Chapter Ten

 

“I expect the boy’s just run off to see the fair, don’t you?”

Rose stared wide-eyed at the Columbian Guard, whose broad, placid face reflected the same complacency she’d heard in his voice.

Before H.L., who had tendered the initial explanation of Bear in Winter’s disappearance, could respond, Rose blew up. “No, we do not expect the boy’s just run off to see the fair! He’s been kidnapped, and I expect you to do something about it!”

The guard, who was at least foot taller and a yard wider than Rose, allowed annoyance to dilute some of his complacency. “Now, little lady, there’s no need to carry on.”

“There’s no—” Rose could scarcely believe her ears. She was so irate, her words clotted up and froze in her throat.

“Take it easy, Miss Gilhooley,” H.L. May advised.

Feeling betrayed, Rose turned on him. “How dare you tell me to take it easy! Bear has been kidnapped!” H.L. tried to pat her shoulder, but she swatted his hand away.

“Listen, Miss Gilhooley, I’m on your side, remember?” H.L. hooked a thumb at the guard. “This guy’s the one who doesn’t give a rap what happened to the kid.”

The round-faced guard, who had by this time lost the last vestige of his complacency, frowned at H.L. “Now see here, young man, that’s not true.”

“It is so!” Rose whirled around and wagged a finger in his face. She had to reach to do it, but she wasn’t about to let this matter drop. “A child’s life is at stake here, Mister, and you’re treating it as if it were a mere nothing!”

“Miss Gilhooley.”

Rose could tell H.L. was speaking to her through gritted teeth, and she resented it like fire. “Don’t you ‘Miss Gilhooley’ me, Mr. May! This matter is too important to be treated lightly—and this man—” She poked the guard in his chubby chest. “—obviously doesn’t want to treat it at all!”

The guard took a startled step backward. “My good woman—”

Again Rose cut him off at the verbal knees. “Don’t you dare speak to me in that scornful voice!”

“Scornful? But—” The guard stopped speaking when Rose didn’t.

“You’d better do something about this right this minute, or you’ll face dire consequences. I’ll see to it!” She had no idea what those dire circumstances would be, or how she’d ever be able to deliver them, but she was too angry to consider such trivia at the moment.

“Miss Gilhooley,” H.L. tried again, “give the man a minute to think, all right?”

“He doesn’t need to think!” Rose bellowed. “He needs to act! Immediately! Instantly! That boy’s life is at risk!” Rose had forgotten all about Little Elk, although he was still there.

She jumped when he lightly tapped her shoulder.

“What?” When she jerked around to look at him, she was flabbergasted to see a small half-smile on his leathery, oak-colored face. She had to suck in air before she could speak without shouting. “Yes, Little Elk?”

“Let the man talk,” Little Elk advised in his grumbly voice.

“Good idea, Little Elk.”

Rose would have liked to slap the grin from H.L. May’s face. Instead, she turned back to the guard. “All right, then, talk.”

“Ahem.” The guard appeared flustered.

Rose sneered, imagining this throat-clearing nonsense was merely a prelude for the spouting of more inanities. She managed to keep quiet, but it was a struggle.

“My duties are to provide protection to fair-goers, ma’am,” the guard said stiffly, as if he’d rather not be speaking to her at all but perceived no alternative.

“You didn’t do a very good job of protecting Bear in Winter, did you?” she snapped viciously.

H.L. muttered, “Aw, cripes.”

Little Elk touched her shoulder again. Rose, feeling stifled and miserable, shut her mouth.

“The Columbian Guardsmen can’t be everywhere at once, miss,” the guard went on defensively. “I’m right sorry about the lad, but I can’t leave my post to go gallivanting all over Chicago to find him if he’s run off to see the sights.”

“He hasn’t run off to see the sights!” Rose screeched, unable to contain her rage. “He was kidnapped!”

“Rose,” H.L. said, speaking more sharply than she’d ever heard him.

He’d also used her first name, which shocked her so much that her mind went blank and all of her words flew away. She wondered if that had been his intention, the rat.

“Let me talk to this poor man, please,” H.L. went on, speaking into the silence occasioned by Rose’s state of shock. “We might get farther if we don’t accuse him of shirking his duty.” The tightness around H.L.’s eyes belied the silkiness of his voice.

