Baby on the Oregon Trail

by Lynna Banning

  “Go for another walk,” he ordered. “A long one.”

  * * *

  Jenna thought she would split in two, but through the fog of pain she tried to concentrate on what Lee was saying.

  “Push,” she thought he said. As if she wasn’t already. She took a deep breath and bore down with all her strength, and then she was tearing... Oh, God... Oh, God...she was ripping right up the middle.

  Lee yelled something, and she could hear Tess sobbing outside the wagon. One more long, clenching push and suddenly she felt a gush of liquid and she was free. A funny, faint squall sounded.

  Oh! Was it finally over?

  Lee was busy doing something with the scissors, and then she heard water splashing and the funny noise got louder. And then Lee was laughing and holding up something, a blue bundle that was moving. A tiny pink fist waved.

  “It’s a boy, Jenna.” He lifted his head. “Tess,” he called, “it’s a boy!”

  The sobbing outside stopped. “Is...is Jenna all right?” a small voice asked.

  He pulled the soaked quilt out from under her and rolled it up into a ball. “Jenna is fine,” Lee called.

  To Jenna he said some more words. “What do you want to name your son?”

  She thought his voice sounded odd. Choked, somehow.

  She drew in a long, tired breath. “His name,” she said, her voice tired, “is Robert E. Lee Carver Borland.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Lee left Tess in the wagon with Jenna, exclaiming over the baby, counting fingers and toes and admiring the fuzz of dark hair on his tiny head and his big blue eyes. Lifting his head, Lee stumbled across the snowy ground for a good half mile up the trail until he stopped shaking.

  Jenna had more courage than he did, enduring the endless hours of pain and exhaustion while he worried and sweated and tried to sound calm. His hands ached from Jenna’s wrenching grip, and his legs felt rubbery. Women were tough. Men were cowards.

  The beautiful, brave butterfly and the cowardly woodpecker. He would never forget that ridiculous fairy tale he’d concocted, and he hoped to God he never had to think up another one.

  The sun broke through a puffy white cloud, bathing the mountain in warm golden light. Good God, it was morning! Late morning, from the angle of the sun. He had to fix that broken axle and get over the pass before dark.

  From the wagon he heard Tess crooning nonsense words, punctuated by Jenna’s laughter. Robert E. Lee Carver Borland, huh? Big mouthful of a name. He was flattered. Hell, he felt poleaxed.

  The axle. Focus on the axle.

  He cut the pine sapling to the length he’d need, skinned off the bark and went back to the stump he’d left. He chopped it off close to the ground, rolled it up to the wagon and wedged it under the rear wheel. Then he backed the ox team up until the axle hung up on the stump and the wheel could spin freely.

  He shaped one end of the pole into a point, removed the wheel and pounded the makeshift axle into place. He prayed it would hold long enough to catch up to the wagon train.

  Just as he drove in the last nail, he heard a horse. Two horses. No, three. He looked up to see Mary Grace galloping toward him on Devil, and behind her... He squinted against the snow glare. It looked like Doc Engelman and...Emma Lincoln? He blinked to make sure.

  Mary Grace reined up, slid off and launched herself at Lee. “Is she all right? Did she have the baby yet? Was—”

  “Hold on, honey. Catch your breath. Jenna is fine, and yes, she’s had the baby. You have a brother.”

  The girl yelped and whirled away toward the wagon, but Lee snagged the back of her wool coat. “Wait! Let Doc look at her first.”

  Lee went to greet Dr. Engelman. The physician dismounted and shook his head. “Got here as quick as I could, Lee. Snow closed the pass. How’s Jenna?”

  “Jenna’s fine, I think. Baby seems fine, too. But, hell, I don’t know what’s fine and what’s not fine.”

  The physician nodded, lifted his leather bag off his horse and started for the wagon. Lee moved to help Emma dismount.

  “Never seen you on a horse, Emma. Didn’t know you could ride.”

  “I don’t ride,” she huffed. “That’s why I can’t get down off from this darned animal! My legs won’t work.”

  Lee managed to lift the woman off her mount, and she stood on the ground, patting herself all over. “Hurts everywhere,” she said with a laugh.

