Coming Up Roses

by Duncan, Alice

  Annie had laid aside her embroidery several sentences ago. Her face was set into a stern frown. “I don’t know, Rose, but I fear I was right about Mr. May. He’s not a nice man, and you’d be better off not speaking to him again.”

  Wiping tears that, in spite of her attempt to control them, had leaked from her eyes, Rose said shakily, “You’re right. What a fool I was to believe him.” Because she’d already begun reading the article, and because she was driven by the need to see what other shocks lay in wait for her within H.L.’s words, Rose continued reading. “‘Unable to read more than simple, basic words’—” Oh, Annie, that’s not even true!” Rose wiped away more tears. “Not anymore, anyhow. I’m learning. He didn’t even give me credit for learning!”

  “The man’s a monster,” Annie stated flatly.

  Rose found she didn’t want to disagree with Annie’s harsh assessment of H.L. May’s character. She no longer entertained the slightest inclination to defend him. She hated him. She wanted to take up one of Annie’s guns and shoot him dead.

  “‘Although the ravishing’— What does ravishing mean, Annie?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  “He finds you attractive,” said Annie through seriously clenched teeth.

  Well, that was something, anyway. Rose sniffed. “‘Although the ravishing Miss Gilhooley is unlettered and unso’—Fiddlesticks. I hate it when he uses big words. What does u-n-s-o-p-h-i-s-t-i-c-a-t-e-d spell?”

  “Unsophisticated.”

  “Oh.” Rose heaved a huge sigh and decided she guessed she was unsophisticated all right, although she despised H.L. for revealing this flaw to the whole world. Without further comment, she continued. “‘Although the unsophisticated Miss Gilhooley knows little or nothing about life in a big city, she proved herself to be an ace at tracking down lost children.’”

  Crumpling the newspaper as she lowered it to her lap, she gazed at the far side of Annie’s tent for a moment, contemplating the words she’d just read. “Did that sound sarcastic to you, or am I imagining it?” she asked at last.

  Annie had picked up her embroidery again, although the sour expression on her face hadn’t gone away. “I don’t believe you’re imagining a thing, dear. I think he’s making fun of you.”

  Rose’s heart crunched painfully. “That’s what I was afraid of.” She lifted the paper and went on, grimly determined to finish the article and learn the worst.

  It took a long time, since she had to spell out many of the bigger words H.L. had used in the article. He, obviously, hadn’t missed out on an education. Blast him. He could fling words around as if they were nothing at all. He could annihilate Rose Gilhooley in the newspaper with ease and facility. He probably thought Rose was too stupid to read the article in the first place.

  Or . . . Maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe he’d given her the newspaper to prove to her exactly what he thought of her, which was pretty much nothing except on a superficial level. She amused him. That much was clear. He thought she was pretty. That was clear, too. But he despised her as beneath him. That was painfully obvious.

  Rose wanted to shoot him. Then she wanted to shoot herself. Then she wanted to jump up and down on him, wearing the one pair of heavy boots she owned. Then she wanted to throw him into Lake Michigan and laugh as he drowned.

  She wanted to die.

  “Rose, look at me.”

  Rose lifted her head and looked at Annie. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this miserable, unless it was when her father had died. Or maybe when she’d departed Deadwood to join the Wild West, leaving her mother and brother and sisters behind. This felt worse even than that.

  “You will not allow that man to make you unhappy,” Annie commanded.

  “Oh?” She couldn’t make herself ask Annie how to accomplish that feat. Anyhow, it was beyond her since H.L. May had made her unhappy already.

  “No. You will not. You will not speak to him again, and you won’t fall for any more of his ‘I-want-to-interview-you’ tactics. The man has no morals and is a fiend.”

  “He is? A fiend, I mean.”

  Annie gestured at the newspaper. “Would he have called you an unschooled bumpkin if he wasn’t a fiend?”

  Rose winced when she recalled that part of the article. “No, I guess he wouldn’t have.”

  “He is an insensitive boor, and if you take my advice, you’ll refuse to see him again.”