Rose, still flustered, noted his dour expression and took heart. Maybe he really was concerned enough to help find Bear.

“True, true.” The guard tugged at his fancy uniform jacket and patted his badge. Obviously, he was proud as punch of his status at the Exposition. Rose would like to shove the badge down his throat.

“So, I understand you can’t leave the Exposition to search for a lost boy,” H.L. said before anyone else could speak. “But we need to know where the nearest police station is. Is it the one on Fiftieth Street, or is there one on the Navy Pier?”

The guard cleared his throat and concentrated on H.L. Rose got the impression he was happy to be dealing with a sane man instead of a crazy woman, and she’d have kicked him if she thought it would do any good.

“The Fiftieth Street Station is the closest. I advise you to go there, as long as you’re certain the lad’s nowhere in the Exposition grounds. It’s a vast place, you know. Have you looked around the fairgrounds?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Rose couldn’t even remember the last time she’d been this disgusted. “You’ve got a band of Sioux Indians here, you idiot! Don’t you think they’ve scoured the Exposition grounds long before this? They’re the best trackers in the world!”

The guard, unable to avoid further communication with her, gave her a good, hot scowl before speaking. “Madam, I have no doubt your Indian friends know how to find rabbits and so forth in their native forest. This is a big city they’re in now, and life’s not so simple.”

“Native forest?” Rose goggled at him, astounded that anyone could be so stupid. “Rabbits!” Turning precipitately, she grabbed H.L.’s coat sleeve. “Come on, Mr. May. This man is worse than useless. He’s a fuddle-headed moron! We must get to a real police station before whoever kidnapped Bear does something awful to him.”

She’d have liked to shove H.L.’s sigh down his throat, along with another Columbian Guardsman’s badge. Since, however, he turned to accompany her, only flipping the Guardsman a farewell salute as he did so, she decided to wait until later to scream at him.

“I’ve never seen such a stupid man,” she muttered as the three of them hurried back to the Wild West.

“He’s only doing his job,” H.L. told her mildly.

“Fiddlesticks!”

“Will police find Bear?”

Rose and H.L. both glanced at Little Elk. His voice was impassive, but Rose knew how worried he was. She shot H.L. a quick look before she said, “I hope so, Little Elk. If the police won’t help us, you and I can find him, I’m sure.”

“What?” H.L. didn’t stop and stare at her because they were in too great a hurry, but the effect was the same. The look on his face was one of clear incredulity. Again, Rose wished she could do him bodily harm.

She growled, “You heard me.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said flatly.

“It is not. If the police won’t help us find that boy, we’ll just have to do it on our own.”

“And how, pray, do you intend to do that? Whoever grabbed him probably didn’t take him to a mansion on the lake, you know. Do you think the two of you can wander around Chicago’s worst neighborhoods without courting danger? That’s the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard of.”

If Rose had the time, she’d have grabbed him by his fancy city-suit lapels and shaken him until his brains rattled. As it was, she spoke through clenched teeth and with monumental fury. “You may or may not be aware that Little Elk and I grew up tracking game, Mr. May. You may also not be aware that tracking game and tracking people amounts to the same thing. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he and I were a whole lot better at it than any of your fancy-dancy Chicago policemen.”

“Damnation, Miss Gilhooley! You don’t know what you’re talking about! There are street gangs in Chicago that would as soon slit your throat as look at you! And that’s after they’d . . . assaulted you. All of them!”

To her storehouse of fury, Rose piled on a whole bunch of embarrassment. Assault assuredly meant rape, in this case. “How dare you speak to me like that,” she said in a voice shaking with indignation. “I can use a gun, a knife, and a whip better than a thousand of your Chicago ruffians. Just let any of them try to hurt me, is all I say!”

“Jesus.” H.L. had his hands stuffed into his pockets. Rose got the feeling he’d like to strangle her with them and was keeping them in his pockets as a defense against committing a felonious attack. “If you hare out after this kid, you can bet your sweet life I’m going with you.”

She sniffed. “Don’t be absurd. You’d only slow us down and get in the way.”

“I would not!”

“Would, too.”