  “Jenna has some whiskey inside.”

  “You mean you didn’t drink it all up during her labor last night?”

  “There wasn’t time,” Lee said drily.

  Emma touched his arm. “Are you all right, Lee? You look like something’s clobbered you good.”

  “It’s been a long night. Broke an axle and then...”

  “I can guess,” the gray-bunned woman said. “Mary Grace told us. When Sam wouldn’t let her ride back over the pass she cried and carried on something fierce.”

  Tess and Mary Grace walked off arm in arm, talking so fast it sounded like the chatter of squirrels. The doctor climbed out through the canvas bonnet and dropped his medical bag to the ground with a clunk.

  “Emma? I expect Jenna’d like to talk to a woman about now.”

  Lee swallowed. “Is she okay, Doc?”

  “Son, Jenna is fine, just fine. You ever want to give up this idea about a horse ranch, you let me know. You’d make a fine physician. A whole lotta men wouldn’t have any notion how to deliver a baby. They’d have just caved in.”

  A laugh of sorts burst from Lee’s mouth. “Hell, Doc, you think I knew what I was doing? What Jenna went through was enough to give a man religion.”

  “Yep. I can guess what it must have been like for you, Lee. I hear she named the baby after you. Good choice.”

  “Got to fix that axle, Doc,” Lee said quickly. “Help yourself to the whiskey, if Emma and Jenna have left any.”

  Emma poked her head through the canvas bonnet and called to the girls. “Jenna says she’s hungry! That’s always a good sign. So let’s cobble up some breakfast.” She climbed down out of the wagon and headed toward the fire.

  Lee worked all afternoon on his improvised wooden axle while the girls flitted in and out of the wagon with biscuits and bacon and hot coffee for Jenna. He ignored the squeals of excited laughter from inside, and late in the afternoon he got the axle fitted through the wheel hub and nailed in place.

  Doc and Emma mounted their horses. “Lee,” Emma called. “The wagons will wait for you to catch up.” The two riders headed back over the pass, and Tess and Mary Grace came to stand beside him.

  “Are we gonna go now?” Tess asked.

  “Maybe,” Lee said. “Any coffee left?”

  Tess’s eyes widened. “Oh, Lee, I forgot you haven’t eaten anything all day. There’s biscuits and—”

  “Any of Jenna’s whiskey left?”

  “Oh!” Mary Grace clapped her hand over her mouth. “I think Mrs. Lincoln and Jenna drank it all up!”

  “Well, hell.”

  Both girls sucked in their breath, but Lee just sighed. “Come on, then. Get in the wagon. Mary Grace, do you want to ride Devil?”

  “Uh, no. I want to ride inside the wagon and hold Baby Rob.”

  “Baby Rob, is it?”

  “Well,” Tess said with a giggle. “It’d be confusing to have two males named Lee, wouldn’t it?”

  Lee bit his tongue and went to feed the animals and shovel dirt over the remains of the fire. When he’d stowed his saddle and the tools under the wagon, he climbed up onto the driver’s bench and lifted the traces.

  He hadn’t seen Jenna since morning. And, he had to admit, he missed her. He didn’t want to think how he’d feel when they separated in Oregon.

  Chapter Thirty-Two


  They caught up to the rest of the wagons just before full dark. Lee was so tired he considered sleeping right where he sat his horse while Tess and Mary Grace cooked up some supper. But he decided he couldn’t stand one more hour without seeing Jenna. He climbed up into the wagon bed.

  She was propped up, holding a tiny bundle of blue blankets in her arms. She looked up and smiled.

  “Jenna, I—” His voice failed.

  “Oh, Lee, just look at him! Isn’t he beautiful?”

  Reluctantly he forced his gaze away from her glowing face and peered down at the baby she held. A fuzz of dark hair covered the small head, and his eyes were a unique blue-green, like Jenna’s. Yeah, he was beautiful, all right. Really beautiful. Like her.

  “Have you eaten?” she asked.

  “Not yet. The girls are cooking something.”

  “I know,” she said with a laugh. “I can hear them arguing over whether to make stew or beans. Nothing changes, does it?”