  Rose’s heart felt as if it were being gripped in an eagle’s talons. It hurt so badly. Here she’d begun to believe H.L. May wanted to be her friend. If she were brutally honest with herself, she’d own up to something else. She’d begun to harbor a faint wish that he wanted more than friendship from her.

  Annie went on, interrupting Rose’s train of thought. “I hope to heaven that man hasn’t taken any liberties with you, Rose. If he has, he’s worse than a scoundrel.”

  “Liberties?” Rose almost cried out in torment when she recalled that kiss. Had that been a liberty? It had felt like heaven. Rose heaved a huge sigh. Yup. It had been a liberty. And she was a simple-minded fool. “No,” she lied. “He hasn’t taken liberties.”

  “Hmph. I wouldn’t put it past him.” Annie again laid her embroidery aside. She got up and joined Rose, who was sitting on the bed, and put her arms around her. “Oh, Rose, I’m so sorry. I know how much this article hurt you. It made me angry, too, although perhaps we’re making more of it than is really there.”

  Rose had subsided into Annie’s arms and allowed herself to cry. Annie would understand. Sniffling, she said, “How? It was mean, what he said.”

  “Perhaps he was only trying to be honest,” Annie said, sounding as if she didn’t believe it. “Perhaps he didn’t mean to belittle you.”

  “Hunh!” Rose didn’t buy that one. After spending so much time with H.L. May, if he hadn’t come to understand how sensitive she was about her lack of education, he was a really lousy reporter, and Rose didn’t believe that for a second.

  # # #

  When H.L. moseyed around to the Wild West encampment late on Monday morning, he was surprised not to find Rose exercising one of her pretty white horses in the arena. Glancing around, he saw no one at all, not even Little Elk searching for coins.

  “Huh.” He guessed he’d just have to go look for her, then.

  She wasn’t in her tent. When she didn’t answer his call, he lifted the flap and peered inside. No Rose. Since she liked to hang out with

  Annie Oakley, he made his way to the Butlers’ tent, the flap of which was down. Unusual, that. The Butlers usually kept the flap up during the day, to catch the Chicago breezes. He stood outside and hallooed.

  He was startled when, a second later, Annie popped outside, dropping the tent flap behind her. She looked as if she was as mad as a wet hen, and he jogged backward a step.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked without preamble.

  Taken aback, H.L. stumbled over his response. “I-I’m looking for Rose. Miss Gilhooley. You know. Rose. Wind Dancer. To interview.”

  Reaching up, Annie wagged a finger in his face. H.L. blinked in time to the movement of her finger. “Rose doesn’t want to see you again, Mr. May. That article you wrote about her was not only mean and degrading, it was awful. I don’t know how you can live with yourself, writing things like that about people.”

  Dumbfounded, H.L. could only stare down at Annie, who knew an advantage when she saw one and continued to berate him.

  “If you didn’t discover, in all the hours you spent with Rose, that she’s sensitive about her limited education, you’re a pure idiot, Mr. May, and I don’t believe that. I think you’re too smart for your own good. You did what you did on purpose. You humiliated her in print, and that’s unforgivable. You ought to be horsewhipped.”

  “Shot,” came from inside the tent. H.L. recognized Rose’s voice.

  “Rose!” he cried. He was feeling sort of numb, not having anticipated this reaction from the woman he’d written about in such glowing t
erms.

  “You can’t speak to her,” Annie said abruptly. “And you assuredly can’t see her. You said the most dreadful things about her in that article. You made her feel awful, and you just get out of here now!”

  She whirled around and ducked back into her tent.

  H.L. might have tried to enter the tent after her, except he saw, by the indentations on the canvas, that she was tying down the flap. He also didn’t care to have one of Annie Oakley’s famous guns aimed at him, mainly because she was too good with her weapons and he didn’t want to annoy her more than she was already annoyed. His mouth hanging open, he stared at the tent flap for a few minutes, trying to think.

