“Who said I was kidding?”
He took her hand again and lifted it to his lips, nipping at the knuckles with his teeth before pressing a light kiss over them. “Behave, Helen. You promised.”
“I did?” Geez, just that playful touch of his lips on her skin set all kinds of indecent thoughts racing through her mind. She tugged on his hand and reciprocated the gesture, giving his knuckles a little bite and a kiss, adding a quick lick of her tongue.
He exhaled sharply.
She inhaled sharply.
A dangerous game, and they both knew it.
Rafe started to lean across the table, his lips coming closer and closer to hers.
“Well, don’t you two jist beat all — ” a booming female voice interrupted them with fortunate timing — “making lovey-dovey all the time. Tarnation! How long did you say you bin married?”
A strapping young woman of almost six feet, big-boned and dressed like the miners right down to her heavy boots, dragged a chair up to their table and straddled it from the back. Mary Stanfield, known only as “The Indiana Girl” because her father owned the hotel in which they were eating, smiled at them companionably. She had become a good friend to them this past week, delighting in their horror over the five-mile trek down the mountain. Last spring, she’d walked down that same dangerous trail carrying a fifty-pound sack of flour on her back.
“What kin I do fer you folks?” she said, chortling as Rafe and Helen jerked their hands apart. “We got Hangtown fries on the menu today.”
“What are Hangtown fries?” Helen asked, putting her hands on her lap under the table. They still trembled from Rafe’s kiss. She saw Rafe do the same thing, then wink.
“You ne’er heard of Hangtown fries? Land’s sake! Where you been? They’s a mix of fried-up eggs and bacon and oysters. Mighty fine eatin’ ta fill a hollow stummick, iffen I do say so myself.”
“Oysters!” she exclaimed.
“No, I don’t think Helen and I need any oysters,” Rafe added drolly. “I’ll just have the usual. Venison steak and coffee.”
“We’re out of taters.”
“That’s okay. Just give me some extra bread.”
“Is there any trout?” Helen asked.
“There’s allus trout. If there’s one thing the Feather gives us, ‘ceptin’ chilblains, it’s a good supply of fish. Lordy, sometimes I smell them scaly critters in my sleep.”
“I’ll have the trout then. And coffee, too.”
After delivering their food, and a special treat of blueberry cobbler, Mary sat down with them again. “You folks thought anymore ’bout my suggestion that you link up with Zeb on his claim?”
Helen glanced over at the corner where Zebediah Franklin sat, snoring drunkenly, as usual. Apparently, the old man had a promising claim high up in the mountains that he’d abandoned after his wife died six months before.
“You know we can’t leave Rich Bar until Pablo arrives,” Helen reminded Mary. They’d told her that the young bandit had an important possession of theirs without giving her too many details about their past.
Mary shrugged.
“Besides,” Rafe added, “Zeb’s claim is probably taken over by someone else by now.”
“There ain’t too many men willing ta work that high in the mountains. It’s a mighty lonely spot, I hear.”
“So, you’re saying that the spot is so remote and dangerous that even a Mexican could file a claim without pure-blooded Americans having any objections?” Rafe remarked caustically.
“Don’t go takin’ that wrathy tone with me,” Mary snapped. “I ain’t got nuthin’ ta do with them furriner rules.”
“I’m sick of rules,” Rafe muttered.
“Me, too.” Helen flashed a secret smile at Rafe.
He groaned.
“I got some more of them dime novels,” Mary told Helen. “Yank brought ’em over yestiddy from his store on Smith’s Bar.”
Gunfire rang out down the street, but that wasn’t unusual. Guns were always being fired. This time, though, a woman’s screams accompanied the repeated firing, and men started running down the street, past the Indiana House, toward the outskirts of town. One of the miners yelled in, “Some Mex greaser jist killed Frank Boilings and his partner, Hiram Flagg. They’s gonna be a lynchin’, fer sure.”