Coming Up Roses (25 page)

The cab jolted into motion and Rose said no
more, although she was still fuming; H.L. could clearly distinguish
the signs. Because he didn’t feel like wasting time arguing with
her, he said, “Our first stop is to go to a certain tavern on the
dock. It’s a low place and full of scummy characters, so stick
close to me and don’t get into an argument with anybody. If you
open your mouth, sure as the devil, someone will realize you’re not
a boy.”

“
I can sound like a boy,” she said
defensively. To prove it, she lowered her voice and added, “See? I
sound just like my brother Freddie.”

Actually, she did sound like a boy, although
H.L. didn’t have a clue as to what her brother Freddie sounded
like. Nevertheless, he didn’t trust her not to allow her moral
outrage at the reprehensible treatment of Bear to get the better of
her.

“
I don’t care who you sound like, keep
your mouth shut.” He adopted a severe expression and leaned toward
her. “This is not a farce, Miss Gilhooley. The people we’re going
to be among tonight probably commit worse crimes than kidnapping
when they’re paid for it. There’s every sort of villain on the
dock, from prostitutes to dipsomaniacs to murderers, and I don’t
want any more trouble than necessary. If you aren’t willing to play
by my rules in this, I’ll take you straight back to the Wild West
and go alone.”

“
You can’t do that!” Rose cried,
forgetting to whisper. “You’re no tracker!”

“
No, but I’m a man, and I’m a lot
bigger than you are. I don’t care how good you are in the wilds of
Kansas, I’m more familiar with Chicago’s criminal underbelly than
you are.” He wagged a finger at her, as he’d seen her wag her
finger at the policeman. “Admit it, Miss Gilhooley. It’s the
truth.”

She glared at him ferociously for a few
moments, then sat back and crossed her arms over her chest—her flat
chest. “Oh, very well. But don’t expect me not to fight if I have
to.”

“
Never,” H.L. said, after not heaving a
regretful sigh over her flattened bosom and giving himself a point
of honor for it. “I’ve come to expect you to fight even when you
don’t have to.”

Her glare got hotter. “And exactly what do
you mean by that?”

“
Nothing,” he said. “Forget it.” He
turned to look out the window. Since night had fallen and the fog
was thick, he didn’t see a thing but fuzzy balls of light from the
gas lamps. They didn’t illuminate anything but haze, and they
looked rather like enormous, nebulous fireflies in the dismal
darkness.

“
Fiddlesticks.”

The rest of their trek to the dock was
accomplished in silence. When they arrived at their destination,
H.L. paid the hackie off, and told Rose they’d find another cab
after they’d rescued Bear in Winter. He only hoped they could.

# # #

Fog shrouded the peeling buildings and
trash-strewn boardwalks. The stench emanating from the lake around
the dock blended with the tang of creosote-coated ropes,
half-rotten wooden hogsheads, dried fish, cheap tobacco, stale
alcohol, and back-alley garbage. Rose tried to hold her breath, but
couldn’t do it for very long without getting light-headed.

“
It smells awful around here,” she
whispered to H.L., who walked beside her. She sensed that he was on
the alert for malefactors.

“
Yeah. It’ll get worse when we get to
the Sailor’s Rest. These dockside taverns are
disgusting.”

Hard to imagine, although Rose braced herself
for worse odors ahead. “Am I walking all right?” H.L. had told her
not to walk like a woman, and she, taking her cue from him, had
commenced swaggering in imitation of his own king-of-the-world
manner.

“
You’re doing fine.”

Something in his voice made her glance up,
and she saw his white teeth gleaming in a Cheshire-cat grin. Her
heart did a brief flippity-flop in her chest before she glanced
away again. “Good.”

“
Remember not to talk unless you
absolutely have to.”

“
Right.”

