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 the feeling she got when someone was gazing at her with rather too much admiration. No, this was as if someone was measuring her, sizing her up, judging her. It was the feeling she would have associated with being weighed by a predator she couldn’t see.

The feeling did not go away. In fact, if anything, it got slightly stronger, right up until the moment when the visitors were chased off so the first show of the day could begin.

And at last, as she and Rosa hurried toward the staging area, she got the chance to say something. “I had the most awful feeling that someone was watching me, and it wasn’t friendly!” she said, as the two of them lined up for the Grand Entrance Parade. “Did you?”