“If I had any idea where to search,” Mac said, “I would go after him. But it’s pointless without a place to start.”
“Esther didn’t have any notion where Jonah might have headed either,” Jenny said. “She wondered about Portland and a ship, but Jonah has never expressed any desire to sail. She thought about Illinois, where their half-brother Franklin lives, but Frankie left when Jonah was still young, and the boys weren’t close. She mentioned Joel, prospecting in the Rogue River Valley, but she doesn’t know why Jonah would head there.”
“Joel seems the most likely possibility,” Mac mused. “But why would Will go with him? Will’s never shown any interest in mining.”
“He was so upset, Mac,” Jenny said. “About Jacob Johnson. About me. About how we reacted after he kissed Maria.”
Mac shook his head—he’d done many things during his teenage years without good rationale. And as Jenny noted, Will did have reasons to run away. “When I see Esther on Saturday,” he said, “I’ll ask her to write Joel. It can’t hurt to tell him to watch out for the boys.”
Jenny grew bored lying in bed all day. She hadn’t noticed any additional spotting, but she still felt occasional cramps. This pregnancy was unlike any of her others. Most of them had been uneventful after the early months of nausea. Even her miscarriage had started as a normal pregnancy until one violent spell of bleeding.
She felt fine most of the time. Only the cramping caused her continued anxiety. And each spate of pain made her anticipate the next, dreading when it might come again.
Over everything lay her fears for William. She’d heard Maria ask Mac, “What if he’s dead?” and she had wept alone in her room. She brooded about them all—Maria, Mac, the other children. And William most of all.
She’d been so afraid when she learned she was pregnant that first time—alone, traumatized, not knowing what to expect in childbirth. On the trail, Cordelia Pershing, Esther’s mother, and Elizabeth Tuller, the doctor’s wife, had befriended her. But neither of them had known the root of her fears—they’d both thought Mac was the baby’s father. Doc and Mrs. Tuller later guessed he was not, and Jenny poured out her heart to the older woman. The Tullers urged Jenny and Mac to marry. Perhaps they should have, but Jenny had been too afraid to consider marriage, the brutal attack by the Johnsons and her stepfather still on her mind.
She could talk now about her family’s past with Esther and Hannah, both of whom knew her story. But she didn’t want to burden them—they had their own families to handle.
Jenny thought of her mother. They’d never been close—Jenny had been more attached to her father than to her mother. She’d received her mother’s letter in early April, and with all the worry about Will and the coming child, Jenny hadn’t yet responded. She decided to write her mother now, and called Maria to bring her paper, quill, and ink.
Then she sat at the little desk in her room. But what should she write? Mama didn’t know her husband Bart Peterson and the two Johnsons had raped Jenny. She couldn’t tell her mother about their latest encounter with Jacob Johnson, nor about the reason Will ran away, even though those were the thoughts that haunted her day and night.
And so she wrote:
May 6, 1864
Chère Maman,
Thank you for your letter, which I received a month ago. I am with child again, though I am currently confined to bed and having a difficult time. My oldest boy William has run away from home, and I do not know where he is. The rest of the family is distraught, as am I. . . .
Jenny stopped. By the time her mother received this letter, William would most likely have returned. Maybe her baby would be healthy, and Jenny could resume her activities.
Or maybe there would be more tragedy to report.
She crumpled up the paper and tossed it toward the fireplace.
Chapter 23: Along the Applegate Trail
The land was all new to Will as he and Jonah continued their journey south of Eugene. The road deteriorated into not much more than a trail, but contrary to what they’d been told, it was wide enough for a wagon in most places, and Will and Jonah rode side by side when they could.
Mac had told Will about the Applegate Trail. In the late 1840s, the Applegates sought a southern approach into the Willamette Valley after two boys in their family drowned while rafting down the treacherous Columbia River. Mac said learning of the Applegates’ experience on the Columbia led him to take their wagon train on Barlow Road around Mount Hood. But Barlow Road had proven almost as dangerous as the Columbia.
Mama also told Will how terrible Barlow Road had been. “I carried you up that mountain just days after your birth,” she said, shuddering. “I don’t ever want to be so tired again.”
Mama had done so much for him, Will thought with a pang. He missed her. He missed Maria and the other girls. He even missed Cal and Nate.
And Mac. There was a hole in Will’s heart and mind where Mac had been. And he didn’t know how to fill it.
Will had always been proud of being Mac McDougall’s son. Mac was a leader in Oregon City, a wealthy man, a kind and good husband and father. Will often wondered if he could live up to Mac’s image and expectations. Now he knew that was impossible—Mac wasn’t his father.
Will’s father was a violent criminal, a vicious rapist. How could he overcome such evil? Could he ever be as easy in his skin as Cal was, knowing what he did about himself?
The store owner in Eugene had predicted it would take the boys two days to reach Roseburg. But by the evening of the second day past Eugene, they still hadn’t reached the town. They camped on the banks of a river larger than most of those they’d encountered. “Must be the Umpqua,” Jonah said. “That ain’t far north of Roseburg.”
“How do you know?” Will asked.
“Joel told me. He prospected on the Umpqua for a while. But he says the Rogue River is better diggin’s.” Jonah sounded authoritative, but Will still questioned whether Jonah’s estimate of their location was accurate.
They would find out soon enough.
After they made camp that night, Jonah continued spouting what Joel had told him. “Umpqua’s panning ain’t great,” he said. “But do you think we should try?”
“All we have is the spider pan,” Will said.
Jonah shrugged. “Joel says any pan’ll do.”
“You try,” Will said. “But I’d rather you tried fishing.” His stomach was full of corn pone, and he just wanted to sit, to leave the activity to Jonah. The horses grazed in their hobbles not far away, and the evening was peaceful. They were higher in the hills now, but still well below the snow line. Will wondered if the trail would take them into snow before they reached Jacksonville.
