The show had been packed up the night before, and the company moved out as soon as the first light of predawn lightened the sky. Kellermann had arranged with a local baker at a coffee house to have steaming rolls and coffee delivered in the darkness, and the cooks had precut slices of cold ham, beef, and cheese, and kept out bowls of butter, and they all ate a solid breakfast standing beside the cook wagons, with nothing for the cooks to pack up but the rinsed cups, and the sugar and cream. The cowboys grumbled that the coffee wasn’t strong enough, but Giselle noticed that they drank the milk cans that the coffee had been brought in dry.

Hot rolls and butter, ham and cheese and plenty of coffee and cream were her idea of an ideal breakfast, so she began the day in a good frame of mind. Evidently this was too early an hour for the watcher, for as they drove down the road that paralleled the railway, Giselle felt no eyes on her, to her intense relief. Lebkuchen and the show horse Polly had worked out their differences and pulled alongside each other willingly. There was plenty of light thanks to street lamps within the city, and by the time they were actually past the point where the gaslights ended, the sun had crested the horizon.

Within an hour, they were well outside the city. Had the watcher recognized what was going on last night, or had he concentrated on Giselle, and missed the fact that the show tent was coming down, the midway packed up, and the canvas walls packed away? She had tried to stay away from all that activity, hoping to mislead him if all he was watching was her.

She’d never felt his gaze this early; it always began around midmorning, as if he was a late riser. With any luck, she thought, as she chirped to the horses, and got them past a pushcart they were eyeing with suspicion, by the time he wakes up, he won’t be able to find us.

It felt good to be on the road again.

They were by no means the first to leave the Oktoberfest, but also not the last, merely the largest. The enormous beer tents were all put up by local bierkelleren, and were coming down today; the pretty girls that waited on the tables would go back to their regular lives, as daughters and housewives. This was a yearly bounty of income that many counted on to pay for Christmas.

Smaller shows had left earlier to get into winter quarters. Most of the single-tent shows had stayed, getting the last pfennig they could eke out before the lean season—or at least, before they could do some business at the Christkindlesmarkt here or in another city.