expecting something like a Karl May hero!
But she had no choice. Although Ned had spoken as if in jest, she could read behind his words that he was quite serious. She was getting quite a fine bit of money, and it was his estimation that she’d better start earning it now.
The outfit she was wearing for the Grand Parade and her first turn was rather like the female version of Ned’s own buckskin suit: fringed gold-colored leather ornamented with round silver buckles. Lebkuchen was wearing a different sort of saddle than the one that both of them were used to; it had a very high pommel, with something called a “saddle horn” that the cowboys used during their roping exercises, and was much larger and stiffer than the little riding saddle she used. Lebkuchen had laid her ears back on being presented with this thing, and had snorted at the additional weight, but seemed to have adjusted to it.
Somehow, Karl May had never mentioned these saddles in his books, even though they were wildly unlike a German saddle, and as much as he liked to describe things in prose, one would think he would have at least mentioned them! She was beginning to wonder if he had ever set foot in the West at all!
But all that went quite out of her head as the music began on the other side of the canvas. This was the music she remembered from watching the show, the brazen, bellowing, exciting stuff that made a thrill run down her back, not the lazy tootling of the rehearsal.
Ahead of her, Captain Cody’s horse Lightning pranced in place and tossed his head, impatient for his gallop into the arena. Cody sat straighter in his saddle and seemed to somehow grow taller and more impressive than he had been a moment before. And then one of the curtains was pulled aside just enough for a single rider, and Lightning leapt through the opening.
Then the curtain was pulled aside again, and the color guard—the quartet of Indians and cowboys that carried in the flags—surged across the magic threshold.
And then, it was her turn.
She sat frozen as the curtain was pulled aside, suddenly too terrified to move—
She heard a slap behind her, and Lebkuchen bolted under the raised curtain, propelling both of them out into the arena. And she heard Kellermann call out through his megaphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, the most beautiful sharpshooter on the prairie, the lovely, and deadly, Rio Ellie!”
Somehow she managed to bring Lebkuchen to a halt exactly where she was supposed to, in the middle of the arena. Somehow she managed to bow gravely to either side of her. And somehow she managed to get Lebkuchen moving again, to the end of the arena, and then around to the left, lifting her hand to wave at the audience on that side, as Texas Tom rode out to the tumult of his own applause. Her chest felt tight, her face felt flushed, and the tent seemed utterly airless—and yet, as the assembled company rode back out again, she couldn’t wait for her turn to ride back in again.
6
“AND there are no mountains in Texas?”
Determined to reconcile what she knew of Indians and frontiersmen from Karl May’s books with what she had seen in her dreams the night that Leading Fox and she exchanged languages, Giselle had cornered Captain Cody.
They were about to pull up the tents and move on tomorrow, having, in Kellermann’s opinion, extracted all the money from the local economy that they were likely to. Their next engagement was for next week; they would have plenty of time to travel the three-days’ journey and practice on the way.
Giselle went out of her way to find Cody after the second show to cross-examine him. He invited her to a glass of beer in the outer room of his spacious tent, which served as a species of drawing room.
This close questioning was under the guise of being able to adequately counterfeit being a girl who could properly be called “Rio Ellie,” but the fact was, she already knew it didn’t matter what she told Austrians and Germans. If what she told them matched Karl May, they would go away happy.
No, this was purely for herself, because she was determined to know the truth.
The Captain had supplied her with beer, drawn from the little barrel of it he kept in this “drawing room,” and made sure the tent flaps were tied open for the evening breeze.