  “Everything changes. You. Me. Everything.” He looked everywhere but at her. She was so incredibly lovely he could scarcely speak.

  “You know,” she began, then bit her lip. “When you first came to drive our wagon, I thought you were pushy and...um...maddening.”

  “Yeah? What do you think now?”

  She laughed softly. “I think you are still maddening. But...”

  He closed his eyes. “But?”

  “But,” she said shyly, “I think you are the bravest man I’ve ever known. You are not afraid of anything.”

  That brought a snort of laughter. “You think I wasn’t scared last night?”

  “No,” she said quietly. “I was the one who was frightened. Really, really frightened. I have never felt such pain.”

  He caught her hand. “Jenna, I thought you might die. Or else I might. You’re so, well, small.”

  “Oh, that.” She blushed scarlet, then held out the blanket-wrapped baby. “Would you like to hold him?”

  Lee froze. Hold him? Another man’s child? A man he detested?

  “Lee?” she urged. “It’s just a baby.”

  “Yeah, but he’s... My hands aren’t clean,” he said abruptly.

  “Here.” Jenna thrust the baby into his arms. He weighed about as much as a pan of oats. He spread his fingers around the tiny body and tentatively reached out his forefinger and grazed the soft cheek. The little mouth opened in a yawn and something strange happened inside his chest.

  “Jenna.” His voice shook.

  “Don’t talk, Lee. You don’t have to say anything.”

  He couldn’t talk even if he wanted to. But what he could do, what he couldn’t keep from doing, was bend over and catch Jenna’s soft mouth under his.

  “Butterfly,” he murmured after a long moment.

  * * *

  Lee’s homemade axle held for the next five days as the wagon train descended into broad valleys and climbed over more mountains until they reached Fort Hall on the Snake River. They replenished their dwindling supplies and Lee found a forge and a blacksmith to make a new axle.

  The following day the train forded the river with no mishap other than when one of Mick McKernan’s mules got mired in a quicksand bog. Lee drove the Borland wagon past him, then went back on horseback to help pull the animal free.

  Four families split off to follow the trail to California; the sixteen remaining wagons continued on to Farewell Bend, where they turned south to follow the Free Emigrant Trail that skirted the foothills of the Cascades.

  Four days later they dropped down into the Willamette Valley, and Jenna steeled herself for what she knew was coming.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  When the wagon came up over the rise Jenna gasped. She could see all the way to the valley floor. Everything was so green it looked painted.

  “I’ve never seen grass so lush,” Lee said. “Not even back in Virginia.”

  His excitement sent an odd pang through her chest. She cuddled Baby Rob closer and listened to the girls’ laughter as they pointed their fingers down at the place they had struggled so hard to finally reach—Oregon.

  That night the wagon train celebrated. Emil Gumpert brought out his squeezebox, and then instruments began popping up from ragged, dust-laden wagons like jack-in-the-boxes—two fiddles, guitars, and a banjo played by aging Jan Ronning. The girls and Ruthie skipped off to join the dancing, and Jenna walked over to visit Sophia Zaberskie, grateful for a place where she could sit and nurse the baby in peace and relative quiet.

  “Your baby so pretty,” Sophia remarked when Jenna folded back the flannel blanket. The other woman patted her expanding belly. “I hope for girl. Maybe,” she added with a laugh, “my daughter and your beautiful son, they will grow up and get marry.”

  “You are fortunate that your baby will be born in a town. I don’t even know what state we were in when Robbie came. Wyoming? Nebraska?”

  “I think Idaho. Ted showed me on map.”

  Idaho! And now they were dancing and singing in Oregon. She hugged the baby close. They had arrived safely, thanks to Lee Carver. She was glad she had named the baby after him. Without Lee, she might not have borne a healthy child. Mercy, if Lee hadn’t been with her, she might not have lived through the birth at all.

  “What troubles you?” Sophia asked suddenly.

  “N-nothing. It’s just that, well, now that the journey is over, I hope we will settle close enough to be neighbors.”

  Sophia squeezed her hand. “Yes, sure. Ted has job waiting with newspaper.” She pointed down to the town that lay in the pretty green valley below. “I t’ink we all be neighbors.”

