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except for the few occasions when she’d been
accosted by men who were liquored-up. Rose knew liquor did horrid
things to men. On those occasions, however, she’d been armed. At
the moment, all Rose had with which to defend herself were her
fingernails, and she kept them short because of her act. Well, and
her feathered headdress, which only tickled. A whole lot of help
that would be.
    “ Nonsense,” H.L. said jovially. “I
promise I won’t be a nuisance. I’ll just tag along. That way I’ll
get to write about what you do after your act is over.”
    He gave his head a small shake, and Rose
thought she detected reverence in his expression, although it was
difficult to tell since he was so brash and rude. Reverence from
this source would also be incredible, so she decided she’d been
hallucinating.
    “ I swear, I’ve never seen anything like
your act. You’re amazing.”
    Bother. She guessed she couldn’t shake him
off her tail. And, although she hated to admit it, it was sort of
flattering to have a cultured big-city reporter so enamored of her
showmanship. However, she still didn’t view with joy the prospect
of having him ogle her corsetless body while she rubbed Fairy
down.
    “ Well,” she said with less than her
customary courtesy—he was really a most aggravating fellow—”I guess
I can’t stop you.” She turned and clicked to Fairy, who walked
beside her obediently. Rose reflected that it was comforting to
have something obey her commands, even if H.L. May was too dense to
do so.
    “ Great.” H.L. seemed totally undismayed
when Rose took off for the stables without waiting for him. He
merely trotted along next to her.
    Rose cast him a sidelong glance from the
corner of her eye and was irked to observe that he didn’t show the
slightest degree of embarrassment. She’d known for six years now
that newspaper people were aggressive sorts and inclined to be
pushy and insensitive, but she hadn’t understood until this minute
that some of them had no feelings at all. It was quite
vexatious.
    She also felt a little edgy, knowing she was
hemmed in on both sides. Generally, she had only Fairy beside her
as she walked to the stables. She felt much more comfortable
without H.L. May walking with them. She kept expecting him to say
or ask something awkward or embarrassing.
    Nevertheless, Rose knew Colonel Cody courted
the press, so she aimed to do her duty by him. She didn’t give a
rap about H.L. May or his articles, but Rose held up William F.
Cody almost as a saint in her life, and she’d not disappoint him if
she could help it.
    This reporter made her awfully nervous,
though. Rose had the disheartening feeling that she’d be less
anxious if H.L. May were a plain man. Or old. Or obviously
dissolute and dissipated. Or short, soft, and flabby. Unhappily for
Rose, he was none of those things.
    H.L. May was a large, robust, young,
healthy-looking fellow, with a charming grin, a handsome face,
lovely eyes—they looked dark in the dim light leaking from the
arena, but Rose recalled that they were a dancing hazel green. He
also towered over her, although that wasn’t hard to do.
    Rose frequently felt insignificant, but the
feeling most often occurred when she was contemplating her lack of
formal education and her frontier upbringing. She was unused to
feeling insignificant just because she was small. Her overall
smallness worked to her advantage in the most important area of her
life: Her work.
    At the moment, if she’d been able to grow six
inches and gain thirty pounds, she’d have done it instantly,
because then H.L. May wouldn’t seem so overpowering to her. Or
maybe he would. With a sigh, Rose decided that H.L. May was
uniformly bad news in her life, and there probably wasn’t anything
she could have done about it, even with help from a miracle growth
spurt.
    “ Here’s the stable,” she
grumbled.
    “ Aha. Where the real work takes place.” H.L. sounded
smug.
    Rose shot him another glance, this