Simon Boudlin

Simon Boudlin is a fiddler and joiner whose practical kindness and firsthand account of a former captive sharpen the novel’s questions about return and belonging. When Jefferson Kyle Kidd asks him to help keep watch on Johanna during a public reading, Simon recognizes that she wants to return to the people who raised her. His recollection of another captive who escaped the United States Army gives that wish a human precedent; his later report that Johanna has disappeared sets the next crisis in motion.

Identity and Introduction

Simon first appears behind the glass of a storefront that combines a ladies’ millinery with a meat market, sitting as still and conspicuous as an item on display. He watches the street with his fiddle tucked under one arm and his chin resting on his fist. Though short, he carries himself as if he were six feet tall. His straight, broad, square shoulders contrast with his slim hips; unruly brown hair forms a halo of burrs, and freckles mark his face. The setting brings together the ordinary materials of his world—music, clothing, meat, passersby—while Simon himself seems momentarily suspended as an observer of them.

His hands reveal another trade. They are hard and coarse from joinery, with blunt fingertips, so that his musical skill is not presented as separate from manual labor. When he plays, those same work-worn fingers move across the strings and produce a tune. The combination makes Simon legible as both workingman and performer: his fiddle is not a decorative attribute but an instrument he handles with practiced familiarity.

Helping Jefferson Kyle Kidd

Jefferson Kyle Kidd finds Simon while making arrangements for an evening newspaper reading at the Masonic Lodge. Simon asks where the reading will take place, and Kidd explains why he needs help: Johanna has lost her familiarity with white people’s customs, and he fears that if left alone she may bolt. He asks Simon and Simon’s particular friend, Doris Dillon, to sit with her while he reads. The request is practical, but it also makes plain that Kidd cannot manage the reading and keep Johanna in sight at the same time.

Simon takes the concern seriously. After watching a cowboy pass through the rain, he remarks that the two sides are always at war, then identifies the essential difficulty: Johanna wants to go back to them. His response does not treat her wish as a passing impulse or a problem solved by supervision. He understands that the child’s attachment lies elsewhere, even as Kidd has undertaken to return her to her relatives. Simon’s observation gives a spare, clear name to the conflict between the task of returning Johanna and her own sense of where she belongs.

The Story of Kiowa Dutch

Simon explains his understanding through the story of a blond man known as Kiowa Dutch. Nobody knew where the man had been captured from, or when; by Simon’s account, the man himself did not know either. Simon had played at a dance in Belknap when the man was brought in. During the attempt to return him, he escaped from the United States Army and remained in the territory where he had been living. The story is not a general report: Simon was present at the dance and remembers the return attempt and its failure.

For Jefferson Kyle Kidd, the example makes the possibility of cultural change more than an abstraction. He responds that it is chilling how completely people’s minds can change, while also saying that he has taken on the task and must try. Simon’s anecdote does not decide what will happen to Johanna, but it puts pressure on any assumption that return automatically restores a former life. The man’s unknown origin and continued absence from the society attempting to reclaim him leave the question unresolved; that uncertainty is precisely what makes the story relevant to Kidd’s burden.

Music, Assistance, and the Missing Child

Before agreeing, Simon lifts his fiddle and plays “Virginia Belle.” The tune draws a line between his readiness to help and his habitual life as a musician: he stops, apologizes for playing, and then says he will go and get Doris. He considers where she might be, guessing that she is attending a woman named Everetson, who is ill with a fever. His response turns Kidd’s request into a small chain of practical arrangements rather than a declaration of duty. He also recognizes the strain on Kidd, calling the burden heavy; when Kidd answers that Simon means he is an old man, Simon stands, wraps the fiddle in waxed silk, places it in its velvet case, and snaps the catches shut.

Simon subsequently enters the Masonic Lodge through the rear door just as Kidd is putting his newspapers away. He reports that the girl is gone. That brief announcement changes the immediate course of events: Kidd sweeps his papers, glasses, lantern, and money tin into his portfolio, puts on his silk hat, and runs into the rain. Simon does not narrate the search or explain how Johanna left; his importance in this moment is that he brings the news. Across his appearances, he moves from watching the street behind glass to entering the lodge with information that demands action. His combination of attentiveness, musical work, and experience with the failed return of Kiowa Dutch makes him more than a convenient helper: he recognizes the limits of simple restoration and becomes the messenger of a disappearance that exposes them.