He said, “Check the pockets.”

He lay there and dissolved slowly into both pain and happiness, with his hands lying on either side like inoperable devices that had to be made to work again somehow, and watched as she dredged up a few coins, his small penknife, a tortoise-shell comb. One eye was black above and below and had almost gone shut; both cheekbones had contusions and torn skin. His entire upper lip was swollen and split. His ribs were splotches of blue where the jail maniac had kicked him.

“How did you speak to a tribunal like you are? The dogs, the black dogs. How could you argue before the law for yourself and you bloodied so?” She unbuttoned his vest and then the shirt. Bent to kiss him again, lightly.

“I had to.”

“Now the shirt, please.” Slowly she drew off the old vest and his arms from the shirtsleeves.

He said, “Where are we?”

“The house of Mercedes’s family on Obraje Street, near Camaron.”

“Good.”

“Her husband is a carpenter. Carpintero. It is aye a sweet little house.”

“Where’s my hat?”

“Over here, on the floor.”

He didn’t say anything, thinking. Obraje, a block or two away from Flores. Flores Street was the wagon route out of San Antonio to the north. He tried to come up out of the fading feeling, to pull his thoughts together. They had to get their possessions retrieved and packed, they had to get out of San Antonio. Pruitt had friends. Webb had friends. Shettle the Unavoidable was probably lurching around the plazas seeking whom he may devour. He had to find a way to get money to Twohig’s. He had to find another fiddle or he had no way to make money, not in the shape he was in and was going to be in for the next while. But he could play no matter what. Maybe. I don’t know how bad my hands are. He would miss the feel of the fiddle neck in his left hand, against the heel of his thumb. The magic that was in it, that came to his touch and his call. Then he stopped thinking and simply lay there in the mellow lantern light to feel her hand and a hot cloth cleaning him up in one long stroke after the other and all the dried blood flaking away.

“Simon?”

She was holding a cup of hot broth in her hands, waiting. After a moment he reached for it and lifted it to his mouth. He saw her making little gestures unconsciously as if to help him but did not. He poured it down and felt, in a moment, the flush of nutrients flowing into his empty stomach, his bloodstream.

Voices in the next room and a tap at the door.

“Dorita!”

“What, then?”

“Give me his clothes.” The door opened a crack and Mercedes’s arm thrust through, she snapped her fingers. “I will take them to the washwoman.”

She went away with the clothes. She had not asked to come in. There was a privacy between them now that none could enter without permission. It comforted Simon deeply, beyond words. Doris took the empty cup from him and then touched the hot cloth carefully to his mouth. Then he drifted away again but she called softly to him, “Simon, it’s the doctor.”

A man in a black frock coat with green edging had come to stand beside his bed. A military physician’s markings. He saw Doris go to the door as if to leave but the doctor said,

“Are you his wife? You’ll stay. I might need your help.”

Simon thought, He’ll put me back together. Then we can go.

The doctor flipped the sheet and coverlet back. Simon saw her look quickly away with a sudden flush of embarrassment on her cheeks and it made him smile, and then it was hard to keep himself from crying out at the doctor’s probing. It was thorough and expert. The doctor first examined the long shallow cut down his middle. He pressed here and there to see if it was becoming infected. Then he ran his hand up Simon’s skull, riffling the hair back, pressing carefully on his skull bones. Placed thumb and forefinger on either side of his nose, nodded. Then he bore down on his ribs and Simon made a low sound, shoved back against the dusty pillow.

“Fractures,” the doctor said. “Right side. Other side’s good.”

Then he went over his neck, face, all the bones of his arms and legs, and then one hand after another. Simon felt himself sweating. His short-cut reddish hair was dark with it and stood up in cranky spikes. He saw Doris at the foot of the bed, looking everywhere but at him, and her cheeks were bright red.

When the man came to his left hand he tried to sit up again.

“That hand is not broken, is it?”

