“Do it, Thomas! Please!” She croaked out the words, gasped for air. “Please go. He means it! He’ll kill yo—” Dengler’s arm jerked, shut off her air.
Thomas straightened, looked beyond her to Dengler. “I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you, Viola.”
His voice was quiet, calm, his hand holding the gun steady. She had to do something! Make him leave. She clawed at Dengler’s arm, fought to breathe, to think. His arm tightened. Her ears buzzed, her sight faded. Darkness hovered.
“Would you rather see her dead?”
The words echoed through the fuzziness in her head. Dead…soon… The darkness came closer. Cold washed over her.
Thunk!
Dengler jolted, slumped against her. She collapsed beneath his weight, crashed to the floor.
“Looks like I got here just in time.” Frankie Tucker dropped a long, thick piece of branch to the floor, stepped over Dengler’s legs, grabbed hold of his suit coat and rolled him off her. “You all right, Viola?”
She nodded, sucked in air. The darkness receded.
Frankie rolled Dengler over onto his stomach, scooped up the gun beneath him.
Viola pushed to her hands and knees, grabbed hold of the end of the settle and hauled herself to the seat. Her head reeled. Her body shook. She took a slow, deep breath, fought to hold back the churning bile.
“Looks like things are under control here.”
She lifted her head, turned. The sheriff stood in the front doorway, his gun held ready in his huge hand.
“Sorry it took me so long to get here, Viola. Hattie had to hunt me down.” He looked down at Dengler sprawled on the floor at her feet. “Guess it’s a good thing she found Frankie first.” He looked down at Dolph. “You, too, Thomas.”
“She didn’t find me. I came on my own.”
The tone of his voice said clearer than words he had come because he had been concerned and wanted to be sure she was all right. But no more. Her control shattered. She hung her head, caught her breath, held it to hold back the sobs.
Dolph groaned. She saw him twitch, flinched back against the settle. Ed Parker placed a knee on Dolph’s back, shoved his gun back into its holster and pulled two long, leather thongs from his pocket. “You hogtie that one, Frankie.” He tossed her one of the thongs, grabbed Dolph’s hands and wound the other thong around his crossed wrists. “These varmints after Goldie’s gold?”
She braced herself, drew breath to answer.
“I heard it mentioned.”
Thomas’s words were terse, his tone strained. Shame flooded her. He knew what she was.
“Viola’s a prostitu—”
Frankie’s knee banged down onto the back of Dengler’s neck, shoved his face to the floor. “You’d best shut your lying mouth, lest you want me to knock you on the head again!”
Viola closed her eyes, gathered every ounce of courage she possessed. This had gone far enough. She raised a trembling hand, wiped away the blood pooling at the corner of her mouth. “Let him speak, Frankie. The sheriff has to know the truth.” The words came thick and slurred from her split and swollen lips, sounded as dead as her hopes and dreams.
“Viola’s in no condition to answer questions, Ed. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”
The caring in Thomas’s voice brought tears surging to her eyes, clogging her throat.
“Don’t see any reason why not. I’ll just take these thugs off to jail for tonight and—”
“Must be Viola’s been plying her trade, boss.” Dolph sneered up at Ed as he hauled him to his feet. “No one cares about a piece of trash prostitute, except one of her customers.”
“A pros—a lady of the evening!” Evelyn Harris gasped, gaped at her from the doorway. “And to think I heard the commotion and came to see if I could help!” She lifted her nose into the air and shifted her gaze to Ed Parker. “I expect you will do your job, Sheriff. Treasure Creek is a God-centered town with no place for the likes of her!” She whirled and hurried outside.
Viola rose, stared after her neighbor, her head reeling. Frankie’s hand touched her arm. She looked into her friend’s angry blue eyes.
“Don’t pay her no mind, Viola.” A scowl knit the freckles on Frankie’s nose together. “I’ve a good mind to wallop Evelyn upside her head, too. Might knock some sense into her.”
“Not a good idea, Frankie.” Ed Parker, growled the words, looked in their direction, skimmed over her and focused on Frankie. “I’d have to arrest you for that. And I need your help to get these two to jail.” He nodded toward Dengler, still prone on the floor. “Can you manage that one?”