Now that they’d left the cab at the dock
area, Rose felt not the slightest inclination to chatter. This
place scared her. It was awful. It was even worse than the saloon
district of Deadwood, because it was out of the realm of her
experience. She felt sort of like she had when she’d visited
splendid houses and universities. Only when she’d visited splendid
houses and universities in the course of her employment with the
Wild West, she hadn’t feared someone would leap out at her from
besides a stack of barrels or a jumbled fishing nets and try to
shoot her, as she did now. The weight of the weapons concealed on
her person comforted her. She fingered the Smith and Wesson in her
jacket pocket to ease her jitters. She was comfortable with
weapons; it was people who frightened her.

“
Here it is.”

Rose sucked in a breath of foul-tasting air
and steeled her nerves. She told herself to get a grip on her
apprehension, or she’d be of no use to H.L. May and, ultimately, to
Bear in Winter. That thought calmed her slightly. When H.L. opened
the door and walked inside, however, it took her a second to
understand he hadn’t held the door for her because she was supposed
to be his brother, not a lady. Bother. She scurried to catch up
with him, then caught herself walking like a lady and halted to
gather her wits about her.

Taking her courage in both hands, she
swaggered into the saloon behind H.L. Instantly, a pall of smoke,
denser and smelling even more foul than the fog outdoors, enveloped
her, and she nearly succumbed to a fit of coughing. Her eyes teared
up, and she had to blink furiously to keep from crying.

“
Sort of thick in here, isn’t it?” H.L.
said with an understanding twinkle in his eye, not to mention a
mastery of understatement Rose couldn’t properly appreciate at the
moment.

“
Yes,” she rasped when she could do so
without exploding in hacks and coughs.

“
Come on over here. I see a table in a
corner.”

“
Why do we have to sit in here?” Rose
wanted to bat the smoke away from her face, but didn’t dare for
fear the gesture would be remarked upon by the rough
company.

And the company was certainly rough. Rose had
seen lots of villainous men in her day, but none like these. The
rowdies in Deadwood were definitely cut in the Western style. Not
these Chicago toughs. She’d never seen the likes of the men in this
place. Many of them fitted her notions of sailors perfectly, with
empty sleeves pinned to their shoulders, presumably lost eyes
covered with black patches, and scars to beat the band.

H.L. didn’t hold a chair out for her,
naturally, since she was supposed to be his brother. He also had
her sit against the wall so that his own back was exposed to the
rest of the room. Rose appreciated this consideration as she pulled
the chair out and sat in it. She scooted closer to the table for
security’s sake. Not that there seemed to be much of that quality
available in this room.

The floor had been sprinkled with sawdust.
Glancing at it, Rose stopped herself from wrinkling her nose, but
just barely. It didn’t look to her as if anyone had swept the floor
or spread clean sawdust in at least a century. She didn’t even want
to guess at what some of the detritus littering it was.

Yanking her attention from the floor and
surreptitiously eyeing the unprepossessing flock of seamen seated
in the tavern, she muttered, “Why are so many of these men missing
limbs and eyes and so forth. Good heavens! That man over there is
missing most of his ear!”

“
Shhh. Try to speak more softly,
please.”

Rose would have heaved a sigh, except that to
do so she’d have had to take on a cargo of smoke, and she feared
she’d suffocate if she did.

“
Very well,” she muttered, peeved. As
if anybody could overhear anything she said over the din in this
place.

“
The sailor’s life is a rugged one.
Losing an eye is common. I understand that when the wind blows,
often the yardarms will swing around and whack men in the eye.
Fishermen also have to contend with hooks, nets, spikes, and the
like. Whalers with their harpoons are always getting stabbed in the
arm and leg and everywhere in between.”

“
Ugh.”

“
Not to mention the problems they have
with sharks and storms at sea and pirates and the rest of the
perils of the deep.”

Rose peered at him closely. “Are you teasing
me?”

“
No!” He appeared honestly piqued. “I’m
telling you what I’ve learned from interviews with sailors. It’s a
rough life. It’s probably every bit as rough as life out on the
frontier.”

“
I don’t doubt it, if what you’re
telling me is true.” Rose was finding it less difficult to speak
softly since her throat was being scraped raw by the foul air in
the tavern.

A buxom barmaid sashayed up to their table.
She eyed H.L. with a smirk that Rose could only deem seductive. She
felt small and unfeminine and wanted to drive the barmaid away with
one of the harpoons H.L. had just told her about. She said
nothing.