  Damn. He’d humiliated her? Rose? He shook his head hard, attempting valiantly to figure this out. How could an article that fairly glowed with admiration for her humiliate her? How could she object to his having exalted her brilliance, both as a performer and as a person? She was angry because he’d pointed out her lack of a formal education? But he’d explained all that! Plus which, he’d admired her continuing attempts to make up for her ignorance, and had written so clearly and enthusiastically in his article. How could that humiliate anyone?

  He stood outside the Butlers’ tent for almost ten minutes, trying to understand Rose’s reaction to the pieces he’d written about her, but he couldn’t. He’d meant those articles to be paeans of praise for a woman he admired above all other women in the world. How could she take them so completely the wrong way?

  By the time he finally gave up and left the Wild West, he hadn’t come up with an answer. The only thing he knew for certain was that he couldn’t let things rest like this. He needed to talk to Rose; to make her see reason—to make her see him.

  He had a vague and unsettling feeling in his gut that if he couldn’t persuade her to see him again, he’d waste away and die.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rose managed to clear her mind of thoughts about H.L. May so she could perform that night. She knew better than to clutter her brain with extraneous matter when she was doing potentially lethal acrobatic tricks on horseback.

  The crowd roared when she rode into the arena. While that was not unusual, this evening the yells of approval sounded even louder than normal. This surprised her, since she hadn’t anticipated it. In the pit of unhappiness into which she’d sunk, she’d expected nobody to show up at all after reading that article about her. Or, if anyone showed up, she figured they’d jeer at her.

  But they didn’t. They applauded and cheered and clapped and whistled as if they were all madly in love with her. They even gave her a standing ovation before she’d done more than ride out of the tunnel and circle the arena. Odd, that. Rose didn’t understand.

  She went through her routine, keeping her mind on her business, although spontaneous eruptions of applause continued to surprise her throughout her act. When she’d taken her last dancing bow on Fairy, the crowd went wild. She looked around at the audience, and couldn’t understand why they were so much more enthusiastic tonight than usual.

  The colonel rode out to salute the crowd, and gave her a hug from his horse as he sometimes did. Rose feared for her ears, the clamor got so loud. The people sure loved the colonel.

  “They sure love you, Rosie.”

  Rose jerked her head around and stared at the colonel. Did he think the audience was going crazy for her? She glanced back at them, decided she ought to give them another wave, did so, and almost had to clap her hands over her ears when another deafening roar split the air.

  “You gotta give ‘em another dance around the ring, Rosie,” the colonel said, grinning from ear to ear. “They love you. That reporter fella did us all proud with that article he wrote about you.”

  He did? Dazed with shock, Rose didn’t respond with words, but did as the colonel had suggested. Waving and smiling at her admirers even though her head was in a whirl, she circled the ring again, nudging Fairy into a high-stepping trot. After they’d made the circuit, she directed Fairy into the center of the ring, had her take one last elegant bow, and decided enough was enough. The show would get seriously behind schedule if she kept taking extra bows.

  The uproarious thunder of the audience’s appreciation followed her out of the ring. In a fog, she took the moccasins Annie handed up to her.

  “They love you, Rose,” Annie told her with a radiant smile. “They absolutely love you.”

  “Thanks, Annie,” Rose mumbled, beginning to feel a trifle uncomfortable about all the noise.

  She slipped her moccasins on, slid from Fairy’s back, and guided the horse through the masses of cavalry and Indians waiting to head out into the arena to enact Custer’s Last Stand. As she returned her friends’ waves and congratulations by rote, her brain started churning.

  Was the colonel right? Did that horde of people out there love her because of what H.L. May had written about her? Rose trusted the colonel implicitly, but she wasn’t sure about this one, mainly because it made no sense to her.

  After she’d finished reading those articles, she’d felt as if H.L. had knifed her in the back. She’d felt as if he’d stripped her naked and paraded her around Chicago, revealing to the masses every single one of her faults and deficiencies. Annie had understood exactly how she’d felt, because she’d shared her view of the articles.

