was doing. They had practiced this at every opportunity when the troupe stopped to camp for the night, using every minute of daylight.
It wasn’t that Captain Cody was worried about her safety . . . it was that he had been worried about audience perception. Evidently, back in America, he would have been drawn and quartered if he had dared to put the safety of a white girl in the hands of an Indian.
Well, that wasn’t the case here. The German audience loved this, that much was clear from the time the first knife thudded into the board.
And when he had finished with his outline, the audience screamed its approval.
Now was going to come the fun part.
All the while this had been going on, Fox’s fellow Pawnee had been “creeping up” on the bandits. The audience could see them, of course, and if the bandits had bothered to turn around, they would have seen the Pawnee too—but of course, they didn’t turn around. Now Giselle had to fight to hide her smile. Of course the audience didn’t expect them to turn around—that would have spoiled everything!
Fox turned to make a threatening gesture at the bandit chief, and Two Crows waved a hand at him. There was an expectant murmur from the audience, who knew this meant that rescue was at hand.
But what they did not expect was that Fox would pull four more knives at once, and send them sailing in rapid succession at Giselle—so rapid that the first was hitting its target as the last left his hand. With four loud thuds, the knives cut the straps binding her to the target! And as the Pawnee swooped in on the bandits, she bent and retrieved a small handgun from the top of each boot and shot the bandit chief, who “died” with a bloodcurdling scream.
The audience roared its approval.
Had one of the knives failed to cut its target—unlikely—she still could have pulled her hand or foot free without the audience realizing the knife had missed.
The bandit camp erupted in gunfire, every man firing at once, just as a string of the Pawnee horses were driven into the arena. Each of the Pawnee performed jaw-dropping running mounts on his horse, including Fox.
She wasn’t capable of that, of course, but she was light and small enough that Fox could stop his horse beside her and pull her up behind easily. They had practiced this as well, and she managed the trick not too ungracefully. Then they were off, leaving the cursing bandits behind, including the miraculously resurrected bandit chief. The bandits ran in futile pursuit. As the last of them vanished out through the curtains, the audience went wild.
That was the last of her official turns. Captain Cody performed his trick riding and shooting. There was wild-horse riding—“bucking broncos,” they were called, and the goal was to stay on as long as one could. All the rest of the remaining acts from the original show were fitted into this final third of the new show, then there was the repeat of the Grand Parade and the show was over.
But her work wasn’t over yet. Like everyone else, she had to rush to her part of the “camps”—in this case a little tent set between the Indian encampment and the cowboys. There she sat down in a camp chair not unlike Captain Cody’s, and prepared to meet the audience.
Or at least as many of them as were prepared to pay the extra for the “special” ticket.
Kellermann was conducting the “official tour,” of course, which meant that only those who were independently minded approached her on their own. There were not that many of those; most people, however excited they had been by the show, seemed to prefer standing behind the guide. When they asked her questions, they did so diffidently, and with immense politeness.
Well, except for the children and young adolescents.
“How did you meet Chief Leading Fox?” blurted one lanky boy at the front of the group, looking as if he was likely to burst.
“Oh, that is a long story, would you like to hear it?” she replied, amused that not one of the group seemed to question the fact that she spoke perfect German although she was allegedly an American.
Then again, it probably never occurred to any of them that she wouldn’t, even though Kellermann had to translate for the others in the show. But perhaps they haven’t asked questions of anyone else.
“Yes, please, Fraulein Ellie!” the lad said eagerly. The