“This is ridiculous.”

He might have thought it ridiculous, but at least he finally shut up about it. Rose would have taken some pride in having silenced him except that she was so worried about Bear.

Bear in Winter was Little Elk’s nephew, the son of his sister, and was a delightful child. He was one of Colonel Cody’s favorites, and was a whiz at riding and shooting. If life had been fair to the Sioux and they’d been allowed to maintain their nomadic life on the plains and in the hills, he’d probably have made a spectacular warrior.

The free life was over for the Sioux, though. While Rose held certain opinions about savagery, which she’d garnered from her childhood on the Kansas frontier, she honestly didn’t hold any grudges against any of the Sioux knew. She’d learned in the cradle that life was a difficult proposition—and that’s even if the culture into which you were born still thrived. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like for Little Elk and his kin, who were no longer allowed to carry on as they’d done for generations, but were obliged to make do in a new and, to them, alien world. She honored Colonel Cody for giving so many of them employment, and for paying them the same wages he paid his white employees.

Some of the old Sioux skills, however, could be used in this instance, no matter what H.L. May thought. The big city was as different from the Kansas plains as night was from day, but the principles of tracking were the same no matter where they were practiced. Not only that, but Rose had been taught by experts. If she had to kill a few of Chicago’s ruffians whilst practicing them, so be it. Bear in Winter was worth it.

The three of them practically ran through the throngs of fair visitors on their way back to the Wild West. Rose was perspiring buckets in her pretty sailor suit. She was also beginning to feel distinct pangs of hunger, since she hadn’t eaten anything but a sausage-on-a-bun for lunch, and it was getting close to supper time. She reviled herself for thinking of her stomach at a time like this, but her stomach didn’t care.

When they finally found the colonel, who was regaling a band of city slickers with tales of his scouting days with the army, H.L. did the talking, much to Rose’s initial dismay. She discovered, however, that he could be a concise and thorough communicator when he chose to be. Probably his journalistic training.

The colonel expressed sincere dismay. “Hell, Little Elk, this is terrible. You want me to get a scouting party together and go look for the boy?”

Rose cast H.L. a superior smirk. He rolled his eyes. She wanted to kick him.

“I think we’d better report the kidnapping to the police first.” H.L. sounded totally rational and cool, and Rose chalked it up to his cold heart. “After we find out if they plan to do any searching, we can better decide if there’s anything the Wild West people should do.”

The colonel nodded. “Good idea, son. Rosie, can you and Little Elk tell the police what happened?”

“Yes. Little Elk has a description of the man who took him.”

Little Elk nodded in agreement, and the colonel said, “Very well, then. Good luck to you. Will you be back for your performance, Rosie? If you need somebody to fill in . . .”

Rose was shocked. “Oh, no, Colonel! I’ll be back. You don’t ever have to worry about that.”

He smiled beatifically at her. “You’re a good little girl, Rosie. Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Rose, H.L., and Little Elk rode a trolley car to the police station. Rose had never been on a trolley car before, and if the circumstances hadn’t been so frightening, she might have enjoyed herself. Her insides cramped with worry about Bear in Winter, though, and she wanted to get out of the trolley and push it sometimes, it seemed so slow.

“For crying out loud, Miss Gilhooley, it’s a lot faster than walking would have been,” H.L. grumped at her when she expressed impatience.

“I know. I know. It’s only that I’m so worried.”

Little Elk, who sat on his seat in the trolley with his arms folded over his chest, and looking so much like an Indian from the wild, western frontier that the rest of the passengers actually seemed scared of him, grunted. “This thing goes fast, Wind Dancer. Calm yourself. You waste spirit with worry.”

Rose glared at her oldest friend, feeling abused, misunderstood, and completely out of sorts. Was she the only one here who was worried about Bear in Winter?

It didn’t help that she was still as hungry as a bear—so to speak—and still had on her corset. She wasn’t accustomed to wearing a corset, and she didn’t feel any inclination to get accustomed to wearing one, either. Corsets cut off one’s breath, made walking quickly difficult, and in general interfered with a woman’s life. She had a grumpy suspicion that men had created them as a means of keeping women in what men recognized as their “place.”

