That night they lay up in a draw. The storm rumbled on like a celestial caravan loaded with rain, to the west, upriver, and then on to parts unknown. Stars came out intermittently between the low, separating clouds. Simon heard a corporal crawling past them, whispering, Dawn attack, dawn attack and saw the watchful, anxious faces around him and men feeling in their pockets for pieces of cornbread or chew or lead balls, groping with wet hands. There were three shots left in the revolver and Simon didn’t know where he was supposed to get more ammunition. He turned it over in his hand; it was a big heavy object. He rolled up an empty chamber under the hammer and lay down in the wet dirt, with the revolver clutched under his coat. It stopped raining. Simon lay curled up with his head on his arm, waiting for sleep, and suffered through a peculiar feeling, a kind of interior weeping, because he knew his fiddle was gone—broken or stolen.

At dawn Simon woke up confused, in the orient light of a desert newly washed with rain in which hid men who wanted to kill him. He was dirty and wet. His hands were black with gunpowder residue. Men stirred, made small noises. Damon crawled toward him and tossed him a leather satchel. It had the powder measure and patches and balls in it. Shortly afterward they followed shouted orders to charge and retake their camp, and as he ran he heard the tearing crackle of musket fire. Within seconds black-powder smoke hung over their heads in sliding layers. Simon sprinted straight for the regimental band tent. The cane walls and canvas roof had collapsed and all around it their blankets were scattered like tattered corpses, bundles of nubby wool all sodden. The attacking Federals had stolen whatever was to hand.

Simon cocked the hammer repeatedly until he had a load up, thumbed on a cap, got a running Federal in his sights. With a vast, furious, vengeful joy he pulled the trigger and saw the man go down and hit and roll like a rag doll. And damn you stay down, he thought. He found that they were once again in possession of their camp. Confederates ran bent over, ducking rifle fire, looking for their possessions. Simon and his tent mates pulled at the wet canvas of their shelter and there he found his rucksack with his savings inside in a pool of water, and others cried out in joy at finding some few of their possessions.

“Stop mucking around in that, you sons of bitches!” a sergeant yelled at them. Simon dodged a galloping team of artillery horses and sought shelter from further conflict at an abandoned provisions wagon. He sat under the tail of it and considered the revolver—how much it was worth, where he could sell it, and how he could start in again on the long road to contriving and saving for another fiddle. Then a deep discouragement came over him and it was a heavy feeling like he had rarely experienced in his life.

The next day, Colonel Santos Benavides and his Tejano Confederate troops arrived as reinforcements. At ten o’clock Simon heard ear-splitting thunder very close by and threw himself flat on the ground. It was Colonel Rip Ford with French artillery from across the river. Colonel Ford had gone over and borrowed the Frenchmen’s cannon. In a screaming tide of men and a thick screening of powder smoke they drove the Federals back to their island. Colonel Ford rode into the surf and sabered a Yankee struggling for a boat so that his head half came off and the next wave rose up marbled with his heart’s blood. Then Giddings’s regiment stood on the shore of Texas and danced and waved their regimental flag, making rude gestures at the Yankees fleeing across the water.

And then they surrendered.

The day they surrendered was perfectly clear and it had turned hot. Simon and the other men of Giddings’s regiment were mustered to march to Fort Brown several miles farther west up the river. This had been the Confederate fort, this was where they would formally surrender. Damon handed Simon his big G whistle, bent over, and blew the spit from his D. The musicians were put behind the colors, dressed right, and started out in a rolling step. With the two pennywhistles and the drummer and bugler doing their best, they played “The Braes of Killiecrankie,” that terrible lament of an old Scots battle where the clans had fought against one another and left bodies strewn in pieces all over a rocky battlefield. He and Damon had to fake the low notes but Simon heard many of the men behind him singing the words; they knew it, they had always known it would come to this.