  Lee appeared carrying Ruthie on his shoulders. “Mrs. Zaberskie.”

  Sophia nodded. “Mr. Carver, welcome. Would like coffee?”

  “No, thanks. I was wondering if you’d look after Ruthie for half an hour or so.” He handed Ruthie down, lifted Robbie out of Jenna’s arms and deposited him on Sophia’s lap. “And the baby, if you don’t mind. I’d like to talk to Jenna in private.”

  Sophia smiled. “Sure. You go, Jenna. Baby is fine.”

  “Well...” Jenna hesitated, but Lee grasped her hands and pulled her to her feet.

  “Come on, Jenna. Tomorrow we’ll be going into town, and then it’ll be too late.” He slipped his arm around her waist and walked her off a dozen yards.

  “Too late for what?” Jenna asked.

  “Too late for what I want to say now that our journey is over.”

  Jenna waited, aware of a tension about him she’d never sensed before. Her insides tightened. “What is it, Lee? You have never hesitated to speak your mind before.”

  “Yeah, well, I... It’s like this, Jenna. I want to keep going north. Find a place to start my ranch.”

  “Yes. I know how important that is to you.”

  He let some time pass before he spoke again. “Something else is important, too. You and the girls and the baby.” He took a breath and plunged on. “I want you to come with me, Jenna. All of you. We could...um, we could get married.”

  “Oh, Lee,” she breathed. “I know you don’t want to marry again. It scares you to death.”

  He said nothing.

  “Doesn’t it?” she repeated.

  “Yeah, it does scare me. Even so, I want you to come with me.”

  She looked up into his unsmiling face. “But it does matter, Lee. I have always known what you wanted.”

  “Jenna—”

  “Wait. Let me finish. We have all depended on you. And you and I have grown close these past months. Very close. But that is not reason enough to marry.”

  He pulled her into his arms and rested his lips against her forehead. “Jenna, I care about you. You know I care what happens to you and the girls and the baby.”
>
  “I do know that, Lee,” she whispered. “I care about you, too. But when Mathias died, and after that awful business with Randall, I realized what a mess I had made of everything. Now I distrust my judgment. I let Randall seduce me against my better judgment. I let Mathias talk me into marriage, also against my better judgment. It’s too late for me, Lee. I will never marry again.”

  He huffed out a choked laugh. “How old are you, twenty-four? You’re too young to give up like this.”

  “It’s too late for me,” she repeated. “I feel as if I’ve lived three lifetimes this past year.”

  He grazed her mouth with his. “It’s not too late. Marry me, Jenna. Come with me.”

  She reached both arms around his neck and kissed him. “I can’t, Lee. I just can’t. It would be a disaster for both of us.”

  He tightened his hands around her shoulders. “Dammit, Jenna, yes you can.”

  She shook her head. “I no longer trust myself to make good decisions. I would hurt you, Lee, and you don’t deserve that.” She stepped back and turned her face away so he wouldn’t see her tears.

  * * *

  From the crest of the last gentle, grass-covered hill, Jenna looked down on the pretty little town nestled between a wide, slow-moving river and a thick stand of fir and maple trees. As the wagon drew closer, she spied a large painted sign. “Heavenly, Oregon. Population 743.” This was the emigrants’ chosen destination.

  A big white-painted church with a pointed steeple perched at one end of the main street; at the other end stood a redbrick schoolhouse. Heavenly seemed like the perfect name for such a lovely place. It looked peaceful and orderly and clean, a different world from the one they had inhabited for the past five months.

  Horse-drawn wagons piled with bulging sacks of feed rumbled past the storefronts. First County Bank. Springer’s Mercantile. The sheriff’s office, Morning Glory Hotel, a newspaper office, a dressmaker with fancy hats in the window. Women in starched shirtwaists and flared skirts swept along the board sidewalks, some leading young children by the hand.

  Suddenly she realized how uncivilized she and the girls must look to the townspeople; the emigrants were worn-out and sunburned, their clothing frayed from skirt hem to collar. They had traveled two thousand miles to start a new life, rolling over wildflower-strewn plains and across towering mountains, over rivers and through sandy, sagebrush-dotted deserts. Their ordeal certainly showed.