Her newly washed red hair was tied at the nape with a strip of lace, but soft curls spilled out around her cheeks and over her shoulders. Her face, with its sprinkling of freckles, glowed fresh and lightly tanned. She wore her military boots and the ugly green gown, which hung loosely on her, but she was lovelier to him than any woman. And more precious.
He felt like a vise was closing around his heart, and he could barely breathe. Looking down, he realized it was actually Calina who had wrapped herself around his body tighter than a Cuban cigar. Damn! While he tried to extricate himself from her stranglehold, Rafe attempted to get Helen’s attention. Several men had approached and were saying something to her, but she gave them the cold shoulder.
Glancing back at Rafe one more time, Helen’s brown eyes grew huge with hurt and began to well with tears. But only for a moment. Anger instantly took over. She lifted her chin, spun on her heel, and prepared to rush out.
But the rambunctious miners blocked her way. “Hey, boys, lookee here. We got us a new singer. We doan need no Felicia. No sirree. Jist take a gander at this l’il redheaded filly.” They passed her toward the stage, ignoring her shrill objections.
Rafe moved to go after her, but somehow the Mexican señorita had twined one leg around his calf and he tripped, almost taking both of them to the filthy ground. By the time he finally got himself loose from her clinging hands and legs, Helen was being shoved up onto the stage with demands that she sing.
“I can’t sing,” she rebelled. “Will you men just listen to me? I’m not a singer.”
“What can ya do, honey?”
Much laughter followed that question.
“She ‘pears a mite like that Elena gal, don’t she?” one man speculated.
“Ya mean the one that corkscrews?” another responded.
And that held a lot more appeal to this crowd than singing.
“Singin’ or corkscrewin’? What’s it gonna be, darlin’? Let’s get on with it,” snarled a mountain man, about six-foot-five with half his face covered with slash marks. He’d probably tangled with a grizzly bear at one time.
Rafe noticed that one of Helen’s short sleeves was torn, and her eyes darted wildly through the crowd, imploringly, searching for him. He tried to force his way forward toward the tightening crowd, to no avail, and the two bouncers he’d met up with earlier stood in front of him. One of them barked, “Weren’t ya told before? No greasers on this side of the room. Out!”
Rafe backed up.
Since she obviously wasn’t going to sing, the men now demanded that Helen dance — a prelude to her corkscrewing the entire damn lot of them.
Rafe rapidly assessed the situation and decided he had no choice but to leave through the front door.
Helen stared at his departing back and couldn’t believe her eyes. He was actually abandoning her to this mob. Well, what had she expected? Just a few moments ago, she’d come into this hellhole to give him some important news, only to see him making out with some Mexican bimbo.
She bit her bottom lip to stop its trembling and refused to allow the tears in her eyes to overflow. With more courage than she felt, she tried to outshout the obnoxious men. “Would you all just shut up for one minute and listen to me?”
The music slowly petered to a stop, and the shouting died down to a low rumble. The only sounds were the clinking of coins at the gambling tables.
“My name is Helen Prescott. I don’t sing and I don’t corkscrew. You ought to be ashamed — ”
She heard a rustling movement behind her and saw Rafe crawling under the tent flap. Thank goodness!
“What’s that greaser doin’ up there? Someone oughta put ‘im in his place.”
“Yeah, let’s show ‘im what we do to them what tries to mix with their betters.”
“He’s my husband, you blockheads,” Helen yelled.
“Her husband?” exclaimed the huge mountain of a man with a clawed face. He spit a wad of tobacco on the floor, splattering the boots of all the miners around him. No one seemed to mind. “What kind a white woman marries a dirty Mex?”