Coming Up Roses

by Duncan, Alice

  Without looking to see if she was obeying him, he continued his assault on the kidnapper. Time and time again, his fists bludgeoned Pegleg’s chest and belly. The sickening crunch of bone smashing against bone filled the air as he took time out from the cursed fiend’s body and concentrated on his face for a while.

  H.L. had no notion of time. When, with a whimper that would have done justice to a babe in arms, Pegleg crumpled to the floor, H.L. wasn’t through with him. Leaning over, he administered about a hundred or two parting blows.

  Through the murderous fog of his rage, other sounds penetrated slowly, one by one. It wasn’t until Rose’s frantic, “Stop it! Oh, stop it, please!” filtered into his head, that H.L. realized he’d given up on his fists, since he had to lean over too far for convenience, and had begun kicking the bastard. Hard.

  “Stop it! Mr. May! You’re killing him!”

  “Good!” His breath had started coming in shallow gasps before H.L. finally understood that the danger had passed.

  “Oh, my land, is he dead?”

  Dazed, H.L. blinked down at his fallen foe. Shoot. Was he dead? At the moment, H.L. felt only triumph at the notion. By God, there was one kidnapper who’d never ply his wicked trade again. He managed to gasp,

  “I dunno.”

  Rose squatted next to Pegleg and put two fingers to the pulse in his neck. “He’s still alive,” she said doubtfully.

  Hot anger sloshed through H.L. again, consuming his rational thought process in an instant. He reached down, grabbed Pegleg by the dirty bandanna tied around his neck, and started to heave him to his feet.

  “Oh, Yeah? Well, then, I guess I’m not done yet, am I?”

  He got in one good punch before Rose threw herself across the arm holding Pegleg up, causing his grip to loosen. “Stop it!” she screamed. “We’ve got to get Bear out of here before somebody comes!”

  Feeling as if he were waking up from a very bad nightmare, H.L. stared at her. He shook his head hard. He discovered he couldn’t breathe and slammed a hand over his heart. For a second, he feared he was dying of a heart seizure. Then it occurred to him that he was only winded.

  He said, “What?”

  Rose reached up and patted him on the cheek. Enunciating slowly and clearly, she said, “We need to leave now, Mr. May. We need to get Bear out of here before somebody else comes and realizes he’s been rescued.”

  “Bear? There’s a bear in here?” H.L. glanced around uncertainly.

  “Yes. Come along now. Bear’s not been hurt, but he’s been tied up since this morning, and his circulation is bad and he’s a little unsteady on his feet.”

  “Oh.” H.L. shook his head again. He realized his hands were hurting really badly and lifted them to take a look. “Good God.”

  “Mercy sakes, you’re a mess, Mr. May. Come along. We need to soak those hands in antiseptic water.”

  “You fight good,” a strange, young-sounding voice said at H.L.’s back.

  Turning, he staggered slightly. Rose kept him from falling flat on his face by looping an arm around his waist. Her arm felt good there. For the first time, he noticed Bear in Winter, who was standing up, rubbing his wrists as if he were trying to renew the circulation therein. At last he remembered what he’d been fighting for. “Oh. I guess you’re Bear,” he muttered inanely.

  The small boy grinned up at him. “Yes. You fight good, mister.”

  By God, he did fight well, didn’t he? A sudden burst of pride filled H.L.’s chest. By God. He’d rescued a child from a kidnapper! “Thanks.” He hoped he sounded modest. He didn’t feel modest. He felt swell.

  “Let’s get out of here now,” Rose said firmly. “This is a terrible neighborhood. We’ll have to find a cab somewhere, I guess.”

  “Right.” With one last hard shake of his head, H.L. decided he’d have to wait to gloat over his victory. Rose was correct; they had to get the hell out of the lakeside dock district, and the sooner, the better. H.L. had no idea how Pegleg made contact with the buyers of the children he kidnapped, and he didn’t particularly want to find out with Rose and Bear in Winter along.

  God, this was going to be a good story!

  He was disappointed when Rose unlooped her arm from his waist. Glancing down at her, he saw her pretty, piquant face peering up at him. She looked worried. He gave her the cockiest grin in his repertoire. “Hell, Miss Gilhooley, you don’t have to let me go. I might fall down without your support.”

