She narrowed her eyes. Finally, Helen nodded slightly, and Rafe breathed a sigh of relief.
Before she had a chance to digest the fact that he had successfully sent her a message, Rafe began softly to hum the music to “Wind Beneath My Wings,” her favorite song. Helen would have recognized the rhythm anywhere. At first, she was caught up in the beautiful lyrics. “Did you ever know that I’m your hero?” he sang softly, but horribly off-key. He must be tone deaf.
“Are you drunk?” she asked suspiciously.
He flashed her a look of irritation.
“Sunstroke?”
He continued to croon, “Did you ever know that I’m your hero?”
Huh? That isn’t the way the song goes.
Helen’s fuzzy brain puzzled over his odd behavior as he persisted in singing his own version of the popular song, all of the changes having to do with his being her hero. Was he trying to say that he was going to rescue her? Now?
“Why do you sing, Senor Angel?” Pablo asked kindly. “Do you avoid thinking about the hanging? Don’t worry. If you wish, I weel shoot you when the hangman pulls the rope so you weel feel no pain.”
Rafe gave him a blistering once-over. “Don’t do me any favors, pal.”
“Perhaps he ees practicing for the heavenly choirs. Heh, heh, heh!” Ignacio joked, and some of the men who still followed laughed at his gallows humor.
Meanwhile, Helen was shaking her head rapidly from side to side, trying to signal Rafe not to take any chances. The last thing she wanted from him was some imbecile attempt at heroics.
“Now what?” Ignacio asked, staring at her head twitching. “Did the bug move from the Angel’s nose to your ear?”
Well, that was as good an explanation as any. “Yes.”
Rafe made a clucking sound of disgust, then bit his bottom lip in concentration. Finally, his eyes brightened. This time he belted out a rendition of “Band of Gold,” except that in his version, it was “Hands of Gold.”
Helen shook her head in dismay. She never was much good at charades. Okay, hands, he wanted her to focus on hands. With sudden insight, she glanced over at his bound hands and noticed for the first time that the ropes appeared somewhat loose. Her eyes shot up to his and he mouthed, “Finally.”
Still, Helen frowned. Hero. Rescue. Now. Hands. Fear gripped her when she realized Rafe planned some foolish move. Even if he got his hands free, he was unarmed and wouldn’t be able to challenge these three bandits with their lethal weapons.
“No!” she exclaimed, uncaring if the outlaws overheard. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I told you not to talk,” Ignacio said, then furrowed his brow. “What ees too dangerous?”
Rafe crossed his eyes with mounting frustration at her words of resistance. Grimacing at her, he started another song, and she groaned, but still he carried on. This time he favored them with a Bobby Darin tune, “Mack the Knife.” He tried not to emphasize the word knife in the song, but sang stanza after stanza of the old standby.
And Helen concluded that Rafe must have a knife. She squinted at him questioningly, and he tapped his booted foot lightly along F. Lee’s flank.
He had a knife hidden in his Army boot. Well, of course, he would. Old gang habits died hard.
Helen studied Rafe closely, as if seeing him for the first time. No wonder he seemed unconcerned about their safety! No wonder he kept telling her to trust him!
She felt like such a fool, thinking him a defenseless wimp. He must have been laughing at her silly misconceptions, her karate attempts to defend them, her criticism of his cowardly failure to fight off the bandits.
She pressed her lips together, forcing back the lump in her throat, and Rafe apparently thought she still didn’t understand. So, he started singing “Wind Beneath My Wings” again, promising in his weird, off-key version to be the wings behind her dreams.
And a slow tear slipped down Helen’s cheek.
“See,” Pablo told the crowd, “the Angel ees singing of angel wings to his wife.”
Ignoring Pablo and the miners’ “oooh” of understanding, Rafe tilted his head in bafflement at Helen’s tearful response to his song. Then, he continued to sing softly, “Did you ever know that I’m your hero?”