Coming Up Roses (18 page)

Because the high-pitched, tuneful piccolo
part appealed to her so strongly, she placed her other hand on
H.L.’s arm as he reached out to open the door. “Do you mind waiting
to hear the end of this piece, Mr. May? It’s so—lively.” She hoped
that didn’t sound idiotic.

“
It’s lively, all right.” H.L.
chuckled. “Sure. Why not? We have all day. Almost.”

H.L. May’s chuckle did something to Rose’s
insides that she didn’t trust. He did, however, stop in his
headlong pursuit of fine arts. Actually, he didn’t even seem put
out with her, so Rose guessed she hadn’t done anything too
appalling or low-class.

“
That’s a great band, isn’t
it?”

Surprised by his seemingly easy acceptance of
this alteration in his plans for their day, Rose glanced up to
study his face. He appeared perfectly cheerful. “I think they’re
wonderful.”

There. She’d offered a firm opinion on
something. She felt rather as if this were a test of her ability to
perform in the world outside of the Wild West. If he didn’t make
fun of her, perhaps she’d dare to be a trifle more forthcoming in
stating her opinions in the future.

“
The conductor—see him there? The
fellow who’s bouncing up and down and waving that
baton?”

“
Yes. Of course.” Rose had even known
the leader of the band was called the conductor, although she was
certain H.L. wouldn’t understand her pleasure in the knowledge. But
Deadwood boasted a brass band and, while the conductor thereof
didn’t direct his musicians with a revolver, as the conductor of
the Dodge City Brass Band was reputed to do, Rose had enjoyed their
music on many occasions. In truth, she was glad the Deadwood
conductor didn’t find it necessary to conduct with a revolver. Life
in Kansas was already too perilous, and surely listening to pretty
music didn’t need to be a dangerous affair.

H.L. nodded at the conductor. “His name’s
John P. Sousa, and he writes a lot of the music his band plays,
primarily the marches. I think he wrote that piece. If it’s the one
I’m thinking of, it’s called ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever,’ and
it’s being introduced here, at the Exposition. Nobody’d ever heard
it before this Fair opened.”

“
My goodness.” Here was another
discovery for her to ponder. First it had been the invention of
foods, and now it was the invention of musical compositions. She
guessed there was a lot to life, if a body had time to appreciate
it.

All at once, she experienced an aching
longing to bring her mother to Chicago and show her the fair. Her
poor mother hadn’t been allowed to experience very much of life
aside from the difficulties it afforded a woman on the frontier.
Rose would love to be able to present the world to her, as H.L. was
presenting it to Rose.

Now there, she thought, was an interesting
concept. Sneaking another peek at H.L.’s face, she decided maybe he
wasn’t so frightening a fellow after all. As long as she could
guard herself against making more out of his attentions than was
there, she could undoubtedly benefit greatly from his willingness
to introduce her to new things. Then she could relate her
experiences to her mother via letters.

Rose wasn’t great with words, but she knew
herself to be adept at creating pictures with them. She tried hard
to develop this skill, since it was through her that Mrs. Gilhooley
was seeing the world. She hoped that with enough urging, Mrs.
Gilhooley and Rose’s two younger sisters would agree to visit Rose
and the Columbian Exposition before it closed.

The band, with the piccolo’s part soaring
along above every other instrument—Rose got the impression of a
small bird flying over a herd of cattle—came to the thrilling
conclusion of their musical offering. Rose was pleased when several
people who’d stopped to listen applauded. Believing the musicians
and their director deserved the applause, Rose added her accolades
to theirs. She found it a joy to be on the giving end of applause
for a change.

When she turned to continue on her way to the
Fine Arts Building, she was embarrassed to find H.L. smiling at
her, his overall expression that of a man whose pet had performed
some kind of trick to his satisfaction. She said tartly,
“What?”

“
What what?”

“
What are you looking at me like that
for?”

“
Like what?”

He appeared far too innocent, and Rose
frowned, not believing the pose for an instant. “Like I’m a
performing bear in a circus and you just taught me a new
trick.”