  She turned so pink, he could see the color bloom even in the dark. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  With that, she took Bear’s arm and led him out of the ruined hovel. They had to step over Pegleg, since his body was so large it covered most of the floor. H.L. heard the man groan as they went through the smashed door and thought about turning back to kick him a few more times, but Rose, apparently sensing his thoughts, grabbed him by the tail of his jacket and wouldn’t let him.

  # # #

  Rose knew it was probably wrong of her, but she couldn’t help it. She was so impressed by the skill H.L. May had demonstrated in dispatching that awful villain, she wanted to kiss him.

  Not that wanting to kiss him was a new sensation, she reminded herself. Annie would be upset to know of Rose’s secret daydreams about this outrageous, unruly newspaper reporter.

  “There’s a cab,” H.L. said, startling her and making her heart leap in her chest. Bother. She was really on edge. Small wonder, after their recent encounter with that dreadful man back there. “Good. We need to get Bear back to the Wild West as soon as we can.”

  “I’m hungry,” Bear announced suddenly. “That man, he don’t feed me nothing.”

  Rose glanced at the boy and frowned. “Well . . . I think we really ought to get you back to your family, Bear.”

  The boy shrugged, resigned. Rose’s heart pinched. She knew very well how much the reservation Sioux were made to suffer these days. They were supposed to be supplied with adequate amounts of food on the reservation, and they were being taught farming techniques so that they’d eventually be able to support themselves.

  But the Sioux weren’t farmers by nature, and the Department of Indian Affairs was probably the most corrupt department in the entire government. The Sioux were forever being given bad meat and wormy grain to eat—and that’s when their shipments weren’t subverted entirely and they received nothing at all.

  Glancing from Bear to H.L., she said doubtfully, “Do you think we could stop somewhere and get something to eat?”

  H.L. pondered the question for a minute as he hailed the cab. “Why not? I could use something to eat, too. That brouhaha back there made me hungry.”

  The arrogant grin on his face tickled Rose. She returned it with one of her own. “Yes, I imagine you do. Beating people to a pulp must be hungry work.”

  He beamed down at her. “You betcha!”

  “You mean we get to eat?” Bear said eagerly.

  “Yes, Bear. We’ll get you a meal.”

  “Meat?” His dark eyes sparkled.

  “Meat.” Rose patted his arm.

  H.L. stepped aside after he opened the cab door to allow Rose and Bear to enter before him. Rose was surprised he’d remembered his manners, since he was obviously under the influence of victorious euphoria. She didn’t begrudge him his moment. He’d performed heroically. She heard him speak to the cabbie before he climbed in the cab after them.

  “Take us to Louie’s, cabbie.”

  Louie’s. Rose wondered if the food would be as good as that at Joe’s had been. People seemed to name their eating establishments after themselves around here. As soon as H.L. flopped into the seat opposite her, making the cab rock as he did so, she asked. “What’s Louie’s?”

  “Steak house. It’s not fancy, which is why I asked the cabbie to take us there.” He lifted his hands and looked ruefully at his knuckles. “I’m not looking too elegant at the moment, and neither are you.”

  Rose gasped since she, too, was seeing those battered and bloody knuckl
es fully for the first time. “Oh, my goodness! Mr. May, we need to get you fixed up before we even think about eating. It looks like your knuckles are smashed!”

  “They’ll be all right.” He sounded nonchalant, but Rose saw him grimace as he flexed his hands.

  “Nonsense! Before we do another thing, we need to get your hands cleaned and bandaged.”

  “Bandaged? But—”

  Rose didn’t wait around to listen to him fuss at her. She’d had enough experience with men to know they’d never admit when they needed help. She leaned out of the cab and used her Smith and Wesson to bang on the side of it to get the cabbie’s attention. He jerked and swiveled to stare down at her from his perch.

  “Take us to a hospital or a clinic, if you will, please, sir.”

  “Beg pardon, ma’am?”

  “We have an injured man in here.” She used her most regal tone. It was one she’d copied from Annie, and it generally got people’s attention. It worked with the cabbie. “And we need to get him bandaged.”