Blast all men. She hated them all with equal ferocity at the moment.

“I can’t help it if I’m worried about Bear, Little Elk,” she said resentfully. “He’s just a little boy, and he doesn’t know anything about life in a big city.”

H.L. snorted. “And you do?”

She rounded on him indignantly. “I know more than Bear in Winter does. Don’t forget that I’ve been to London and Paris—”

“And Rome. I know. But at the moment you’re in Chicago, and it would probably behoove you to relax and let me take care of this problem. I know the police, and you don’t. What’s more, they’ll be more apt to pay attention to you if you don’t screech at them like you did to that poor Columbian Guard.”

“I did not screech at the man.” Rose crossed her own arms over her breasts and sat back with a huff. “Besides, he was a moron.”

H.L. had the gall to laugh. “He might not have been the brightest candle in the box, but you gave him a touchy problem, don’t forget. The most those Columbian Guards usually have to contend with is folks who’ve had too much beer in the German Village.”

“Hmph.” Rose didn’t think anything about this situation was funny. “This is much more serious than that.”

“Right. Which is why we’re on our way to the police station right now. Don’t worry, Miss Gilhooley, we’ll get the boy back if it’s possible to do so.”

Rose had her doubts about that, if she were forced to depend on H.L. May to do it. She gave him another “Hmph,” and passed the remainder of her trip staring at the city of Chicago as they traveled past it.

She was impressed, although she’d eat a bumblebee before she said so to H.L. But Chicago seemed like a nice place and pretty in spots, although Rose was more comfortable in her native wide open spaces than in cities. Still, if one had to live in a big city, Chicago might not be a bad one in which to do it, especially if one had a good income and could buy a nice place by the lake. She liked Chicago better than New York City.

Her mother would probably love it here. Although Mrs. Gilhooley had come from a family in modest circumstances, she’d begun life in Massachusetts, in the city of Greenfield. She used to regale her children with stories about life back home, and Rose had been able to discern the longing in her voice, even though her mother had always tried to hide it.

Every time Rose thought about her poor mother, she ached inside. It made her feel better to know that the money she sent home helped ease her mother’s burdens. It would really ease her burdens if Rose could take her away from Deadwood and find her a home somewhere in a more civilized environment.

Her mother never complained, and she loved her family more than anything else in the world, but her life had been so hard. Rose longed to make her remaining years comfortable. She had a long-standing dream of moving her entire family somewhere other than Deadwood; somewhere they could all be together, but where there more opportunities for a decent life than there were in Deadwood.

Until she’d met the colonel, her dream had been an idle one; a mere daydream. The longer she worked with the Wild West, the less impossible it seemed. She’d never spoken aloud of her ambitions, not even to Annie, because Rose was sure people would think she was only being fanciful. Whoever heard of a woman taking care of her whole family?

Actually, lots of women took care of their families, but not the way Rose wanted to do it. Rose wanted more than poverty and worry, which is what the normal female-headed family experienced daily. Rose wanted peace and, if not luxury, at least comfort for her loved ones. Before they died. It was all well and good to rest in eternal peace, but Rose wanted to provide her family with a bit of peace long before then.

Fiddlesticks. She wanted everything. Why not ask for the sun and stars while you’re at it, Rose Gilhooley?

Still and all, maybe her secret dream wasn’t too far out of line. After all, even if she couldn’t move her whole family to Chicago or somewhere else as nice as this, at least she could eventually allow them to live a better life in Kansas, and that was the main thing. With her brother’s help, it should be possible, too. Good old Freddie worked hard to help their mother, just as Rose did. The two smallest girls were too young to help a whole lot, but Rose had no doubt that they’d pull their weight one of these days.

She heaved a huge sigh.

“What’s the matter? Worried about Bear in Winter?”

She turned to glance at H.L., whose voice had actually sounded kind. She didn’t believe it and squinted at him narrowly, trying to figure out what his game was. “Of course.”

“We’ll all do our best for him, Miss Gilhooley,” he said, still sounding sympathetic and kindhearted.

What was going on here? Why was he being nice to her? Did he know something she didn’t about the fate of kidnapped children in Chicago? Was there some kind of ring that captured loose children and did awful things to them? Obviously, something was amiss, if H.L. May had taken to being kind.

