it. Fortunately the path they took down the mountain did not end in Bad Schoensee, but near a farmhouse, and from there, they could walk through the meadow grass to the camp without crossing so much as a beaten track.
By the time they got to camp, she felt almost normal, if a little breathless, a little giddy, and as if she held a wonderful, tremendous secret inside her.
And still, she had to act, and speak, as if nothing had happened, as if they had only taken a walk up the mountain and back down again for pleasure. But the rest of the company had matters of their own to think about; they were back from doing a little shopping or drinking in Bad Schoensee, from doing sightseeing on the Schoensee, or even from going to the Kirche. Or they had taken the opportunity offered by the rare day off to take care of things they had long put off. The camp was full of lines strung with washing, for instance, and people were mending harness and saddles and the garments they called “chaps.” Some of the big canvas banners had been touched up, as were some of the pieces of the barriers. Wagons had been washed. Bedding was being aired out. And once they reached their vardos, she and Rosa followed that example, since there was still plenty of afternoon left to do it in. She was still so buoyed by her experience that none of it seemed like a chore, and she went about giving the vardo a complete cleaning in a cheerful sort of trance, humming the entire time.
As the sun began to wester and she put her vardo back to rights, the rest of the camp started to settle again too. Rosamund beckoned to her, and she followed her lead, joining everyone else in the mess tent for supper, letting the conversation just wash over her. She really didn’t want to eat, and yet, she was ravenous. The food tasted odd, but not in a bad way, but as if she was discovering nuances to it that had not been there before. Captain Cody joined them at their table and kept looking over at Giselle while he talked to Fox and Rosa. He had known what they were going to do, of course; Rosa had told him when he’d decreed the day off. And she suspected he could tell that it had worked.
Finally, he confirmed that. “Damnitall, I envy ya,” he said, shaking his head. “I wisht . . . well, if wishes was fishes ev’body would eat. But, hey, y’all wanta try somethin’? T’night, afore the sun goes down?”
“Like what?” Rosa asked, eyeing him curiously.
“All the shootin’ tricks. I got a suspicion they’re all a-gonna be better.” He shrugged. “Iffen they ain’t, no harm, an’ y’all jest got a good practice in.”
“I’d like to do that,” Giselle agreed. “I think it might settle me. I’m still feeling—” not giddy, not buoyant, not . . . merely happy . . . she groped for the right word, and gave up. “I’d like to see if I can manage the card-splitting trick at last.”
She discovered, as Fox and Cody set up targets for her, that there was indeed a difference now: her eyesight was slightly sharper, her awareness of every faintest breath of air keener, and once she began actually shooting, she discovered her reflexes were faster.
And she knew things. Like exactly how that coin was going to fall, and exactly when to shoot it so that she could hole it instead of sending it spinning. Like the precise motion of the “rabbit” target, so she could not just hit it, but hit it in a neat little daisy pattern.
Then Cody set up the edge-on playing card for Annie Oakley’s famous trick. And suddenly, literally out of nowhere, she understood that if she created a kind of tunnel of air for the bullet to travel down, and leaned infinitesimally to the right, she could guide the bullet and . . .
...hit it.
Splitting it right down the middle.
Just like Annie Oakley could.
The roar of cheering that broke out behind her startled her so much she nearly dropped her rifle. She realized only at that moment that most of the company had gathered behind her to watch her “practice.”
Then her rifle was snatched out of her hands, and she was engulfed by the crowd of her fellow showmen and friends, hoisted on their shoulders, and paraded around the camp like