“
What can I bring you, sweetheart?” the
barmaid asked H.L. in a voice as smoky as the room.

Rose didn’t scowl at her and was proud of
herself.

“
Beer for the both of us, darling,”
H.L. said with a wink.

Rose didn’t kick him, either, and was doubly
proud of herself. The rat. Did he honestly find females like this
overstuffed beer-flinger attractive? If he did, Rose wanted nothing
more to do with him, and that was that.

Good heavens, whatever was she thinking? What
did it matter to her what kind of women H.L. May found attractive?
She rubbed her eyes, and wished she could remove her hat, because
the air in the tavern was close as well as smoky, and sweat was
beginning to make her scalp itch.

“
This little guy here don’t look old
enough for beer,” the barmaid told H.L. with a wink of her own.
“Want I should bring him a sarsaparilla?”

His grin back at the woman was every bit as
seductive as hers to him had been. Rose could hardly stand to
watch, but didn’t dare look away. “He’s old enough,” H.L. said. “So
am I.”

“
I don’t doubt that.” The barmaid
laughed and moved off, swinging her hips as if they were attacked
to one of those pendulum things Rose had seen in a London
museum.

Concluding that she’d only show herself in an
unfortunate light if she were to comment on what she perceived as
the overall sluttishness of the serving wench, Rose held her tongue
with difficulty. She wanted to rail at H.L. May about his poor
taste in women, even though she knew absolutely nothing about his
taste in women, really. After all, perhaps he’d only been putting
on a show for the barmaid.

While this conjecture might have been the
truth, it didn’t affect Rose’s overall black mood. She glowered
into the smoky room and wished the earth would open up and swallow
H.L. May and the slutty barmaid. And if it swallowed the rest of
the people in this wretched place along with them, Rose would be
just as happy.

“
Don’t look so cranky. I might just
think you’re jealous.”

Rose lifted her head so fast when she heard
H.L.’s outrageous comment, she nearly broke her neck. “What?”

H.L. squeezed his eyes shut as the room went
silent. Rose realized she’d shrieked, and was embarrassed.
Understanding that she’d just made a horrible mistake, and that if
she were discovered to be a woman in disguise, the consequences
might be dire, she blustered in a voice she hoped like the devil
sounded masculine. “I don’t take that kind of talk from anybody.
Not even my brother!” She glared daggers at H.L. and was pleased
that her voice had come out ragged and hoarse. Small wonder, given
the air in this joint.

H.L. muttered, “Sorry, little brother. I was
only teasing.”

“
Hmph.”

The barmaid slapped two mugs of beer on the
table between them. Perceiving another opportunity to fool her
audience, Rose lifted her mug, still glaring blackly at H.L., and
took a gulp. She very nearly spat it back out again. Fortunately,
she managed to swallow the awful brew, and the folks who’d turned
to stare at her after her outcry lost interest and went back to
their own business.

Oh, but the stuff tasted vile. It was all she
could do not to throw up after that one swallow. She tried to hide
the reflexive gagging that overtook her by wiping her mouth with
the back of her hand.

Even the thick smoke couldn’t hide the
sparkle in H.L.’s eyes as he watched her. “Good recovery,” he said.
“But I don’t think you’d better try that again. You look like
you’re about to be sick all over the table.”

“
I am,” Rose choked out. “How can you
drink this stuff?”

“
Drink it? I don’t drink it. It’s for
show. I’d advise you not to drink any more of it, either. They only
serve the lousiest liquor in this place. Here. Suck on this.” He
reached into his vest pocket and withdrew a paper-wrapped
peppermint. He palmed it and reached across the table toward
Rose.

After shooting a quick glance around the room
and finding nobody watching, Rose took the peppermint, unwrapped
it, and slammed it into her mouth. She could scarcely do so fast
enough to suit her. “Thank you.”

“
You’re welcome. Just pretend to drink
from now on, all right?”

Unable to speak, she nodded and
surreptitiously wiped her eyes, which were watering from her effort
not to upchuck the unholy beer she’d swallowed.