“Hmm.” Doroteo began to turn the pegs and pluck one string after another. “Where is your A fork?” Simon opened the fiddle case and handed it to him; Doroteo struck it and tuned up his A string. “Yes, they will have my name. We could go on down into Mexico but they are fighting down there. Everybody is shooting everybody else. The French, Benito Juárez’s people, bandits, women, children, dogs. Belgians.”

Simon finished his smoke, went out to throw the butt in the bayou, and came back in with the tenderloin. They cut it in half and shared it between them while Damon snored. It was tender and crisp with fat; they ate it with hard ship’s biscuit and jalape?os in a twist of newspaper.

After a silence Simon said, casually, “So Doro, do you believe in signs?”

Doroteo lifted both black, winged eyebrows. He thought and chewed. Then he said, “Yes. Generally. But more when I am scared or drunk.” He laughed to himself and stabbed up meat crumbs with his forefinger. “But tell me your signs. You have it on the mind.”

Simon regarded the planking for a moment. Then he said, “At first when we came up from Los Palmitos and I seen the Gulf I wanted to buy land someday around the coast. But then this land salesman in Galveston showed me a paper, land for sale, up on the Red River.” He paused, then stopped.

“I see,” said Doro. “Then the young woman tells you she knows a song called ‘Red River Valley.’” He tipped his head back and forth. “Private lesson.”

“Yes.”

“Then we lost Patrick. So the coast isn’t that great.”

“That’s about it.”

“Yes, I believe in signs. They come and go. I miss to see them, I don’t pay attention, life is busy, hungry, hard. But I believe in signs.” He rubbed at his eyes as sleep nearly overcame him. “I wish I had some,” he said. “I would pay attention this time.”

Simon nodded. “Something will turn up.” Two in the morning and the water of the bayou moving past, its surface hammered with firelit rain. No noise, no saloon full of yammering men. Somewhere a bittern made a deep boom like a ship’s horn and then fell into a series of gulping clicks. The stillness astounded him for a moment. He had forgotten that there was silence in the world. “Let’s wait. Like the alligator. Something will turn up.”

Chapter Sixteen

One evening at sundown, in late August, a man came to the edge of the wagon yard to call to them, saying something about a job waiting for them down in the south. They were going about their business and then suddenly there he was on the bank just above them, looking down.

“Ho there, sir, I hear you in town, you are a good fiddler!”

Simon stood at the prow wringing out his white shirt, which was becoming less and less white the more he soaped it in bayou water. As he twisted it he scanned the dimpled surface of the water for alligators.

“You did, did you?” Simon slapped the wet shirt against the side and then laid it on the roof of the little deckhouse. “Well, there’s three of us players, you know.”

“Pardon, yes yes, you are good players all,” said the drover. “I hear you in town. You all play good. There is a job for you to play at a wedding. Very festive time.”

Simon stood with his hands on his hips and squinted up at him against the midmorning light. The man was in rancher’s clothes. He wore a broad hat, knee-high boots, and a neckerchief as big as a tablecloth in a bright patterned red that seemed to cover most of his upper torso. He was very fair and Simon could see his freckles and at the same time his eyes seemed like those of an Apache, and it sounded like English was not his native language.

Simon held out his hand toward Doroteo and Damon. “Here they are; the Irish whistle player and that’s the guitar man.”

“Oh yes, excelente, excelente, both!” The man on the bank lifted his hat.

Doroteo and Damon and Simon all looked at one another. Simon tipped his head. Doroteo put his hands on his hips and said, “?Y de donde es usted?”

“Ah,” said the redheaded drover. “Bueno, hablamos espa?ol! Bien bien. ?De donde vengo? Pues, pues . . .”

“Y digame quien es.”

Simon listened, catching a few words here and there. The smoke of morning cookfires curled out of the wagon yard and down to the surface of the bayou. Damon sat in a careful silence, listening, as he broke up a ship’s biscuit to put into their bag of salt against the humid air.

There was a big wedding coming up, the man said. A baile for three days of festivities. Dancing? Hooo. Good whiskey? The answer was yes. The man who sent him was offering them $25 in gold each.

The drover saw the surprised expression on Simon’s face and he chuckled inside his springy pale-red beard. Doroteo sat in stunned silence with his paper cigarillo in his hand and his eyes fixed on the man onshore.

Damon said, “Did I hear twenty-five dollars each? In gold?”

Simon sat with a still face, thinking. Considering. Wondering why so much.

The man’s name was Rosillo, he said, and to Doroteo, Pelirrojo soy. Un hombre pelirrojo, y mi papa lo mismo, un caporal por Don Ricardo de los Kinges. Soy kine?o.

“Where?” said Simon. “Where is this wedding?”

“Banquete. Down in the area they call the Nueces Strip.”

“They call it a lot of different names,” said Doroteo. He drew on the cigarillo and released the smoke slowly. “My home place. It is why I am here and not there.”

“Good Lord,” said Damon. “The Nueces Strip? ’Tis the ghoul-haunted woodland of weir.”

“You stick with me,” the man said. “I guard you. No trouble.”

“No deal,” said Doroteo.

“There’s easier ways to earn that much,” said Damon, and tied up the salt bag with a firm snatch at the strings. “A lot easier.”

Doroteo shook his head. “We could possibly not get out of there with our skins much less a twenty-five-dollar gold piece.”

“You’ll have a great time of dancing!” The drover waved his hands in the air. “It’s old man Solomon Bradford’s daughter! Wants to send her off right before he falls into the great beyond place. Which is going to be any time now.”

Simon became stock-still. “Solomon Bradford?”

“You know him?” The redheaded Hispanic man smiled inside his wad of red beard.

“No, no, I just heard the name, I heard he had filed on land up on the Red River.”

“Yes, he’s got land up there, he says. Yes. Got land everywhere. He said, ‘Go up to Houston, find the best fiddler in town. Bring him back.’”

Simon turned to the other two as their flatboat nudged with a gentle knock at the bank and the red-bearded man stood squishing and anxious on the muddy path they had made going ashore and into town each night. “Listen,” he said. “I’m going. I have to. I have to see this Bradford.”

“Why?” Doroteo took his hat off and slapped it back on. “Why, why? Just a lot of trouble there.”

“There’s three of us,” said Simon. “And I can shoot alligators.” He pulled his undershirt on over his pale torso and then the old butternut vest, buttoned it. “So, what if we got another revolver? Doro?”

Doro thought about it. Then to the man on the bank he said, “We want the money ahead of time. Now. We want it now.”

“I give it to you.” The redheaded man gave one solemn nod and then lifted his right hand palm out as if swearing. “I heard you play and this is fair money. Big wedding. Bradford’s only daughter. Old man Bradford, yes. He lives at W6 Wright’s place. W6 Wright’s place is at Banquete. Banquete is there on the south bank of the Nueces. Let me know. You think about it today. Then you let me know.”

When they turned to one another to consider this, he was suddenly gone. They looked up at the bank and he was gone.

So the four of them started off in a buckboard toward the Nueces Strip the first week of September. Simon sent a last letter to Doris, in which he rather exultantly said he was going into the south grasslands below the Nueces to find a man who had a parcel of land he wanted. That sounded mature, businesslike, substantial, and as if he were a man of standing. He said from there he would make his way to San Antonio by November. If she wished to write him in the meantime, Goliad or Victoria would be the place to send the letter. He said his regard for her was very deep and the thought of seeing her again brought him great joy. Yours with believe me fondest regards, Simon Boudlin.