  “There’s a hospital up on Silverdale.”

  “Good. Take us there.”

  “No! Wait. For God’s sake, Miss Gilhooley!” H.L.’s face emerged from the window across from hers. “Take us to ten eighty-nine Gilcrest, cabbie.”

  “What’s that?” Rose demanded. “I’m warning you, Mr. May, I’m going to get your hands taken care of before we eat.”

  “Good God,” H.L. muttered. “All right. I admit I need to get washed up, but I’ll be damned if I’ll go to a hospital. I have bandages and carbolic at my place.”

  “Your place?”

  “My place.”

  Rose saw his eyes twinkle, and she stiffened.

  “Don’t worry, Miss Gilhooley. I won’t take advantage of you. Not with a witness.”

  “Mr. May!”

  He only laughed.

  Deciding she couldn’t win, especially with Bear in Winter watching everything with fascinated eyes, she turned to the boy and patted his arm. “This won’t take too long.”

  H.L. May sighed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  H.L. had to admit that his hands hurt like hell. He didn’t think any of his knuckles were permanently damaged, although that bastard’s jaw had been as hard as a rock and H.L. had pounded it about a hundred times.

  “You’re a bloody mess,” Rose grumbled. “Keep your hands in that water!”

  “Yes, ma’am.” This was a mighty comedown for a hero. Dammit, he’d just won a battle with a man twice his size, he thought grumpily, and here he was, being bullied by a woman. Rose Gilhooley could make him feel about as big as nothing without half trying.

  Nevertheless, he appreciated her nursing skills. She’d scarcely balked at entering his place of residence, although she had cast one or two apprehensive glances around to make sure nobody saw her walking up the stairs to a single man’s flat. But, what the hell, they had a chaperone. Damn it.

  Bear in Winter was curious about his place. H.L. took time to be glad he was a basically tidy man, or he’d have been embarrassed to bring Rose here. But he didn’t care for messes, and he kept his place neat. It helped, of course, that a cleaning woman came in once a week to dust, sweep the floors, and prepare a meal that kept him going for a day or two. The rest of the time, H.L. ate out. Chicago was a great place for eating establishments.

  As his hands soaked and Rose set out the bandages, scissors, and carbolic acid, Rose too glanced around. “I’ve never been in one of these newfangled apartment buildings.”

  “They’re not so newfangled,” he told her. “This is a nice one, though. It’s new. Built just a couple of years ago. I leased one of the very first flats they offered.”

  “It’s convenient, too, I imagine.”

  “Yup. I only have a short walk to the Globe, and the El’s just down the street.”

  “The El?”

  “The Elevated Railroad. It’s a great Chicago convenience. I tell you, Miss Gilhooley, Chicago’s a wonderful town.”

  “Hmmm.”

  The most time-consuming aspect of H.L.’s medical treatment was the quarter-hour Rose insisted he soak his hands. She snapped at him when he said he didn’t want to waste fifteen minutes. “This will prevent infection, Mr. May, and you’d be a fool not to take the time. Better fifteen minutes soaking in antiseptic water than a lifetime without the use of your hands.”

  Put that way, H.L. guessed a quarter of an hour wasn’t all that long. She was darned good at bandages, too. By the time he changed shirts and they left his apartment, his hands looked like hams wrapped for the butcher to sell, but he could at least still use his fingers. That would come in handy when he wrote his article.

  Rose had demanded that he sit still to have his face attended to, as well. He supposed he had been punched once or twice, before he’d overpowered the big brute. God, he was proud of himself! He’d done a piece of work on that bastard, and no mistake.

  “Your jaw is going to swell up like a pig’s bladder, Mr. May, and you need to get carbolic on those scratches.”

  “A pig’s bladder?”

  She huffed. “We used them as balls when I was growing up.”

  Interesting. H.L. vaguely recalled doing something of the sort back home in Missouri. When he wasn’t fighting with other kids about his name.

  They didn’t get Bear back to his kin at the Wild West until almost dawn. Little Elk was still awake, sitting cross-legged beside a fire. Two women and an old man had also been waiting for Rose and H.L.’s return.