She didn’t get the chance to ask him what terrible fate he envisioned for Bear, because the trolley pulled to a stop in front of the police station, and H.L. announced, “Here we are. Little Elk, will you help Miss Gilhooley down? I want to ask the driver something.”

Rose watched him narrowly as she climbed down from the trolley. He only spent a couple of seconds with the driver, and then he climbed down, too, and joined them on the sidewalk. “I asked him if he’d seen anyone with a wooden leg and a black moustache with a little Indian boy.”

“Oh.” Rose hadn’t even thought about asking the trolley driver if he’d seen Bear. But it was a logical question, since the trolley ran right past the Exposition, and anyone might have caught it. “And had he?”

“No.”

“Oh.” There was no reason for her to feel so disappointed. After all, it would have been a miracle if finding the child were to be as easy as all that.

“So,” H.L. went on, “let’s see what the Chicago police have to tell us.”

“Right.”

The three of them walked up the steps to the police station, and H.L. opened the door for Rose and Little Elk to enter before him. Rose looked around with interest. There was a counter over to one side, with a blue-uniformed man with a big walrus moustache behind it. He looked bored until he glanced up and saw H.L. Then he frowned. Rose wasn’t sure, but she thought this might be an unlucky-for-Bear reaction on the policeman’s part.

“What are you doing here, newshound? Didn’t know we’d had any riots or police beatings lately.”

The man had a thick Irish accent. For some reason, Rose wasn’t surprised, perhaps because she’d heard somewhere that lots of Irishmen became policemen when they moved to the United States. Why that should be she didn’t know, but she wondered if Freddie might like to take up a career in law enforcement if he moved with their mother to Chicago. She warned herself not to get sidetracked. Bear in Winter was her first priority at the moment.

“No such luck, Morty,” H.L. said with a hard laugh.

Rose looked at him, surprised by this change in his tone of voice. He sounded sharp and sarcastic with this police person. Only moments earlier, he’d sounded kind and concerned. She hated people who changed their personalities this way. They were so disconcerting. One never knew how to react to them.

H.L. went on, “We’re here to report a kidnapping and to get help in finding the kidnapped party.”

“A kidnapping? Where’d you get a kid to nap?” The policeman barked out a laugh as if he appreciated his own wit.

“Not mine.” H.L. tilted his head in Little Elk’s direction. “His.”

Morty, who hadn’t paid any attention to Rose or Little Elk once he spotted H.L., glanced at the two of them now. His gaze came to rest on the Sioux. His eyes nearly popped from their sockets. “Jaysus, May, that there looks like a real wild Indian.”

Rose bridled instantly, but H.L. put a restraining hand on her arm. When she tried to shake him off, he dug his fingers into her flesh and it was all she could not to cry out in pain. She was so incensed, she wanted to stamp on H.L.’s foot, but finally understood that he was giving her a signal to let him handle the policeman.

She sniffed and almost told him what she thought of him, but another look at the policeman made her hold her tongue. He didn’t appear, at first glance, as if he were a particularly cooperative individual. Maybe H.L., who evidently knew him, ought at least to handle the first part of this interview.

“This is Little Elk. He’s a member of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, Morty. It’s one of his kinfolk who was kidnapped, a ten-year-old boy named Bear in Winter.”

“Why the devil do them Injuns give their kids such stupid names, is what I want to know.” Morty cast a superior sneer at Little Elk. Rose clamped her teeth together and told herself not to shriek at the obnoxious man.

“It’s nothing to you why they do anything, Morty. What matters today is that this little boy has been kidnapped.”

Rose was astonished by how well H.L. May was keeping his temper even under what seemed to her like extreme provocation. If it had been she dealing with Morty, she’d have thrown something at him by this time.

“And how do you know that, Mr. Newshound? Did you see the snatch happen?”

“No, but there were two witnesses.”

“Ah, and did you bring ‘em with you? Is that what these two are?” He jerked a rude nod in the direction of Rose and Little Elk. Rose decided this horrid man wasn’t worth her anger. He wasn’t worth anything at all.

“No. This is Miss Rose Gilhooley, who performs with the Wild West as Wind Dancer.”

