Coming Up Roses

by Duncan, Alice

  She stopped walking, causing Fairy to whicker again. Fairy didn’t like disruptions to her schedule any more than Rose did. She decided to be blunt. “Mr. May, you’re annoying me. I have to take care of my horse, and I don’t need help.”

  “Aw, hell, Miss Gilhooley, all you need to do is answer a couple of questions tonight. We can talk more later. I won’t be in the way. I promise.”

  “You’re already in the way,” Rose said through clenched teeth.

  He laughed again. He was, without a doubt, the most impervious, not to mention aggravating, person Rose had ever met. Well, except for the few occasions when she’d been accosted by men who were liquored-up. Rose knew liquor did horrid things to men. On those occasions, however, she’d been armed. At the moment, all Rose had with which to defend herself were her fingernails, and she kept them short because of her act. Well, and her feathered headdress, which only tickled. A whole lot of help that would be.

  “Nonsense,” H.L. said jovially. “I promise I won’t be a nuisance. I’ll just tag along. That way I’ll get to write about what you do after your act is over.”

  He gave his head a small shake, and Rose thought she detected reverence in his expression, although it was difficult to tell since he was so brash and rude. Reverence from this source would also be incredible, so she decided she’d been hallucinating.

  “I swear, I’ve never seen anything like your act. You’re amazing.”

  Bother. She guessed she couldn’t shake him off her tail. And, although she hated to admit it, it was sort of flattering to have a cultured big-city reporter so enamored of her showmanship. However, she still didn’t view with joy the prospect of having him ogle her corsetless body while she rubbed Fairy down.

  “Well,” she said with less than her customary courtesy—he was really a most aggravating fellow—”I guess I can’t stop you.” She turned and clicked to Fairy, who walked beside her obediently. Rose reflected that it was comforting to have something obey her commands, even if H.L. May was too dense to do so.

  “Great.” H.L. seemed totally undismayed when Rose took off for the stables without waiting for him. He merely trotted along next to her.

  Rose cast him a sidelong glance from the corner of her eye and was irked to observe that he didn’t show the slightest degree of embarrassment. She’d known for six years now that newspaper people were aggressive sorts and inclined to be pushy and insensitive, but she hadn’t understood until this minute that some of them had no feelings at all. It was quite vexatious.

  She also felt a little edgy, knowing she was hemmed in on both sides. Generally, she had only Fairy beside her as she walked to the stables. She felt much more comfortable without H.L. May walking with them. She kept expecting him to say or ask something awkward or embarrassing.

  Nevertheless, Rose knew Colonel Cody courted the press, so she aimed to do her duty by him. She didn’t give a rap about H.L. May or his articles, but Rose held up William F. Cody almost as a saint in her life, and she’d not disappoint him if she could help it.

  This reporter made her awfully nervous, though. Rose had the disheartening feeling that she’d be less anxious if H.L. May were a plain man. Or old. Or obviously dissolute and dissipated. Or short, soft, and flabby. Unhappily for Rose, he was none of those things.

  H.L. May was a large, robust, young, healthy-looking fellow, with a charming grin, a handsome face, lovely eyes—they looked dark in the dim light leaking from the arena, but Rose recalled that they were a dancing hazel green. He also towered over her, although that wasn’t hard to do.

  Rose frequently felt insignificant, but the feeling most often occurred when she was contemplating her lack of formal education and her frontier upbringing. She was unused to feeling insignificant just because she was small. Her overall smallness worked to her advantage in the most important area of her life: Her work.

  At the moment, if she’d been able to grow six inches and gain thirty pounds, she’d have done it instantly, because then H.L. May wouldn’t seem so overpowering to her. Or maybe he would. With a sigh, Rose decided that H.L. May was uniformly bad news in her life, and there probably wasn’t anything she could have done about it, even with help from a miracle growth spurt.

  “Here’s the stable,” she grumbled.

  “Aha. Where the real work takes place.” H.L. sounded smug.

