The teamsters said San Antonio was growing now, it was the only city inland, in all those blank places on the map of Texas. Since Santleben and Twohig and the Mavericks, Dullnig and Guenther moved in, why it’s a hummer. Seems like there’s a fandango or a cockfight or a gunfight every night.

The cook sang, They say I drink whiskey but my money’s my own and if you don’t like it you can leave me alone . . . The river led them to the west, along the galleria of river trees and no other trees anywhere. Banquete and the old horse pens were far behind. A new world lay in front of them. Not even the Spaniards in all their armor could keep San Antonio but now the German merchants have moved in, why the world is different. They were traveling straight into the wind and it bit at Simon’s bare face. He wrapped a sock around his neck against it. If a tree don’t fall on me I’ll live ’til I die.

Simon sat with the driver of number four, bundled in his old Mexican War coat made of blue wool and patches, mismatched buttons. He was surprised to learn the driver was from Kentucky. They talked for hours about Paducah and the war, how the driver had been raised in Bowling Green or near there, had known Walking David as a great horseman and a good trader. How the big Alexander’s Livery stable had been burnt down during the war and the horses stolen, what a shame it was. If there was aught left of it.

“No,” said Simon. “Flat burned down. Who was you with?”

“Tenth Kentucky, under Harlan.” And then he added, “Union. I was commissary. Driving wagons. Looks like I’ll never stop driving wagons and I don’t care if I don’t, it’s a good life. Who was your old man?”

“David, Walking David.”

“I mean your pa.”

“A fiddler,” said Simon. “He went his way.”

The driver nodded and asked no more questions. Simon sat and listened to his talk, his reflections. Mile after mile they bumped over the old Mission Road, and they camped where others had camped before them, in places near the river and under great live oaks so that their fires lit the undersides of the leaves all the way to the crown. Then there was a great bustling of mules and horses being unharnessed, men walking backward from tree to tree uncoiling ropes from their cold, wet hands for overhead tie-lines where others had strung lines before them. Somebody sang, Shady Grove, my little love, I’m going back to Harlan . . .

Sometimes the noise bore down on him and he had to briefly put his hands over his ears. At the first gray light of dawn the wagon master banged on a metal basin to roust out the scouts and send them forward into the bitter wet morning. The scouts stood around a fire eating what there was to eat and pouring down cups of black coffee. All right boys get on top of ’em! Bang bang bang. Get your asses in the middle and a leg down each side! When they galloped out, every horse and mule in the place set up a racket. Then men ran down the rows with nosebags of corn and the mules made shrieking noises of great volume when they saw them coming. The horses called and pawed holes in the ground. The cooks dropped tailgates for working surfaces and there was a great clashing of crockery and tin. Simon split and carried wood for their fire and helped repair harness while Damon was set to kneading dough with his sleeves rolled up past his elbows. Every night big skillets turned out frybread and bacon, a man walked past tossing apples at people, one box of oranges was broken open by agreement with the owner. Freight payment.

If they sat up late they could hear the night hunters singing wolf to wolf or the low hushed sweep of an owl. An arrow or bullet out of the dark was a possibility. Instinctively Simon sat with his hands between his knees, to be protected at all costs.

The first mission they came to was Espada, barely recognizable in a clustering of hackberry and cedar elm trees. Its facade stood alone among overgrown rubble. Then San Juan and then San José. All with purposes unknown. To Simon they were ruins ancient and lost that he did not understand and as he walked through the roofless nave of San José he wondered about their music, what it was they sang, how they sang it. What instruments they played and to whose glory. On the remains of the plaster, men of three different armies and two languages had carved their names. He thought of the acoustics and so, since it had stopped raining, took out his fiddle, stood on a great fallen beam of cypress, and played “Neil Gow’s Lament” to hear the echoes from the high standing walls in which once had sounded plain chant or the songs of the Indians of the mission.

