Ruby by Lauraine Snelling, Alexandra O'Karm

kerosene on the embers of Ruby’s long-damped rage.
    “You thundering half-wit, picking on a child like that. I hope to heaven that when you are not three sheets to the wind, you have some kind of manners, for you certainly aren’t exhibiting any now. And you, ma’am, from the look on your face I feel certain you know where my father is and how to take us there, so I suggest you do so immediately.” God, you shut the mouths of the lions facing Daniel in their den. Can you do the same here for us?

CHAPTER SIX
    “Ah, ain’t she a looker!”
    Ruby ignored the laughter and the comments as Belle led her and Opal through the smoke-hazed room and up the stairs. She wanted to keep her hands over Opal’s eyes and ears, but that was not possible. No young girl should be subjected to this . . . this . . . She could not for the moment think of a word for the miasma of horrified thoughts that assailed her. She kept her eyes straight ahead, on the part in Opal’s hair, created with such love and caring each morning when she braided her sister’s hair. But like the flyaway wisps that glowed with a red fire in the lamplight, her attention careened around the room, sensing the men staring at them, realizing that Belle was prolonging the agony instead of protecting them.
    Nay, surely not. Ah, but true . Up ahead she could see Belle’s hips sway from side to side as she took each step of the carved oak stairs deliberately. Each hip would bump the side of a normal doorway, the sway was so pronounced.
    A wolf whistle came from the room behind and below her. She saw Belle send a saucy look over her shoulder. She was enjoying every moment of this humiliation.
    Surely this isn’t the way our father would have his daughters treated—humiliated at the hands of these ruffians . If this was any picture of the men of the West, the romantic stories she’d read about cowboys were not only highly overrated but downright lies. A picture of the man on the train flashed through her mind.
    What a difference. So which was true? She reached the top step and followed Opal, who followed behind Belle.
    Ornate red wallpaper lined the hall with dark oak doors set at intervals. She heard a giggle behind one they passed and a man snoring from another. When Belle stopped and knocked on a door on the street side of the building, Ruby sucked in a breath. Were they about to meet their father? Must be since Belle had said nothing about his passing away. She laid a hand on Opal’s shoulder.
    “Wait here.”
    “But, Ruby—”
    “No, let me go in first.”
    “Take your time, ladies, he ain’t goin’ nowhere.” Belle’s voice had lost the purr she used when men were around. And her smile didn’t begin to reach her kohl-lined eyes.
    “Th-thank you. You may go now.”
    “Don’t you want me to introduce you?” The beauty patch at the side of her mouth moved when she talked, a trait that seemed to entrance Opal. She kept staring at Belle as if to memorize every inch of her, and in some areas the inches were considerable.
    “If you like.” Ruby wished she’d kept the words inside the moment she said them. She didn’t need anyone to introduce her to the father she had at one time adored. They crossed the dimly lit, sick-smelling room.
    “Per. Per!” Belle shook the shoulder of the skeleton lying in the bed. She leaned closer and called his name again.
    Ruby glanced around the high-ceilinged room, wondering if she could turn up the lamp. Weren’t there any candles available, or was the only light source the kerosene lamp nearer to the door than to the bed?
    “Ruby,” Opal whispered from the doorway, shielded from the sight of the bed by a short wall. “Can I come in now?”
    Ruby shook her head, then whispered back. “No, you wait there.” Surely this caricature of a man lying in the bed could not be their father. But he had said that he was dying, and from the looks of this man, he’d been dying a long time.
    “Per.” Belle shook him again,