Frankie’s face lit like a candle. “Watch me!” She straddled Dengler, leaned down and grabbed hold of the back of his collar and yanked him up onto his knees, stepped back and tugged his gun from where she’d shoved it in her belt. “Now get on your feet and get moving, you no good piece of garbage woman beater!”
Dengler struggled to his feet, looked her way and started to speak. Frankie raised the gun. He clamped his mouth shut and staggered toward the door, Frankie prodding him along. Ed Parker shoved Dolph into line behind them as they left the cabin.
Silence. So thick it pressed against her shivering body, hurt her throbbing temples. How long had it been since Dengler came? A matter of minutes only, yet it felt like forever. She tried not to, but she couldn’t stop herself. She had to look at Thomas, store up one more memory against a lonely forever. She turned, caught her breath at the sight of blood staining his shirt. “Your shoulder.” She forced her shaking legs to carry her to him. “Let me—”
He caught her hand, set it away from him. “I’m no longer needed here. I’ll go to the clinic. Jacob or Teena will tend it.” He pivoted, laid Dolph’s gun on the table and walked out the door.
Chapter Fourteen
Thomas sat on the edge of the table and concentrated on the knot in the floorboard beneath his dangling feet. If he looked at the dark shape right, it looked like a dog’s head. And it kept him from thinking. Viola a prostitute. He clenched his hands until the knuckles turned white. Sucked in to replace the air fury squeezed from his lungs.
“Hold still.” Jacob Calloway wiped at the blood on his shoulder and scowled. “I told you to be careful. How did this happen?”
Thomas glanced at his gaping wound and shrugged, winced at the pain that shot through his shoulder and down his arm from the movement. “An altercation.”
Jacob’s scowl deepened. “Don’t you know missionaries aren’t supposed to get into fistfights?”
Viola’s cut and swollen face flashed before him. “Sometimes they’re unavoidable.” He clenched his hands on the edge of the table in spite of the pain it caused, wished it were Dengler’s neck. Great thought for a preacher.
Jacob uncorked a bottle, splashed liquid over gauze pads and suturing equipment in a bowl. “Did you win?”
“The fight, yes.” The battle to conquer the rage in his heart, no. He’d wanted to beat Dengler and Dolph senseless. Still did.
It won’t take you long to earn the money to pay me back. You were always a favorite among my customers. And there are so many men clamoring for satisfaction in Skaguay I haven’t girls enough to answer their need.
He clenched his hands tighter, dug his fingernails into the underside of the wood table. He’d known Viola was hiding something…had offered to help. But he’d never thought she— You were always a favorite among my customers. His stomach churned, knotted. All those men…
“What’s that mean?”
Thomas gave him a sour look. “It means I’m in a foul mood.”
Teena carried a tray of bandaging material to the table, looked up at him. “I think it means you have pain in your heart.”
Did the woman sense everything? He took a breath and made an effort to get his boiling emotions under control.
“Well, he’s going to have pain in this shoulder for sure.” Jacob held his hands over another bowl, rubbed them together as Teena poured liquid from the b
ottle over them. “I can’t say what damage you’ve done yet, Thomas. But judging from your pain on moving your arm, I would say it’s extensive. You’re going to have to stay in town again until it’s healed. And that may take quite some time. I hope whatever you were fighting over was worth it.”
Thomas glanced at the people waiting for treatment and clamped his jaw to keep from spewing out the whole story. Evelyn Harris would spread the news about Viola soon enough, and the malicious gossip would start. She would be so hurt….
He shoved away the thought and stared down at the knot on the floor to erase the image of the hurt in her eyes when he’d turned away from her. Now all he needed was something that would erase her from his heart.
She couldn’t stop shaking. Or thinking. Oh, if only she could stop thinking. She winced, sucked in a breath.
“Sorry, Viola. That cut’s a deep one. But the dried blood’s cleaned off now.” Hattie dropped the cloth into the basin of water and picked up the jar of salve.
“Unhh—” Viola bit off the moan, clenched her hands, and sat unflinching as Hattie spread the salve on the gash at the hairline of her temple.