“Just lie still. No. Maybe a hairline fracture here on the first knuckle. I want you to keep it above your head and keep this splint on it for a week or so.” The doctor flipped the covers back over him and then laid a piece of split cane alongside the forefinger of his left hand and with swift, expert movements bound it to his middle finger. “You may wonder why I know. There is fighting and brawling going on in this town such as I have rarely encountered. I have become the local expert on busted knuckles.” He tucked in the end of the bandage and then took Simon’s hand and placed it on top of his head. By this time Simon’s white skin was glittering with damp. “So stop hitting people with your fists. Try an ax handle next time.” He turned to Doris. “Mrs. Boudlin?”

“Yes?” She started up from the wooden stool where she had sat herself down with clasped, anxious hands.

“Bring that candle. Hold it in front of his eyes and move it back and forth. Simon, watch the candle and don’t move your head. Just your eyes.”

The doctor peered into his eyes and noted that they were tracking, that both irises were the same size. “Thank you. Set it back down.”

He took a green jar from his bag and placed it on the little bedside table. Then he brought out a brown glass bottle and placed it there as well. “This first is for the cut. This other is laudanum. Thirty drops tonight and then thirty drops each day, morning and night.” He turned to Doris. She was gazing at him as if he were some sort of divinity, the great healer, somebody who would save Simon’s face and his hands. He said, “Don’t use a spoon for the drops, use this.” He handed her a glass rod with a tiny ball on one end and then turned to Simon and put a hand on his shoulder. “Nothing is broken. You will be tempted to do more than you should. But you have fractured ribs and severe contusions and I think the pain will put a stop to that.”

“When can I use my left hand?”

“A week, nine days. You’re left-handed?”

“No, sir, I play fiddle.”

“Ah.” The doctor stood back and thought for a moment, his hand on his mouth. “Yes. Lieutenant Whittaker didn’t tell me that.”

Doris said, “He asked you to come?”

“Yes.” The doctor snapped his bag shut and turned to the door. “Now I have a delivery across town. Stay quiet, take your medicine, you’ll be up and around in about six days.”

He went out and shut the door behind himself.

She sat down beside him on the bed, took ointment from the green glass jar, and ran her fingertip down the long stripe of dried blood on his abdomen. The ointment sparkled. Her hair pinned high on her head was about to fall loose.

He said, “We don’t have six days.”

“I know.”

“Between Webb and the sheriff.”

“We are pursued by fiends,” she said. “It’s like a play.”

“Yes. Darling.” Words were failing him. “We have to find a freight convoy to join up. Going north. We have to get your baggage. Mine too.”

“I can do all that.” She smiled confidently. “I am the fiddler’s wife and none dare cross me.” She held up a fist. “I am dangerous.” Simon laughed, then cried out at the pain in his ribs that it caused him. “So you must not laugh. I shall not be funny. And now, Damon came. He brought your rucksack from the Plaza House and left a note. He said he does not like to say goodbye.”

“All right.” He started to say “what is in the note” but to make a w sound he would have had to purse his lips and couldn’t do it. His mouth seemed very fat. He said, “Read it to me.”

She brought out a sheet of paper from her sleeve and unfolded it. Considered it. “It says ‘Over the Mountains of the Moon, down the Valley of Shadow, ride, boldly ride.’ I collected your money and paid for the harness. There is a man in Fredericksburg who has a Gaillard for sale. In good condition, name Koenig. God be with you both. Ever thine, Damon.”

“Yes. Good. A Gaillard.” He thought it to himself several times so he would not forget. Promise of a fiddle. Soon. In his hand. “Where is my rucksack?”

“On the floor by your hat.”

“Look in it, sweetheart. See if there is a revolver in it.”

She helped him sit up and then placed pillows and his rolled-up old Confederate-issue trousers behind him so that he was in a reclining position. She dropped to the floor in a welter of skirts and searched through the rucksack.

“There is indeed, Simon. But there seems to be two pieces of it.”