cast the thoughts aside, and finished putting her hair in order. Once her hair was properly braided and coiled up, she was ready for the first show. “Ready?”
“Lead on.” Rosa gestured to the door.
The vardos, along with the living tents of those folks who were not amused by having their every move watched curiously by spectators, were behind a second wall of canvas just inside the first one. They hadn’t needed that particular arrangement elsewhere, but here, those ticket-holders who were allowed to roam the camp seemed to take that as liberty to go everywhere. Having that canvas wall there had been working so far, at least. Giselle had a sort of three-sided tent with a campfire and a little arrangement of camping equipment in the Cowboy Camp that she was supposed to be in when she was not performing or practicing. She sometimes wondered if these people actually believed she lived like that. She was beginning to get a very good idea of what an animal in a zoo must feel like.
There were already people wandering through the camps as she took her place in “her” tent. She and Rosa exchanged a look, and Rosa shrugged. “I’ll go to the mess tent and get luncheon for both of us,” she offered.
“Then I’ll start the coffee.” Giselle had managed to learn the trick of brewing the bitter drink, which she had become quite fond of, as had Rosa. It lent an air of verisimilitude to her campsite, to have a coffee pot on a grate over the fire. By now the days were cool enough that both the fire and the hot coffee were welcome, and she was glad of the heavier buckskin garments in her costume wardrobe.
Rosa returned with a straw basket full of food. By this point, Giselle was surrounded by people asking questions about her presumed life in America, about her shooting, and so on. Giselle was about halfway into the narration she could have told in her sleep by this point, but interrupted it to put the sausages that Rosa had brought on the grate over the fire to rewarm while Rosa poured them both coffee and added sugar and cream. To facilitate eating while talking, Rosa wrapped a piece of dark rye bread around a bratwurst on a bed of sauerkraut, dabbed on some mustard, and handed it to her.
At that point, Rosa got included in the questioning. She had decided on her own story. No one recognized her as one of the Indians when she wasn’t wearing the black wig, which was all to the good as far as she was concerned. So when she was out in the camp with Giselle, she had decided that she was a horse-tamer. As an Earth Master that had been simple enough to pull off, and Cody had even added a couple of places in the show where she could demonstrate that. One, where she and a brown and white “Medicine Hat Pony” called Pitalesharo ran through a number of clever tricks, and one where she “tamed a Wild Stallion” that was one of the bucking horses. Both routines could easily be dropped from the show when she’d had to go off on mysterious errands on behalf of the Brotherhood—which she had done at least six or seven times over the course of the summer. She never explained where she went, or why, and no one ever had the temerity to demand she tell them. According to her story, she had learned her trade from her father and she had tamed Lebkuchen for Giselle, which was how they had met. Captain Cody had taken her on to be in charge of the company’s horses and buffalo.
Giselle had finished her luncheon and was deep in explaining to a group that was about three deep around her that no, she had never met Old Shatterhand, and no, she had never seen the mysterious gunsmith “Mr. Henry” who had supposedly made his amazing rifle when . . . she got the oddest, and most unpleasant sensation of being watched.
She couldn’t exactly break off what she was doing to look around. And she couldn’t summon one of the sylphs to see if her feeling was correct, either. All she could do was glance at Rosa to see if she was exhibiting similar unease. For all she could tell, all was well with Rosa, which did nothing to make her feel any better.
It made her skin crawl, actually. It was nothing like