Rose gave the policeman a cold nod. He returned her nod with a knowing grin. He also adjusted the bow tie at his throat, as if he were trying to tidy up especially for her. Good God, thought Rose. He’s acting just like a thug from Deadwood. She’d believed big-city policemen to be above such things. Which just went to show one more time how little she knew about life. What a depressing thought.

“We can, however, give you a description of the kidnapper,” H.L. said loudly, presumably in an attempt to deflect Morty’s attention away from Rose and back to the problem.

His fun over, Morty heaved an aggrieved sigh and drew a piece of paper toward himself. He dipped a pen in a pot of ink and held the pen over the paper. “All right, then, give me the story.”

H.L. glanced over at Little Elk. The Sioux stepped forward and gave a brief description of the man who had been seen carrying Bear in Winter away.

“And you say the lad was struggling?” Morty asked, sounding as if he didn’t care.

“Yes.”

Rose could tell by the expression on her friend’s face that Little Elk had come to the conclusion they’d be getting little or no help from this quarter. She’d heard of anarchists who threw bombs into public buildings, but she’d never felt in any way akin to them until this minute. If all the policemen in Chicago were like Morty, she’d like to throw a bomb at the lot of them.

“So,” H.L. said after Morty had been scratching away with his pen for a minute or two, “do you aim to help us find the boy or not?”

Morty didn’t answer for another minute or two. Rose wanted to pick up the log book at his elbow and thump him on the head with it. When he looked up from his report at last, Morty couldn’t have looked less interested in their problem if he’d tried. “I’ll file this report,” he told them in a neutral tone.

“I see.” H.L. gave Morty a long, hard look. “That means you’re not going try to find the boy, doesn’t it, Morty?”

“Now see here, newshound. There are rules and regulations that govern these things. Time limits and so forth. We can’t go rushing around looking for every little kid who runs away from home. It ain’t worth the effort.”

“I see.” H.L.’s face hardened further. Rose was glad he’d never looked at her like that. “In other words, you neither care about this lost child, nor are you going to do shit to try to find him. Right, Morty?”

“Now, now, May. That’s no way to talk in front of a lady.” He gave Rose a leer. “If she is a lady, that is.”

“Why, you—”

H.L. grabbed Rose before she could climb up the barrier and hit Morty with her handbag. “Don’t waste your energy, Miss Gilhooley. This specimen isn’t worth it. It’s our misfortune that the man at the desk had to be this slug. The unfortunate truth is that Chicago’s police force has far too many worthless bums just like him.”

“Says you,” Morty sneered.

“Say I, indeed,” H.L. countered. He turned and spoke to Rose and Little Elk. “All right, we’ve done our duty as citizens. Since the police force won’t help us, I guess we’re going to have to find the boy ourselves.”

“Do you mean to tell me we’ve wasted over an hour on a useless mission?” Rose’s indignation couldn’t have climbed much higher or she’d have had an attack of something.

“It’s not entirely wasted,” H.L. told her in a comforting tone. “For one thing, you never know. We might have found one of the few decent men on the police force on duty today. And this way, when we do find Bear all by ourselves, I’ll have an even better story to report to the good people of Chicago. They deserve to know exactly how their tax dollars are being used.” He grinned. “I think I feel a call for reform in the air.”

He took Rose’s arm in one hand and Little Elk’s in the other, and started herding them toward the door. Behind them, Rose heard a chair being shoved back and the squeak of springs as Morty rose to his feet.

“Say now!” the policeman shouted after them. “Here! Come back here, May! You can’t go printing things like that in the Globe!”

H.L. turned his head to cast one last glance at the irate policeman.

When Rose did likewise, she saw fury and fear battling on his ugly red face.

“Watch me.” H.L. opened the door and almost threw Rose outside.

“Mr. May! she shouted at him. “I wanted to give that horrid man a piece of my mind!”

“I know you did, Miss Gilhooley,” he said calmly. “That’s why I shoved you outdoors. Besides, my exit line was better. We’d just be wasting our time if we stayed there while you ripped up at him.”

Rose was so mad, she could only splutter incoherently. H.L. May laughed as he propelled her along the busy Chicago street.