He threw his head back and laughed as he held
the door open for her.

Rose frowned as she passed by him and entered
the building. She didn’t think it was funny.

“
Miss Gilhooley, you’re
priceless.”

She was, was she? Rose didn’t know what to
think about that, so she only murmured, “Hmmm.”

H.L. was still grinning when he led the way
into the main chamber of the building. Rose blinked, amazed by the
size of the room, the number of paintings hanging on the walls, and
the many sculptures set here and there on the floor.

“
This is a great exhibit,” H.L. said as
he, too, paused to take everything in. “You can probably tell that
the fair directors got artists from all over the world to
contribute their work.”

“
My goodness.” Actually, Rose couldn’t
tell that, but she believed H.L. when he told her so. If she were
an artist, she’d like to have her work exhibited here.

“
Look. Over here we have a painting by
Michel. He’s French. The French are big in the fine arts
department.”

“
Ah.” So. Fine arts were paintings,
were they? And statues, too, from the looks of this room. “Good
Lord!”

“
What’s the matter?”

“
Nothing. Nothing. Really.” Rose felt
herself blush from the tips of her toes to the part in her hair.
Why, she wondered but would never ask aloud, did artists seem to
enjoy painting and sculpting ladies with no clothes on? A
surreptitious peek around at the other fair attendees who were
ogling the artworks gave her to understand that most of them
weren’t shocked or offended by these naked renderings. She wanted
to fan herself, but didn’t dare, for fear H.L. would snicker at her
small-town ways. Unwilling to further expose her lack of
sophistication, and annoyed with herself for her unintentional gasp
of surprise, Rose opted to keep her lips pressed tightly
together.

H.L. didn’t seem to take much note of her
outburst, thank goodness. He said, “And there’s a lot of Spanish
stuff in here, too, although most of the artwork was done by
Americans. This is an American fair, after all.”

“
Yes.” She squinted up at him,
perceiving an opportunity to direct the conversation away from her
faux pas. “You must have haunted this fair, Mr. May, to be so
knowledgeable about everything in it.”

He chuckled again, and Rose wished he hadn’t.
She scolded herself for giving him the opportunity to chuckle, in
fact, because every time he did it, hot shivers chased themselves
up and down her skin, and her heart did funny things in her chest.
This was undoubtedly a terribly improper reaction to H.L. May on
her part, and one Annie would be horrified to be told about.

Reminding herself to keep Annie’s advice
about men in mind at all times, no matter what her bullheaded heart
did behind her back, Rose snapped, “Well? Did you get to see the
exhibits before the fair opened? I mean, was that part of your
newspaper job or something?”

“
Actually, no. However, I do have a
pamphlet the Fair directors published before the Exposition opened.
It tells about everything that’s being exhibited here. This is the
largest World’s Fair ever put on. It’s colossal.”

Rose presumed that meant big. She
didn’t ask, but mentally jotted
colossal
down in her internal notebook, along
with
obsolete
. If she and
H.L. visited a comfort station today, she’d write them both down in
the real notebook she’d thought to stick in her handbag before she
set out on today’s excursion.

“
Look over here, Miss Gilhooley. You’ll
probably find this interesting. This artist, H. Buck-Brown, is
famous worldwide these days. Do any of these scenes look familiar
to you?” He gestured at a large plaster statue of an Indian and a
buffalo and then at a painting of soldiers on the western
plains.

They sure did look familiar, although Rose
was impressed by the overall neatness of Mr. Buck-Brown’s
renditions of western life as she’d known it in Kansas. Not to
mention the beauty of the scenes he depicted. Rose didn’t remember
anything beautiful about her Kansas home. If one were to judge by
Mr. Buck-Brown’s notions of life on the frontier, one could be
forgiven for concluding that the West was a virtual paradise.

“
Um, I don’t recall the prairie being
that pretty.”

He gave her another one of his velvety
chuckles. Rose held her breath. “That’s because it’s old hat to
you.”

