Chapter 3: To Portland and Beyond

 

As Mac rode away from the cabin, he put his last minutes with Jenny aside and tried to think, though his head still throbbed with the aftereffects of drinking. He had to decide what to do, without any time to plan.

If he returned to Boston, his father would pressure him to join his brother’s legal practice. Mac had a law degree from Harvard, but office work didn’t interest him. He chafed at doing his father’s bidding after living independently for the last year. But without his own income, Mac would be beholden to his father and to the trust fund his father controlled.

In his addled state, he couldn’t think of any alternative to returning to Boston. He slowed Valiente to a walk and tried to consider the supplies he would need for a long journey east.

The early fog had lifted by the time Mac reached Oregon City, an easy hour’s ride from the cabin. He skirted the swamp south of town to ride north along the muddy main street. Stores were just opening. At Abernethy’s store, a two-story brick mercantile building, Mac hitched Valiente to a railing and went inside.

“Need food and ammunition for a trip to the States,” Mac said to the clerk behind the counter. He’d met the man—Mr. Hamilton—several times through the winter.

“Returning to Boston?” Hamilton asked, seeming ready to chat. “You’d said you was, but I thought maybe the mild winter here would convince you to stay.”

Mac shook his head.

“What about your wife?”

“She’s staying.”

“You’ll be back next year, then?”

Mac ignored the question, not wanting to explain himself to the clerk. “Not much selection on your shelves,” he said.

“Sold almost everything through the winter. Heard tell yesterday the first ship of the season just berthed at Portland. Don’t know yet what Abernethy will buy from its cargo.”

“There’s a ship in Portland?” That was news worth chatting about. “Where’s it headed?”

“Come from the Sandwich Islands. Bound for California next. Then around South America and back to the East Coast. That’s what I heard.”

Mac decided on the spur of the moment. “Never mind the supplies. I’ll ride to Portland. See how long it takes to travel to Boston by ship.” He’d left money with Jenny, but he wanted her to start fresh without him. He handed two gold coins to the clerk. “Let’s settle my account,” he said and watched while the man made a notation in the store’s ledger.

Mac remounted Valiente and rode to Portland, covering the fifteen miles to the outpost at the mouth of the Willamette River by noon. Portland was smaller than Oregon City, little more than a wharf with a log warehouse and small wooden houses nearby. The wharf teemed with activity. Men unloaded cargo down gangplanks from a small barque.

“Who’s in charge?” Mac asked a dockhand.

“Pettygrove,” the laborer replied, waving at a well-dressed whiskered man in a topcoat.

“Caleb McDougall,” Mac said, extending a hand to Pettygrove. “From Oregon City. I emigrated last year, but I’m heading back to Boston. Is your ship bound for the East Coast?”

“First to California, then around the Horn. As soon as we unload here and get the pilot on board, she’s heading to San Francisco,” Pettygrove said. “Tomorrow morning, I hope.”

“How long will it take?”

“Three weeks to San Francisco, maybe less, maybe more. Depends on the wind. Don’t know what goods she’ll take on there, so can’t say when she’ll head south to Panama and beyond.”

“Do you have room for a paying passenger and horse as far as San Francisco?” Mac could think about his future as well on an ocean voyage as while traveling overland. And he’d never been to California. He’d decide in San Francisco whether to head east by land or continue on the ship. Whether to go to Boston at all.

Pettygrove eyed Valiente. “Long voyage for a stallion like that one.”

“He’s been on steamships on the Ohio and Missouri. He’ll do fine.”

“Ocean’s rougher than a river.” But Pettygrove gave him a price. “You can board now. Captain plans to leave on the first tide after the pilot’s here.”

After Mac settled into his tiny cabin on board, he took out his journal:

 

March 3, 1848. It seems I have embarked on another adventure. I have left Jenny and William on the claim with the Tanners. I now sail south to California, en route to Boston, unless another destination reveals itself.

 

The ship’s progress down the Pacific coast was rough—early spring seas tossed the boat like a bobbing cork. The captain sailed far from shore to avoid the rocks near land.

“Need at least seventy fathoms to travel along the coast,” he told Mac. “Rocks ain’t been charted in these parts yet. And there ain’t no lighthouses like in the East.”

Mac was a good sailor, but gripped lines and railings to move about as waves washed over the deck.

“You done much sailing?” the captain asked when Mac climbed to the deck one morning, staggering from side to side on the steep ladder.

“Mostly small yawls and ketches near Boston,” Mac said. “And one voyage to Europe. I always enjoyed the ocean.”

Mac went down to the hold every morning and afternoon. Andalusians were calm by nature, but Valiente grew agitated at confinement below deck, particularly in rough seas.

As he curried the stallion’s coat one morning, Mac wondered how he would fit back into Boston life after fleeing his family the year before.

“It wasn’t right, you know,” Mac told his horse, reflecting on his mother’s treatment of Bridget, a maid in his parents’ home discharged when she became pregnant. “Mother did what she thought best, but it wasn’t right.” His mother had doomed Bridget and her unborn child—Mac’s child—to an early death when Bridget died of fever. “I wonder if she knew the baby was mine.”

Valiente snorted.

Mac had never been sure what his mother knew about Bridget’s child—she hadn’t let him confess. He wouldn’t have married the girl, but he felt responsible for her, and he hadn’t forgiven his mother for treating her so harshly.

He’d left Boston rather than admit his responsibility for Bridget’s death—to himself or to anyone else. Then he rescued pregnant Jenny Calhoun to make up for his negligence with Bridget. “It took me most of the way to Oregon before I realized why I brought Jenny along,” he confided to Valiente. “I thought it was because Pershing only wanted married men. But it was also guilt over Bridget.”

The horse nuzzled Mac’s pocket for sugar.

Another reason Mac had fled was to escape the life his father planned for him. The senior McDougall was a banker, and Mac’s oldest brother followed in his footsteps. Mac’s second brother was an attorney with a growing legal practice, which Mac’s father urged Mac to join. Neither of his older brothers had rebelled against their father’s plans, but Mac wanted something different.

He’d relished his freedom on the Oregon Trail. The men he’d led in the wagon company had recognized and followed his authority—unlike his father and older brothers, who never valued his abilities. Mac wanted to preserve the self-respect he’d gained on the trail and obtain his father’s admiration as well.

The only home he knew was Boston. Was the law firm now his answer? If he didn’t return to Boston, what would he do?

Mac fingered the baby bootie he’d found in his pocket the morning after he left Portland. He missed Jenny. And William. But if he’d stayed in Oregon, he wouldn’t have been able to keep his hands off Jenny.

There was nowhere he wanted to be. Nowhere he belonged.