“Mayhap you should go to the clinic an’ see Doc Calloway. This one might need stitches.”
“No. I’ll be fine. I’ve had worse.” She shuddered, rubbed at the scar on the edge of her hand below her little finger. She would heal, and a jagged scar was better than exposing her swollen cheek and split, swollen lips to the stares of the crowd of people waiting to be treated at the clinic. With hundreds of stampeders passing through town daily, on their way to and from the gold fields, the place was always busy to overflowing, even in the evening.
And Thomas might be there still. He had witnessed enough of her past life tonight to make him turn from her. She could not bear to suffer his rejection again. Tears stung her eyes. She blinked them away.
“Which one of them give you that? Dengler or Dolph?”
She looked up. Hattie nodded toward the scar she was massaging. “It was Dengler. The second time I ran away.” Her throat tightened.
“Second time, huh?” Hattie squeezed water out of the cloth, dabbed at the split skin along her jaw. “I’m guessin’ that ain’t all he give you.”
“No.” She tried to hold back the shudder, failed.
“You must have been awful valuable to him, Viola. A woman beautiful as you would be a real moneymaker.” Hattie dropped the cloth back in the basin and dipped her knobby, arthritic finger in the salve. “I never had that problem. First off, I worked for a ‘madam’—not that she didn’t slap her girls around when they got out of line. But I was always one of the last ones chosen—’cept when my regulars come in. So she pretty much left me alone.”
The shock traveled in small, tingling spurts all the way to her toes. Sore as it was, her mouth gaped open. “You were a prostitute?”
“Yep. Twenty-some years. Hold still.” Hattie applied more salve, frowned. “Can’t do nothin’ ’bout them splits in your lips. Best thing will be to hold somethin’ cold on them. It’ll help the swellin’ some, too. Good thing the good Lord gives us ice year round up here.” She put the cover on the salve, snapped the bale in place and padded across the room, her moccasins whispering against the puncheon floor.
Viola turned on her chair, watched Hattie kneel down in front of the hutch that held their dishes and flatware and lift out the two short, wide, floorboards covering the hole where they cached their perishable foods. Hattie…a lady of the evening. No wonder she had taken Goldie and slipped out the back door to get help when Dengler pushed his way into the house. She understood about men like Dengler and Dolph. Who ever would have guessed? Hattie was a wonderful Christian woman. One of the staunchest she’d ever met.
Hattie’s chubby, flannel-covered arm jerked up and down. She listened to the thwack…thwack…thwack of the hatchet biting into the ice that was always beneath the cabin and tried to comprehend what seemed, to her, impossible. She now understood why Hattie was so…accepting and nonjudgmental in the face of all that had happened. But what had happened to Hattie? How had she changed her life?
She turned back to the table as Hattie covered the hole and returned carrying a few, small chunks of ice—fought the desire to ask questions. Hattie’s past was none of her business. But the questions were quivering on her tongue, the need to know what had happened to change Hattie burning in her heart. And Hattie must have brought it up for a purpose. Hattie always had a purpose. She sighed and gave in. She was too battered and exhausted to fight her need to know. “Did you run away, too?”
“Me? No.” Hattie squeezed the water from the cloth, smoothed it out on the table then folded the ice chunks in it. “Here hold this on your mouth. The left side’s worst.”
She lifted the cloth to her face, winced as it touched her swollen cheek and mouth. “What happened? How did you leave?” The words were thick and slurred. It was hard to form them correctly with her lips so distended and painful.
“Charley.” Hattie picked up the washbowl, padded across the room and dumped the bloody water into the bucket beneath the dry sink. She swished clean water around in the bowl, dumped it out and carried the bucket to the back door.
Viola’s breath caught. “Don’t open the door!” Her stomach roiled. She braced against the chair, ready to leap to her feet.
“Not going to.” Hattie shot her a sympathetic look. “I’m just settin’ the bucket here ’til mornin’.”
“Oh. I—I should have realized.” She moved the pad of ice a little higher to ease the throbbing in her temples. “I’m sorry for yelling, Hattie. I’m…nervous.” Should she tell her about Karl? No, she would not burden her with that knowledge. She’d been through enough tonight.
