Angel In The Saloon (Brides of Glory Gulch) (17 page)

“Hello there, Miss Jackson.”

“How are you tonight, Miss Jackson?”

“Yer up kinda late, aren’t ya, Miss Jackson?”

Amelia had never been in the saloon past eight o’clock
since her aunt’s party, and she was usually escorted to her door by Paul.

“Are you all right, sweetie?”

“No. I’m not feeling too well, Aunt Corrin. I’m going
to the privy. Hopefully, that will help.”

Corrin escorted her to the kitchen door. Amelia knew
her way through the dark, so there was no need for her to accompany her.

When Amelia emerged from the outhouse she felt a large
hand cup her mouth and a tight grip around her middle. She was dragged into the
woods in the deepest hours of the night with the shuffling of feet against the
forest floor and her muffled screams the only sounds to penetrate the silence. She
struggled to get away, but the man was very large and overpowering. If she
could only free her mouth to scream for help!

He hauled her through the woods for what seemed like
an eternity to her. Her heart pounded furiously as she prayed in desperate
silence to God to protect and rescue her. Despairing tears flooded over her
cheeks and the man’s unwelcome hand. He finally stopped and with an ugly, eerie
voice, he put his mouth to her ear, giving her a blast of the awful liquor
smell of his breath.

“It’s no use for you to scream, my pretty lady. We’re
so far from everything that no one would be able to hear you way out here.” He
taunted her with a sinister laugh. “And besides, you might actually enjoy
yourself.”

He let go of her, and Amelia immediately dropped to
her knees and folded her hands. “Dear Lord! Please forgive this poor drunken
soul. He has no idea of the sin he is about to commit. He lives in darkness,
guided by the darkness. Please, save his soul from the imminent destruction
and---”

The man pulled her up by her shirt collar, ripping and
tugging at it until it came off, leaving her delicate camisole as inadequate
protection from the cold September mountain air. She was thrown backward to the
ground, and in an instant she felt his full weight upon her.

Amelia fought him with all her strength, scratching
his face and throat with her fingernails, drawing blood. His strong arm caught
her hand, and as he pulled it away from his face, a hard blow to her cheek
caused her head to twist. The sting on her face wasn’t nearly as terrible as
the fear and anguish that ravaged her heart. She continued to fight him. He
firmly held her head still as he kissed her hard and repulsively on her mouth,
his whisky breath nauseating her. She battled him with all her fury, hitting
him on the side of the head.

“I didn’t think you would be this much trouble.” She
heard him say as he began to hit her repeatedly with his fists, first in the
mouth, then in her side, taking her breath away momentarily. He kept pelting
her body mercilessly with his blows. Amelia tried to shield herself from them
with little consequence.

She screamed and cried out, “Please, stop! God, please
help me!”

“Your God isn’t here, honey. I’m the only man you need
right now.” She heard the man’s ugly laugh and he stopped his abuse momentarily.

Her wrists were forced over her head and her right
hand hit a hard object. Amelia realized the rock was slightly bigger than her
hand. This was the answer to her prayers, but how could she use it? The power
of his grip on her wrists was bruising them. She had to get him to let go of
her arms.  Gathering all the voice she could muster, she spoke to him through
her tears in her sweet Southern accent.

“Please sir. Don’t hit me anymore. I’ll stop fighting
you if you would please stop hitting me.”

“You will?”

Amelia thought he sounded pleased at the thought that
he finally had a willing prize.

“Yes,” she said weakly.

In an instant her arms were free. She grasped the rock
firmly with both hands and with all the strength that was left in her,
delivered one very hard, sharp blow to the back of his head. She heard him yell
and he fell away from her, all the while shouting ugly curses.

Gathering her wits, Amelia bolted to her feet and
began to run, arms flinging from side to side in front of her in an attempt to
prevent herself from banging into any trees. Her already sick body ached from
the numerous blows and protested severely with excruciating pain. Her face was
cut and bleeding in several places and she couldn’t stand up straight. But she
forced herself to continue on.

Her escape was difficult and slow in her blindness,
and she received many additional cuts and scrapes on her arms and face from low
pine and spruce branches. But she kept on. How long would the man be
incapacitated?  She needed to get as far away as possible. Maybe his
drunkenness would also prevent him from being able to locate her.

She heard his cursing voice behind her, the words
vulgar and repulsive. She had to hide, but where? How? She stopped, hunched at
the base of a tree and prayed fervently for God’s protection. His footsteps
were fast approaching her and he soon staggered within a foot of her, and then
continued on into the night. He hadn’t even seen her!

When she was sure he was far enough away for her to be
relatively safe, Amelia struggled to her feet, holding her side, unable to
breathe properly or to stand up straight. What was she to do now? She had no
idea how to get back to town.

Think! What had her mother always told her? She
remembered. If she ever got lost, it was best to stay put and wait for someone
who was inevitably searching for her. How wise was this thinking under the
present circumstances? But what else could she do? Her aunt was sure to have
been out looking for her by now.

Then a strong, urgent prodding welled up inside her.
Go
!
Amelia knew she couldn’t stay there and felt such an insistence within her that
she began to run again.

Lord, I don’t have any idea where I’m going, but You
do. Mother told me that you would direct the paths of those who acknowledge you
in all their ways. I acknowledge you right now, Lord. You gave me the means to
escape, now I trust You to guide me to safety.

She tripped along, her bruised body complaining with
each step she took. And quickly her arms and neck were scarred and bloody from
the lashings she took from the forest. But she ran on. She was cold, very cold.
She felt an urging from within to turn and run in another direction. So she
turned. And she stumbled on.