  H.L. had told the cab driver to wait for him as he deposited his fellow travelers. The cabbie agreed to wait and settled in for a snooze.

  As they approached the campfire, H.L. watched with satisfaction when Bear broke into a trot, in a hurry and happy to be back in the arms of his family. When he spotted the approaching trio, Little Elk rose slowly from his seat beside the fire. The two women jumped up and ran to meet Bear, and the old man, whose face looked as if it had been drying in the sun for a century or more, cracked into a broad smile and hobbled over to embrace Bear. When H.L. glanced at Rose, he was not surprised to see that she was surreptitiously brushing away tears.

  A chorus of voices speaking Sioux swirled around H.L. and Rose as they were subsumed into the small reunion circle. After a minute or two,

  Little Elk turned to speak to them. “You found him.”

  H.L. thought Little Elk’s statement might perhaps be both simple and profound, although he’d have to think about it to be sure. He nodded.

  “We did,” agreed Rose, smiling. She apparently didn’t have H.L.’s penchant for analyzing other people’s statements. “And Mr. May had a terrible fight with the man who kidnapped Bear.”

  Little Elk appeared interested. He lifted an eyebrow and asked H.L. “Did you kill him?”

  H.L. shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

  The Sioux nodded, but said, “Too bad.”

  Too bad he killed him, or too bad he didn’t kill him? Another, more searching, survey of the Indian’s face answered H.L.’s question. The law of the frontier apparently dictated that a man be killed if he kidnapped a child. H.L. guessed he could understand that, but he’d read often enough that Indians kidnapped children. Would Little Elk think it was all right if somebody killed him for snatching a child?

  As he watched Rose and Little Elk converse softly about the tracking skills Rose had used in determining the place where Bear in Winter had been held captive, H.L. answered that question for himself, too. Little Elk and his Sioux brethren seemed to accept the rules of their culture as a matter of course. H.L. didn’t quite understand it, having grown up among his own kind, in which culture people expected others to forgive them but didn’t necessarily believe in turnabout being fair play. It looked from where he stood that Little Elk would have expected reprisals if he’d stolen somebody’s child.

  Hell, he was confusing himself. Rubbing eyes that felt as though they’d been through a sandstorm, he decided he was way too tired to think about
different philosophies of the world. He kept no particular hours, since his job as a reporter required him to cover stories at any hour of the night or day, but he’d put in more than a full day today.

  Not only that, but he’d fought a noble fight and won it, against a powerful foe. It occurred to him that it might be nice if, say, he were a knight of old and somebody wrote a song about him and his skill as a warrior and his dashing exploit in rescuing Bear in Winter. He’d read that Indians did that, too, and he had a sudden hope that Little Elk or Bear or somebody in his tribe would sing about his brave deed in the future. Keep his legend alive, as it were.

  He laughed out loud at his foolishness. Hearing him, Rose turned and gazed at him. “What’s so funny?”

  H.L. shook his head. “Nothing. I think I’m just dead beat.” The word reminded him of his battered hands, and he added, “In a manner of speaking.”

  Rose smiled at him. “Yes. I’m very tired, too.” She turned back to Little Elk. “I’m awfully glad we could help, Little Elk. Please tell everyone to be careful. I don’t know anything about the man who kidnapped Bear, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s the vindictive sort. He might try to take someone else or do something to retaliate.”

  A trifle irked, H.L. muttered, “If he can get around. He looked pretty badly maimed when we left him.”

  Rose patted his arm, and he got embarrassed. “Yes, yes. You did a wonderful job of overpowering him, Mr. May, and rendering him defenseless, at least for a while. I’m sure you’re a hero in everyone’s eyes.”

  He didn’t appreciate the way she said that, but he didn’t object, knowing that if he did so he’d be putting himself in an awkward light. But, dammit, he had done a wonderful job in overpowering that bastard and rendering him defenseless. “I’ll see you to your tent,” he muttered.

  “Thank you. Yes. I’m ready for bed, all right.” As if to prove it, she yawned suddenly, then put a hand over her mouth as if she thought she’d done something wrong. “I beg your pardon.”

  Amused, H.L. said, “It’s quite all right, Miss Gilhooley.”