  Could the two of them possibly be wrong? Did the people of Chicago like her even better now, knowing she’d overcome certain obstacles? Rose gave her head a shake, making her feathers jiggle and tickle her caves, and she realized she’d forgotten to take off her headdress. She did so as she walked to the stables, still attempting to make sense of everything that had transpired in the last day or so.

  She was so involved in puzzling the matter out that she didn’t at first see H.L. May, who was waiting for her inside the stable. When she saw him, she stopped in her tracks, confusing Fairy, who whickered with irritation. Fairy’s favorite part of the day was the few minutes after her performance, when she got pampered.

  Rose blurted out, “H.L.”

  He pushed himself away from the wall he’d been holding up and walked over to her, ignoring the horse. “I need to talk to you, Rose.”

  Even as her heart soared with joy at seeing him again, she knew she didn’t want to talk to him. Not about those wretched articles. She felt foolish, as if she’d made a big deal out of nothing.

  Yet it hadn’t been nothing to her. Those articles had hurt her so badly, she’d been totally crushed after she’d finished reading them. She was ashamed of her lack of education, and of his calling her an unschooled bumpkin. Annie had called him a fiend for that one. Just thinking about it made the heat creep up the back of Rose’s neck. The thought of the whole world learning her deepest secrets made Rose want to crawl into a hole and hide.

  Knowing she was in no condition to make sense of anything, she withdrew into herself. Renewing her forward progress, much to Fairy’s relief, she muttered, “About what?”

  “You know about what.” He fell into step beside her.

  Rose felt hemmed in, as she had that first night, with H.L. on one side and the horse on the other. Uncomfortable, she sped up. H.L. kept up with her, blast him. When they got to where Rose’s equipment was laid out, H.L. subsided, thank God. He went over to lean against another wall.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Rose. You must know that.”

  “Must I?” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye as she reached for Fairy’s brush.

  “You have to.” He sounded almost desperate. “Those articles praised you to the skies, for God’s sake!”

  Rose sniffed. “I didn’t get that from them.”

  “Obviously.” Now he sounded cranky. “You’re too damned sensitive. Do you know that? Somebody praises you for rising above your circumstances, and all you do is get mad because they mentioned the circumstances. Did you pay any attention at all to the rest of the articles?”

  “Yes,” she snapped. She was beginning to feel as if he were
shoving her into a corner, and she didn’t enjoy the feeling. “Yes, I read the whole thing, thank you, in spite of my unschooled background. Of course, it took me a long time, since I had to sound out a lot of the words.” She sniffed imperiously.

  “Ah, Jesus.” H.L. flung his arms in the air in a gesture of supreme frustration.

  Rose resented that. Anybody would think it was she who was at fault here. She pointed the curry brush at him. “You may think it’s fine and dandy to reveal a person’s darkest secrets to the world, H.L. May, but some of us prefer to enjoy a little privacy. It’s not enjoyable for me to have the whole world know how stupid I am.”

  “You’re not stupid, dammit!”

  He hollered so loudly, Fairy objected, dancing nervously and nudging Rose. Rose winced at the noise and comforted her horse. “There’s no need to yell at me, H.L.,” she grumbled. She did appreciate his emphatic renunciation of her alleged stupidity, although she’d never say so. Rather, she sniffed again.

  “A lack of education doesn’t mean you’re stupid, dammit,” H.L. went on. “Lots of people don’t have the opportunity to go to school. You’ve done more than most people, even people with an education. Don’t you see that?”

  She glared at him, feeling silly about her reaction to his articles, but resenting them anyhow. “It’s all well and good for you to say such things, H.L. May, but look at it from my point of view for a moment.

  How would you like it if the whole world learned the one thing about you that you were most ashamed of?” Embarrassed by this statement and the admission of her shame, she turned back to her horse and clucked gently to her. She started brushing her, hoping H.L. wouldn’t notice how shaky she was.

  “Damnation, Rose Gilhooley, you’re a public figure! What’s more, the public eats up the kind of stuff I wrote in those articles!”

  Rose huffed, mainly because she didn’t know what to say.