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?”