“You got a right to be. A good hot cup of tea might soothe you some.” The iron teakettle clanked against the stove. “Like I said, I never was real pretty, and I was gettin’ older and bigger.” Hattie patted her round hips and plunked down into the chair opposite her. “More and more of the customers were passin’ me over. Truth is, I was gettin’ a mite worried ’bout what I would do when I couldn’t ply my trade. And then Charley came in.”
There was a smile in Hattie’s voice. She searched the elderly woman’s face. Yes, she definitely had a purpose.
“He looked over all them pretty young girls, doffed his hat, walked up to me and smiled. On our third time together he asked me would I marry him.” Hattie fixed a sober gaze on her. “I wasn’t never sorry I said yes. We said our vows in a church and then kept goin’ back. Charley turned into a good Christian man, and he never once threw up my past to me.”
A good Christian man. Thomas. Thomas was Hattie’s purpose. But that could never be. Thomas was a man of God, called to lead others to the Lord. She had never hoped for a future with him. Not even after—after she knew she cared for him. Her past would destroy his ministry. But she had so wanted to have his…regard. The ache that crushed her heart was worse than all the pain in her body. She swallowed back a rush of tears and moved the cloth higher on her throbbing temple.
Sewing was impossible. So was sleep. And prayer.
Prayer? What was the use?
Viola wrapped her sore arms around her aching ribs, turned from the window and resumed her pacing. Obviously, she did not know how to recognize God’s answers to prayer. She stopped, stared at the sampler she had worked: “With men it is impossible, but not with God, for with God all things are possible.” She had been so certain—and so wrong. If God had wanted her to come to Treasure Creek and start a new life, why would He have let Dengler find her? Why would He let everything she had so carefully built be destroyed? And it would be.
She turned from the sampler, looked around the living room, walked to her bedroom door. This small log cabin was her home. She had bought it with money she had earned working in Dengler’s “house.” And now she would lose it because she had been a harlot. I expect you will do your job, Sheriff. Treasure Creek is a God-centered town with no place for t
he likes of her!
She put her hand on her stomach, took a deep breath to ease the nausea. Evelyn Harris was a terrible gossip. By tomorrow night every member of the church, every citizen of Treasure Creek, would know about her past. Over and over again, on the face of every person she knew, she would see the disgust, the judgment that found her guilty and the cold distance it created. And she would have to face the hurt and rejection she had seen in Thomas’s eyes.
Tears welled, overflowed and slipped down her cheeks, stung the cuts on her face. She could not blame Evelyn Harris for wanting the sheriff to throw her out of town. It was clear she did not belong in a God-centered town like Treasure Creek. But what of Goldie? What if her father returned and found his baby gone? And what of Hattie? Where would Hattie live? Who would feed and shelter her?
The tears flowed faster, sobs built to a pressure in her chest she could not contain. She sank down onto the side of her bed, snatched a pillow and, heedless of the pain, pressed it to her face to cover the sounds of her breaking heart. She had tried so hard to be good. Tried so hard to live a godly life since leaving Seattle. She wanted so much to be clean, to be free of the horrible stigma of her past. “Oh, God, I am so sorry. So sorry for what I have been…for what I have done. Please, please forgive me. And please show me what to do. Help me. I don’t know what to do.”
Thomas moved slowly through the darkness under the trees, brushing aside branches with his good arm, turning sideways and inching forward in tight spots to protect his injured shoulder. Exhaustion from the day’s events and the loss of blood dragged at him. But there was no question of sleep for him tonight. Not when there was a possibility Dengler may have more than one man like Dolph with him. They wouldn’t answer when Ed questioned them about that. Dengler and Dolph had only smiled.
His hands flexed at the memory. He’d wanted to rip the smirks right off their faces! Satisfied that there was no one lurking in the woods, he stepped into a small clear area and glanced at Viola’s cabin. No good. He needed to find a spot where he would have an unobstructed view of both the front and back doors. He moved on through the copse, feeling his way through the gloomy light, his mood at one with the darkness that surrounded him.
Gold Rush Baby (Alaskan Brides) Page 13