Back in wagon number six Damon sat on a heap of harness to be repaired and as the wagon groaned past on its shrieking wheels he heard Simon playing as if in a great cathedral and knew he had sought out isolation as always, and as always needed to be left alone. He tapped the end of his pennywhistle against his lower lip and wondered what woman would be happy with a man whose need for solitude was so great, if Simon was headed for marital disaster. He thought of his own. Who among us is ever spared?

Then San Antonio was ahead of them, tucked into the knees of the hills, a layer of mauve woodsmoke sliding overhead in misty layers. The sound of the bells of San Fernando Cathedral rang out, rain crows sailing through the air.

There was rain when they left the wagon train and its triumphant arrival in the wagon yard south of town. It was the first week of November 1866. It was a year and a half since he had last seen her, riding past in the little wagon with its side curtains, in a sweet heart-shaped bonnet thrown back on her shoulders and her hair shining. Simon and Damon walked up Flores Street with their rucksacks on their backs, past little houses of wattle and daub. Women hurried by with their rebozos over their faces against the fine mist. A rooster with flagrant black and red tailfeathers stalked a roof spine.

“Remember we’re under military rule,” said Damon. “A person tends to forget. Keep it in mind, Simon.” He glanced at Simon’s still, attentive face and knew the thoughts behind it.

Simon looked at him with a vague expression. “Yes, I will,” he said.

They took note of the old adobe and stone buildings now being replaced by modern constructions. There was rain when they stood under the veranda of Cassiano’s Feed and Supply on Dolorosa. They stared out at the cathedral with its one tower and a small, walled graveyard, the two plazas on either side of it, both unpaved and rutted, the collapsing facade of the old Spanish governor’s house, the comandancia. He noted an adobe building painted in great high letters—intelligence office—on Soledad and Commerce as those streets emptied into the wide plaza, which meant it was the place to get your letters and telegrams. Despite the fine drizzle, they saw housewives and girls coming for their morning supplies in Military Plaza. In that wide-open space gardeners and farmers and bird-sellers offered their wares from under awnings. They heard the shouts of men and horses and hay wagons.

Damon said, “Let’s try there.” He gestured toward the Plaza House Hotel, which fronted Main Plaza. They dodged puddles and melon wagons and ducked in. Inside were several musicians laying out the evening’s work: scores, instruments, music stands.

God, they’re playing off scores, Simon thought. Music stands! They stood against the back wall in their wet coats and rucksacks. Simon needed to know more about the audiences and so they sat drinking coffee as the waiters cleared the tables and the musicians began to play.

They were doing elegant stuff. He felt the restlessness of the men gathered to drink and gamble at the tables with a great deal of satisfaction. They wanted jigs, reels, hornpipes, and all those tunes that he and Damon could supply. But he and Damon needed a guitar player and somebody on rhythm.

Damon regarded the players carefully. “My guess is that they also teach ballroom dancing,” he said. “They probably don’t have any body hair.”

“You are a cruel man,” said Simon, and elbowed him. “Bitter. Envious.”

“We all suffer from some deficiency and must bear our sinful natures with patience.”

The rain slackened. They finished their coffee and slipped out to walk east on the street called Paseo and crossed the river at Losoya to see the remains of the Alamo Mission. All around it were heaps of rubble from the walls, various indefinable collapsed structures, and open land beyond where small fields backed up onto Salado Creek.

The old Alamo Mission chapel was now the U.S. Army’s Quartermaster depot and the long barracks beside it housed the Quartermaster company. Simon and Damon stood gazing at it in a fine mist. Damon said that it had been their last holdout, that chapel.

“Dramatic,” said Damon. He held on to the brim of his Hardee hat. “Holding out to the last man in a chapel. Statues of saints falling face-first into debris, cannon smoke, shrieks of the wounded and dying . . .”

“You boys looking for somebody?” A man with sergeant’s stripes came up to them.

“No, sir. Just came to see the old battle site.”

“This is it.”