  Rose shot him another glance, this one more sour than before. What did he mean, the real work? If he thought doing all those tricks in front of thousands and thousands of strangers was easy, he didn’t know real work from his own hind end. She chose not to say so, Knowing he could use words better than she and fearing she’d lose any verbal battles he cared to wage.

  Shoot, she was already thinking of their relationship, if you could call it a relationship, in terms of warfare. This boded ill for any articles he aimed to write about her.

  At least Fairy was happy. The small mare pranced gaily into the stable, knowing she was going to be groomed, covered with a snug blanket, led to her comfy stall, and given food and water. Colonel Cody only gave his animals the best, too, so Fairy would get a share of oats this evening, as she always did after a show.

  “There you go, girl.” Ignoring H.L. and determined to carry on with her job as if he weren’t there, Rose clicked to Fairy, who obligingly walked over to stand near the equipment Rose used to brush her and rub her down. She was a good horse. Given tonight’s company, Rose blessed her for it. Fairy represented normality under abnormal circumstances.

  “That horse is sure well trained,” H.L. observed, watching with interest.

  Rose dared to glance at him. She wasn’t pleased to find him relaxed, leaning against the stable wall, his arms crossed over his chest, and watching her acutely, as if his eyes functioned as tiny motion-picture cameras. Rose had seen an exhibition of motion-pictures at the Fair. She got the impression his brain was recording and cataloging everything his sharp green eyes saw.

  “Yes, she is.” She went to where her tools were laid out, picked up the curry brush, slipped her hand under the leather strap, and began working on Fairy’s beautiful white coat. Rose had contemplated naming the lovely mare Buttermilk, but decided she was far too dainty for such a countrified name. The name Fairy suited her much better.

  If Rose were a horse, she had a feeling nobody’d think twice about naming her Buttermilk.

  Fiddle. She had to stop thinking things like that. H.L. May brought out the insecurities in her, and that was not a good thing if she wanted to impress him. Which she did. For the colonel’s sake. For her own sake, of course, Rose didn’t care.

  Who do you think you’re fooling, Rose Gilhooley?

  She managed to suppress a snort laced with self-disgust in time to prevent it from hitting the air. Blast H.L. May, anyhow. He rattled her. Rose didn’t allow herself to be rattled very often these days. She’d learned in six years of hard work with the Wild West how to keep herself to herself and to appear quiet and dignified under the most trying circumstances. She definitely didn’t want to have her humble origins splashed all over the newspapers.

  Well . . . She thought about it as she brushed the mare’s coat with a soothing rhythm . . . She guessed she didn’t honestly care if people knew about her hard beginnings. What Rose didn’t want folks to know was how dumb she was.

  Annie would figuratively smack Rose for calling herself dumb, even to herself. Annie, whose upbringing had been almost exactly like Rose’s, had lectured her often about how a body couldn’t choose the life into which she was born, and that it was what one did with one’s life after one was dumped out onto this earth that counted. Annie invariably went on to say that Rose had made something of herself, and she ought to be proud of it.

  As for her education, or lack of it, that wasn’t Rose’s fault, either, Annie always said. What’s more, Rose was constantly striving to improve that aspect of her life. Therefore, according to Annie, Rose ought to hold her head high and take a back seat to no one.

  Th
e good Lord knew, Rose thought as she brushed, Annie herself never took a back seat. She’d made sure she’d learned how to read and write, even though she hadn’t had any schooling, and she was as dignified and self-assured as Queen Victoria herself. Rose sometimes wondered why Annie was so self-confident and if Rose would ever learn how to be that way. She doubted it more often than not.

  “Who trained him?”

  Having become involved in her own glum musings, Rose had almost forgotten about H.L. May’s presence in the stable. Her head jerked up, and she stared at him. “Who? I mean what?” She stamped her foot in frustration, causing Fairy a moment of uneasiness, which Rose allayed by cooing softly to her.

  H.L. nodded at the horse. “Who trained him? That horse you’re brushing?”

  Him? Rose stared hard at H.L. May for only a second, before she transferred her gaze to Fairy. “This,” she said, trying not to sound as surprised as she felt, “is a mare.” Eyeing H.L. once more, keenly, she added, “A mare is a female horse.”

