PARADISE LOST
Tomas McCleary built his miner’s cabin high on a bluff above the Rogue River, so that it could not be seen by boaters passing below. Up there, he had created his small secluded paradise. With his miner’s shovel, he excavated a flume from a mountain creek, around the face of the canyon to deliver water to his sturdy one-room cabin. He maintained a vegetable garden and a few apple trees. Chipmunks and deer grew to accept McCleary as they would any other non-predatory forest creature. Deer would approach him when he offered apple slices. They would look at him, then at the ground in front of their hooves, as if to say, “Toss it here, I eat off the ground.” McCleary’s favorite deer was a doe. He named her Sweetheart. She was so tame that she would take apple slices out of his hand and let him pet her head and scratch around her ears.
Once a month, McCleary would hike up the Rogue River Trail to town for provisions. He had spent the night in town. The following day, he hiked back to his cabin. Upon arriving, he noticed that no deer or other animals had come around his place. This was strange. He went out to look around. A short distance from his cabin, he noticed that something had been dragged into the woods. He followed the trail of depressed brush for a short distance to find a gut pile and the head of a doe. He recognized it as the remains of “sweetheart”. McCleary could see by the condition of the intestines that the deer had died of a gut shot. Wounded, it had run a short distance before falling. From there, the hunter had dragged it into the brush, probably in an attempt to conceal the discarded head and intestines.
McCleary went to his cabin distraught. It was not hunting season, so it was not a regular deer hunter who killed his doe. He thought of Warren. Only a handful of other miners knew the location of McCleary’s cabin. Even fewer knew that deer were to be found there. The obvious suspect was Jim Warren. Warren had been known to make fun of McCleary’s having “pet deer”. Warren lived a short distance upriver, near Kelsey Creek.
McCleary took his rifle and headed upstream to Warren’s cabin. It was dusk when he arrived undetected. He went directly to the woodshed behind Warren’s cabin. There, he found the carcass of a deer hanging. He could see that it had been shot in the abdomen. It was his Sweetheart. In a fit of rage, he went around the cabin to a location where he could see in through a window. There he waited until Warren walked in front of the window. As he did, McCleary fired one shot. It struck Warren in the abdomen. He fell. McCleary walked back, downriver, to his cabin. In the distance, he heard the report of a gunshot, a pause, and then another. Warren was shooting in an attempt to get help.
Weeks later, a fishing party pulled their drift boats off the river at Kelsey Creek. One of the fishermen went to take a look at the cabin, which stood nearby. There, he found a rotting deer carcass hanging in the woodshed, and in the cabin, he found a rotting corpse on the floor with his rifle in his hand. Judging from the casings lying around him and the bullet holes in the walls, it was assumed that he had been shooting his rifle in a vain attempt to attract attention and to get help.
The County Sheriff was notified and came to investigate. When the Sheriff went to interrogate McCleary, they found that his cabin had been abandoned. It appeared that he had left in a hurry. Tomas McCleary was never apprehended.
Copyright May 2023 by Theodore “Tod” Lundy, Architect
This story is part of Oregon lore. It was told to me, as a boy, by Prince Helfrich. My copyright claim is limited to my rendition of the story.