If you had been where I have been

ye would not be so cantie-o,

if you had seen what I have seen

in the braes of Killiecrankie-o.

Simon was drained when they got to Fort Brown. It took a lot of wind to keep playing that big G and he hadn’t eaten for some time—he couldn’t remember when exactly. Outside the earth walls of the fort, Colonel Giddings and Colonel Benavides turned in their muster rolls and called for the men to unload and stack arms. Somewhere along the way General Kirby Smith had taken the Confederate and Texas colors and crossed over into Mexico and it was said he and his men kept on riding toward Veracruz.

Simon wandered winded and gasping until they were told to form up. He did not have a long gun to stack in the arms pyramids, as did everyone else, but he stood to attention in his shabby trousers and suspenders and butternut forage cap to watch. The Confederates from Giddings’s unit and Benavides’s infantry pulled themselves once again into a military stance as the sergeants screamed out “Prepare SLINGS!” and then “Stack ARMS!” In groups of four the men stacked arms to make pyramids of four long guns each while the Union soldiers stood at attention to watch, somewhat abashed, as they knew they had not won against these surrendering men.

Simon stood unmoving in the rear rank. People noticed movement. He was determined not to be noticed. He had disassembled the big revolver and hidden it in his rucksack. He was thinking that if they caught him with it, what the hell, life could not get much worse than it was at present.

Then Simon saw a Yankee soldier standing around with a fiddle case under his arm and Simon’s hat perched on top of his head because Simon wore a six and three quarters hat size, which was small, and the soldier had a big round head like a pumpkin. Both hope and rage came to him in the same instant. The sun was blinding there on the flat stretch of land before the fort where palm trees lifted their arms restlessly and old smoothed river rocks gleamed. Simon threw off his rucksack and left the ranks at a flat-out run straight for the soldier.

“Get your filthy hands off my fiddle, you son of a bitch!”

The soldier turned to see Simon running at him and threw out a hand. “What? What?”

Simon picked up a fist-sized rock, stood back on his right leg, wound up, and threw. It struck the soldier on the bridge of his nose with the force of solid shot. The hat flew off and the big man sat down in the dirt. Blood burst out of his nose in a spewing gush. Then, since the soldier presented such an easy target, Simon kicked him in the head with the heel of his boot. The man fell flat, making vague movements with one hand. Simon took up his hat and his fiddle case and felt whole again. Then he stood and waited for whatever would happen next.

What happened next was a Federal provost marshal and two privates took him in an armlock. They had him bent over and stumbling toward the garrison punishment cells.

It was a dignified and amiable surrender as far as the officers were concerned. They were all to have a dinner together at the Fort Brown officers’ mess and for a formal dinner, musicians are needed. Simon spent two hours in the punishment cell; a long two hours. He sat with his hands loose between his knees in a dim light and the sweat seemed to jell on his body. He tried to think where it would be, how he could get it back, how long he was going to be left in this hole without food or water. The piss bucket buzzed with flies.

He heard steps and the clank of keys coming down the corridor. He lifted his head but remained expressionless, watching the soldiers’ shadows preceding them.

“Well, fiddler.”

A private turned the key in the lock and its sharp cry pierced the air.

“That’s me.”

“You’re wanted.”

“Good to hear.” Simon stayed where he was. “For what?”

The soldier pulled the cell door open. “Get your ass out of there and you’ll find out.”

He was escorted to the food storage room next to the kitchen, where five others sat with various instruments. They shoved him in the door. After a moment a sergeant arrived and threw down Simon’s fiddle case, his hat, and his rucksack. Simon took up the case without a word and instantly sat down, opened it, and in an interior tidal wave of relief that was beyond his ability to describe saw that the Markneukirche was intact, that his extra strings and his tuning fork were there, his rosin, his scores with his scribbled notes all over the staves, his bow in one piece. There were the slices of shriveled apple. He sat for a moment with his head in his hands. Thank you, God, he thought. Then he looked up.