›
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›

Corrin was horrified when she went out to check on her
niece. She had been gone for over twenty minutes and perhaps was sicker than
she had realized. But upon arriving at the outhouse she found the door open and
Amelia’s cane lying on the ground. The sickening reality cut through to her
pounding heart. She ran to get Harry and Tom who enlisted two more men they
could trust and who had not been drinking too much to begin searching for
Amelia.

But they all knew that in these mountains at night it
would take a much broader effort than that, so Corrin borrowed a horse and
headed to Paul Strupel’s house. There was no formal government in Glory Gulch,
and he usually acted as Constable whenever the need arose. This was one of
those times. She pounded relentlessly on his door until he appeared, yawning as
he held a candle up to see who the intruder was.

Corrin was weeping and out of breath.

Paul opened the door and held up a lamp to see who it
was. When he saw her, his face went from sleepy to somber. “Corrin! What is it?”

“It’s Amelia! She’s disappeared from the privy. I found
her cane on the ground nearby.”

“Oh, dear God! No!” Paul’s face drained of its color.

He disappeared, and in a moment returned wearing a
coat and boots and carrying a rifle in one hand, loading it with the other. “Corrin,
go to as many of my neighbors as you can and enlist as many men as possible to
help look for her. Tell them to bring their rifles and guns. And if anyone
finds her, they should shoot three rounds into the air.” Then he impulsively
reached out and embraced her. “We’ll find her, Corrin. Don’t you worry about
that.”

Paul ran to the street, mounted the horse Corrin had
borrowed, and rode away into the night as Corrin headed out into the
neighborhood to pound on more doors.

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›

Paul had searched for almost an hour in the mountain
forest that rose behind the saloon, his heart racing the whole time.

“Over here!” Harry’s familiar voice shouted nearby.

He rushed through the forage to where the bartender held
a torch light over a white object laying in a heap on the ground. Immediately
dismounting the horse, he bent over to retrieve it. Upon recognizing it, he
halted his arm in mid-air. Amelia wore that shirt the first time she returned
his kiss on the river bank! His heart pounded wildly, his breathing became
strained. His own words resounded in his ears,
we’ll find her
.

And he prayed in desperation. “Please, Lord! Help us
to find her, before it’s... too late!”

›
›
›

Aaron Cowan looked toward the window of the cookhouse
where he often went whenever he wasn’t able to sleep. The strange sound came
again, like a hurt kitten. He opened the door and saw the figure of a woman
stumbling through the camp in the moonlight.

He stepped out of the cookhouse and the woman stumbled
toward him. She apparently had been hurt. He caught her with both hands, and
with negligible strength, she began to beat his chest to try to free herself.

“Let me go!” Her voice came out barely above a
whisper.

Amelia? Aaron’s heart wrenched and his mouth dropped
open. How had this happened?

“Please, don’t hurt me anymore!”

“Miss Jackson! It’s me, Aaron Cowan! You’re all right.
You’re at the logging camp.”

“Aaron?” she questioned between laborious and painful
breaths. Under the weight of sheer exhaustion and the beating her sick body had
taken, she collapsed. Aaron caught her up and carried her to the small shanty
he and his brother shared.

“Jeremiah! Get up and light a lamp! Now!” He placed
her gently on his bunk while Jeremiah bolted to his feet.

“Aaron, you scared me half out of my wits! What are
you doing?”

“Hurry! Light a lamp.”

Jeremiah quickly shook off his sleepiness at his
brother’s urgent request and did his bidding. The lamp lit, he looked toward
Aaron who was bent over his bunk and when he saw the bruised and bloody figure
of a woman lying weeping and wrenching in pain on top of the brown bed covering,
he gasped.

“Amelia?” Jeremiah exclaimed as he grabbed Aaron’s
shoulders. “How did this happen? Where did you find her?”

“I couldn’t sleep and was over at the cookhouse doing
some paperwork when I heard something outside. I went out to see what it was and
she came right up into camp.”

Aaron could hardly believe what he saw. Amelia’s skin
was red from exposure to the cold, and she had obviously been beaten by someone
with superior strength, her delicate body cut, bloody and bruised all over. She
lie on her side, doubled over, holding her stomach, shaking profusely, silently
weeping, and having difficulty catching her breath.

Jeremiah, understanding the purport of what she must
have been through, knelt beside the bunk and touched the battered face of the
sweet lady whom Aaron knew his brother cared for deeply. She winced at his
touch. A pained look covered Jeremiah’s face.

“Aaron, they’re probably out looking for her. Go
outside and shoot off three rounds. If Strupel’s out there, he’ll know she’s
been found.” The signal had been used many times before when children or
strangers to the area had strayed too far into the woods and had lost their way
in the untamed mountains. He knew they would be looking for the signal now.

Aaron did his brother’s bidding and shortly afterward,
he heard three more shots being fired from somewhere down the mountain in
response to his own shots. Jeremiah was right; the message was being passed
along.

Loggers emerged from their shanties to see what the
commotion was. Aaron explained the situation briefly and sent them back to
their bunks.

 Upon returning to his own dwelling, he found his
brother nursing Amelia’s cuts and scrapes with a moistened handkerchief. It
looked like she had passed out.

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›

Every ounce of her being throbbed from the beating,
exhaustion, and emotional duress, and Amelia couldn’t think straight. Where was
she? Was she safe? Where was the awful man? Why had he hurt her this way? She
was going to be sick. Oh, no, footsteps! Was it him? She shouldn’t have stopped.
She should have kept running. Why had she stopped? Her side hurt so badly.
Please,
somebody help me
! She had to keep quiet; he was very close to her.

Someone dabbed her wounds with a cloth, a cool cloth. It
felt good on her feverish bruises. Then the cloth dabbed a place where the man
had hit her and it sent a pain through her as if for the first time. She
recoiled and begged, “Please, don’t hit me anymore.”