  He laughed. He had a loud laugh, and it seemed to bounce off the wooden stable walls. Several of the horses that weren’t being used in tonight’s show shuffled and huffed. Rose knew exactly how they felt. She’d have liked to heave the curry brush at Mr. H.L. May’s head, but she knew that would probably only amuse him, too.

  After what seemed like hours, H.L. stopped laughing and said, “Ah. Well, then, who trained her? Whoever it was did a darned good job.”

  Rose eyed him for approximately ten seconds more before she ground out frigidly, “Thank you. For your information, I trained her. Whom did you think trains the horses I’m expected to risk my neck riding?”

  He laughed again. Naturally. Rose might have predicted as much.

  “Ah, I see,” he said after another several hours of his impertinent laughter had disturbed the horses and Rose’s sensibilities. “I should have known.”

  “Indeed.” Finished with brushing Fairy’s glossy coat, Rose replaced the curry brush without doing anything untoward with it, for which she congratulated herself, and took up the comb with which she maintained Fairy’s sleek main and tail.

  Sometimes Rose braided her horse’s tail, but she didn’t do so unless the weather was particularly windy. Tonight she hadn’t. The colonel had told her that when an audience witnessed the free-flowing tail of a fast-moving horse, they went crazy with excitement, and Rose always tried to please the colonel. Even for the colonel’s sake, however, she wasn’t going to risk her neck any more than she had to, and if the wind blew just right, Fairy’s flying tail interfered with her vision.

  Trying her best to ignore her inquisitor, she started combing, making sure she whispered soothing noises to Fairy, in case the horse was as upset as Rose by H.L. May’s continued presence.

  It wouldn’t be so bad if he weren’t so—so—obtrusive. But he was. Rose had a suspicion that even if he were to be polite and keep his mouth shut, she’d still know he was there. He had a commanding presence. Sort of like the colonel’s, only nowhere near as restful.

  “You did a really good job training her,” H.L. observed.

  As if he knew anything. He couldn’t even tell a mare from a gelding “Thank you.”

  Although Rose had told herself she wanted H.L. May to shut up and go away, when he did remain silent, he made her even more nervous than when he talked. She discovered this unnerving fact when a space of quiet ensued after her last frigid thank you.

  Blast the man, what was the matter with him? For that matter, what was the matter with her. It wasn’t like Rose Gilhooley to be this anxious around newspaper people. Not any longer. During the first year or so of her tenure with the Wild West, she’d been as nervous as a cat on a hot rock every time anyone connected with the press came around. But that was only because she’d been so conscious of her shortcomings regarding language usage and proper grammar. She’d studied hard in the ensuing years, however, and now she could hold her own around most of the press buzzards, as she’d come to think of them.

  At least the reporters in Europe had been polite. This H.L. May person was rude and intrusive, and Rose wished he’d either get on with it or leave. Her nerves crackled uncharacteristically. Perhaps she was only tense because she’d not had her quiet time alone with Fairy.

  Twaddle. She’d been pursued by newspaper people plenty of times after a show. Everyone who saw her considered her act spectacular, and most folks wondered how such a tiny, delicate-looking girl could do the amazing things she did.

  Ha! If they only knew. Rose was about as delicate as bear jerky. She never admitted it to members of the press. When H.L. finally spoke again, Rose was so involved in her own tumultuous thoughts that she jumped in alarm.

  “Say, Miss Gilhooley, I get the feeling you don’t like me much, but I’m really not such a bad fellow.”

  Involuntarily Rose slapped a hand over her thumping heart. She turned to stare at H.L. through slitted lids. Blast him, anyway! How dare he lull her into thinking he wasn’t going to talk any more, and then say something like that?

  Well . . . Rose realized instantly that she’d just been irrational. She chalked up this aberration in her normal clear thought patterns to H.L. May’s influence, too.

  After she’d caught her breath and her heart stopped thundering, which took approximately five seconds, she said, “Don’t be ridiculous, Mr. May. I don’t dislike you. I don’t even know you.”