“
Old hat?” Instantly, her attention was
jerked from the thrill of his voice to a new, and hitherto unknown
to her, figure of speech.

“
That means it’s because you lived
there and were used to it. It was all new and fascinating to
Buck-Brown when he traveled out west. And he probably went with the
express purpose of creating works of art, too. I think artists tend
to infuse romance into reality and make things look better than
they really are sometimes.”

Even though there were some words in H.L.’s
explanation with which Rose wasn’t familiar, she understood what he
was saying. She felt slightly encouraged. “Yes. I see what you
mean.”

By the time Rose and H.L. toured the Fine
Arts Building and the Liberal Arts Building, Rose was beginning to
sort out the different definitions of the arts in her head. Fine
Arts were paintings, drawings, sculptures, and so forth. Liberal
Arts included the writing of books and poetry and the study of
history and language.

Did music fit in there somewhere? She didn’t
believe she could conscientiously assume, simply because Mr. Sousa
and his band were playing on the bandstand outside the Arts
Buildings, that music was a liberal art. And where did mathematics
enter into all this? Or was math a science? Fiddlesticks.

The educational process could be a mighty
discouraging one sometimes, she mused sourly as H.L. and she walked
back to the Wild West encampment. There was still plenty of
daylight left, and Rose didn’t really need to rest up for her show
tonight, but she’d started to feel as if she were drowning in
information. She needed to relax a bit before her head, which had
been crammed as full as it could hold of new experiences and
understandings, either exploded or sprang a leak. They’d almost
come to the Indian encampment when Rose realized from the unusual
activity therein that something was amiss. She stopped in her
tracks. “Oh, my.”

“
What’s the matter?” H.L. went on the
alert instantly. He’d become accustomed to Rose’s moods, he
guessed, because he understood at once that something was
wrong.

“
I don’t know.”

He was annoyed when she took off at a trot,
leaving him to run after her or not as he chose. Dammit, the way he
saw it, she was his responsibility until he got her safely back to
her tent. Obviously, she had other ideas on the matter. He caught
up with her in a couple of seconds.

“
Hey! Wait up there. Where are you
going?”

“
Something’s wrong!” She didn’t slow
down.

“
That’s no answer,” he growled. “What’s
wrong?”

“
How should I know?”

She sounded irked, and her annoyance sparked
his own. “If something’s wrong, shouldn’t you figure out what it is
before you dash straight into it?”

Slinging him a black look, she snapped back,
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. If you’re frightened, you don’t have to
come along.”

This, naturally, only riled him more.
“Dammit, Miss Gilhooley, slow down!”

“
No!”

H.L. spotted Little Elk at approximately the
same instant Rose did.

The two of them cried out in a duet, “Little
Elk!”

The Sioux, looking very worried and thereby
negating H.L.’s lifelong assumption that Indians didn’t visually
express emotions, hurried up to them. “Wind Dancer. Mr. May. I’m
glad you’re here. You know Chicago.”

H.L. couldn’t deny it. “True. Why do you need
someone who knows Chicago?”

“
Bear in Winter is gone.”

Rose stopped running, gasped, slammed a hand
over her heart, and stared at the Sioux, aghast. “Gone? What do you
mean, Bear in Winter is gone?”

Little Elk gave his version of a shrug.
Holding his open hands out, palms up, he repeated, “Bear in Winter
is gone.”

“
Where’d he go?” H.L. was only assuming
this Bear person was a he. For all he knew, these two might be
talking about a woman or even a real bear.

“
Nobody knows.”

Obviously puzzled, Rose said, “You mean, he
left the encampment? On purpose? Why’d he do that?”

“
No.” Little Elk shook his head. “He
didn’t walk away. Somebody take him.”

“
Somebody take—er, took—him!” Rose’s
voice went shrill with her horror. “Good God, Little Elk! Who took
him?”

“
Nobody know. It was a man with black
hair on his lip and a leg made of wood.”

“
But why?” Rose asked. “Did Bear want
to go with him?”