in December, he joined the militia formed to seek revenge. He’d been gone until late January, when a larger force went after the Cayuse.

In a few more weeks the mountain snows would clear enough for travel, Mac thought, shaking his befuddled head. He could last that long. He shut the barn door and crossed the clearing.

He pushed the cabin door open. Jenny stood across the room with William held to her shoulder, her hair glowing in the firelight. “Shhh,” she whispered, a finger to her lips. “He’s asleep.” As she lowered the baby into the cradle Mac had made, her round buttocks under her skirt curved toward him. Then she turned to Mac and smiled, her shawl falling off one shoulder.

In two strides Mac reached her, pushed her against the wall, and kissed her as he’d thought of doing so often. One hand pulled Jenny’s hips to his, the other molded a breast. A fine breast, the first time he’d touched it, and it was as desirable as he’d dreamed.

Jenny gasped into his mouth, softened against him, and her hands clutched his waist. Then she went rigid in his arms.

Mac pulled back to look at her. A tear rolled down her cheek.

The lust cleared from his head at the sight of that tear, and he pulled in a shuddering breath. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He willed himself to let Jenny go, rushed out of the cabin, and returned to the barn.

He had to leave. Now. He couldn’t stay or his hands would be on her again. It didn’t matter how much Mac wanted her, she didn’t want him—she’d said as much when he’d asked her to marry him shortly after William’s birth. He’d wanted a real marriage, not a ruse. She’d said she didn’t want marriage to any man, not after being raped before Mac met her.

Back in the barn Mac lit a lantern, found his saddlebags, and packed what he could. He took a scrap of paper and a pencil and wrote:

 

Jenny,

I’m leaving for Boston. The gold coins under the loft floor near my cot should keep you and William until the crops come in.

I’m sorry.

Caleb McDougall

 

Mac found hammer and nail and pounded the note to the barn wall.

He needed to return to the cabin to gather clothes and money for the journey. He delayed until his fingers were numb and he shivered in his coat, hoping Jenny would be asleep when he went inside.

When he couldn’t bear the cold any longer, Mac saddled Valiente and left the horse hitched to the barnyard rail. He stole into the cabin with an empty saddlebag. Jenny lay in bed, covered by a quilt.

Mac quietly climbed the ladder to the loft and packed clothes and his bedroll. He pried up the floorboard, opened the bag of gold coins he’d brought from Boston, and shook half of them into a sock, which he packed. The rest of the coins he returned to their hiding place.

Then he crept back downstairs, out the door, and mounted Valiente.

“Mac,” he heard Jenny cry behind him, as he kicked the horse into a canter.

What have I done? What have I done? The question echoed in his head to the beat of Valiente’s hooves.