  His grin made her heart stop for a second. She felt the heat creep into her cheeks, and this time she wanted to heave the mane-and-tail comb at him. Instead, she put the comb in its place with the precision that had been drummed into her by Annie Oakley and Colonel Cody, both of whom liked to keep things neat, and walked over to Fairy’s own personal stall, where the mare’s special blanket hung over the railing. Rose had embroidered Fairy’s name on the blanket with her own fingers, under Annie’s tutelage. Rose picked it up and carried it back to the mare.

  “Hey, why don’t you let me help you with that stuff?” H.L. said, jerking away from the wall he’d been holding up. “That’s a pretty heavy blanket for a little girl like you.”

  If there was one thing Rose resented more than H.L. considering her a weakling, it was him thinking of her as a little girl. She glowered at him from under Fairy’s neck as she flung the blanket over the mare’s glossy white back. “I am not a little girl, Mr. May. And I’m quite strong. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t be able to perform my act, would I?”

  Thank goodness he didn’t laugh. He grinned, but Rose thought she might be able to stand that—although she wasn’t sure. His grin flashed two whole rows of gloriously white teeth that made a remarkable contrast against his tanned face. He looked too healthy to be a reporter. Rose had always been told reporters stayed indoors and drank all the time, and were mostly consumptive and dying. This specimen looked awfully darned robust to her.

  “I suppose not,” he said through his grin.

  She sniffed.

  “All right, Miss Gilhooley, I promise I won’t offer to help again. And I also promise I won’t get in your way.” He held his hands up, palms out, as a peace offering.

  “No?” She made sure she appeared as skeptical as she sounded, because she didn’t want him getting any ideas.

  “No.”

  Fiddle Rose wished his eyes wouldn’t twinkle like that. He was too good-looking for her peace of mind, and that was a very bad thing. Rose knew all about newspaper men. She understood they were men of loose morals and looser tongues. Annie, Rose’s model for all things proper, had often told her so.

  Annie’s opinion of men in general wasn’t very high. Her husband, Frank Butler, was a model of masculine perfection, but there wasn’t another man in the world who measured up to Frank, not even Rose’s personal hero, William F. Cody.

  Rose trusted Annie’s opinions absolutely. Since Rose had joined the Wild West, except for that one awful year when Annie had absented herself—she’d not condoned the inclusion of another lady sharpshooter in the W
ild West—Annie had substituted for Rose’s family. Mother, father, teacher, moral arbiter: Annie had been just about everything to Rose.

  “Heck, no,” H.L. said. He walked over to stand on the other side of Fairy and helped Rose straighten out the blanket. Rose wished he hadn’t done that. “I’m really a great guy. And I’m going to write a series of articles about you that will bring you to the attention of the world.”

  Rose squinted at him, this time from over Fairy’s graceful neck. She had to stand on tiptoes to do it, but that was all right. She wanted to make sure he knew she wasn’t any old backwoods hick. “I’ve performed in front of the crowned heads of Europe, Mr. May, not to mention most of the celebrities in the United States and its territories over here. What can you do for my reputation that Colonel Cody hasn’t already done? I’m sure I don’t need any publicity from you.”

  She placed special emphasis on the you in order to make him understand that she considered him a mere scribbler and worth little in the overall scheme of things. She didn’t, of course, but she’d die sooner than let him know it.

  “Nonsense. All performers can use publicity. And you’re really something.”

  She was? Since she didn’t know what to say, Rose remained silent, only leading Fairy to her stall. Fairy was glad to be home. She let Rose know as much by nuzzling her cheek before retiring for the night. Rose’s eyes filled with tears. At least Fairy appreciated her. Because she didn’t want H.L. May to know how much he was affecting her, she kept her back to him as she retrieved a bucket, got some grain, filled Fairy’s feed bin, and checked her water supply.

  “There you go, girl.” Rose patted the mare’s white rump and, unable to delay any longer, left the stall. With a sigh, she closed and locked the stall door, then sucked in a breath redolent of sweet hay and horses, and turned to confront her tormenter.

  “What exactly do you expect to accomplish with these articles, Mr. May? And why do you want to write about me? Wouldn’t you prefer to concentrate on a more famous performer?”