"You look sick, that's all."
"My hair," she said, touching it. "I'm a mess. I think I have yellow fever."
Fuentes, sitting with the rolled hammock on his lap, said, "Don't talk like that."
"Well, I have something terrible, I know. Look at me." She said, "No, don't," and closed her eyes again. "I brought a bottle of quinine. It's with all my earthly possessions stuffed in saddlebags. Quinine and a bottle of Ayer's pills I've had over a year, Lorraine told me to bring."
"Your bags are right here," Fuentes said, and motioned with his head.
Tyler went through one and then the other, feeling what he believed was silk underwear among items of clothing he couldn't identify but didn't believe he should look at. He found hand towels, soap, bath powder, baking soda, a toothbrush, nail files, safety pins, matches, Sweet Caporal cigarettes, bottles of Ayer's pills, Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, Sherman's Papillary Oil, and a half pint of quinine. He turned as he heard Amelia.
"I'm gonna die, aren't I?"
Fuentes was shaking his head. "No, you not going to die. We won't let you."
"But I might," Amelia said. "While I'm still here on this earth I'd like to know if Rollie cared enough to pay the ransom. Open the hammock, Victor, if you would, please."
Tyler had the feeling she was making the most of being sick. She seemed to like putting on acts. Which was fine with him, he liked at ching her. He couldn't look at Amelia without wanting to touch her so gently she would barely feel it. He said, "Here, take a swig of your medicine," handing Amelia the bottle.
She took it, but as she did her sad eyes looked past him and came to life Tyler half turned, looked over his shoulder to see a bearded man in a panama coming along the aisle, the bearded man raising his eyebrows as he said, "Fuentes, is that you?"
Too much at ease, Tyler felt, for that look of surprise. Tyler glanced at Fuentes, whose back was to the man and had to turn all the way around. The look Fuentes showed was honest, more startled than just surprised, not liking what he saw; but gathered himself and said, "Osma, the slave hunter, how are you?" Then said in English, for Tyler, "You still kiss Tavalera's ass when he wants?"
It was all Tyler had to hear. He pulled a. 44 Russian and put it in the bearded face.
"What do you want done with him?"
"Shoot him," Fuentes said, "what do you think?"
Tyler took a step toward the man and felt the train begin to roll, felt that jolt and heard couplings bang together. Two more steps, holding the man's gaze, Tyler pressed the muzzle of the. 44 into the man's belly.
"You're getting off," Tyler said.
The man still seemed at ease. He gestured. "The train is moving."
"Get off or get shot, partner."
"What are you, a cowboy?"
Tyler hit him across the jaw with his gun barrel. No warning whacked Osma to let him know there was nothing to talk about, and again put the muzzle against his belly. Now he reached into the man's coat and lifted his Colt revolver. It had an ivory grip. Tyler handed it behind him and Fuentes reached out to take it, Fuentes saying, "Why don't you shoot him?
Then put him off?"
Osma had a hand to his face, touching his jaw. He looked at the blood on his thick palm and then at Tyler.
Tyler cocked the. 44.
Osma turned and walked down the aisle to the end of the car, Tyler a step behind him. Osma opened the door and the sound of the train picking up speed came in loud. Tyler gave him a shove, not hard, but it was enough to send him out the door. Osma grabbed the platform railing in one hand-couplings below him, between the cars-and came around to Tyler with a short-barrel pistol in his hand, firing as Tyler slashed the man's arm with his gun barrel, firing again as he went off the side of the platform, Tyler firing now, snapping two shots into the dusk, and knew he'd hit the man in midair before the man hit the ground.
Tyler leaned out to see Osma lying back there in the cinders and weeds; he looked done.
An oil lamp hung at the end of the car. Tyler brought it to where they were seated, hung it from a coat hook and used Amelia's matches to light it. He sat with her legs on his lap, his hand on a boot feeling her slender ankle in there. Tyler watched her, flushed and sick as she was, puffing on a Sweet Cap, the smoke rising to hang about the lamp that moved with the sway of the train. Fuentes was taking forever to undo the rope around the hammock.
There was worry in his voice as he spoke about Osma. Was he dead? The man deserved to be. Tyler said if he wasn't dead he was likely on his way. Fuentes said he should have shot him as he stood there, through the heart and be sure. Saying he hoped to God never to see Osma again. Tyler thinking if Osma was dead, my God, that would be how many? Eight men dead by his gun and he wasn't even a shootist, had never sought a man to kill him and never would. Shooting men was not something to be known for, not even in the Wild West anymore. Though Tavalera would come to mind whenever he thought of Charlie Burke, killed by that firing squad. Be best to have all this over with and get back to raising stock.
Maybe right here. It was something he thought about now and again, the idea of staying on after, wondering each time why this country seemed so familiar to him, like home.
Fuentes kept talking about Osma, telling how he had hunted runaway slaves, until Amelia said to him, "Victor, can't you untie that thing and talk at the same time?"
"I'm afraid of what we might find," Fuentes said, pulling the rope loose and laying the hammock on the seat next to him. "Or what we won't find." He let half the canvas unroll to the floor, felt in the part still on the seat and pulled out a pillowcase that had weight to it, irregular shapes inside, corners pressing against the cloth. He held up the pillowcase like a sack ofmwhat?
"For God's sake, Victor, will you please open it?" Amelia's spunk letting her say this in her weakened condition, barely moving her mouth.
Fuentes turned the pillowcase upside down and bank notes bound in money straps poured out to pile on the seat next to him. Fuentes grinning, and yet seemed surprised. "Count it," Amelia said.
Tyler watched her eyes hold on Fuentes as he riffled through several of the packets, counted to himself as he stacked them on the seat and said, "What you ask for, forty thousand American dollars, all there."
Tyler looked from the bank notes to Amelia, the flush of fever on her face, and saw her eyes shining.
The mulatta he called Isabela Catelica worked on Tavalera's wound for two hours, first cutting and shaving hair matted with blood to see the wound clearly, then cleansing it with diluted carbolic acid. She closed the wound with needle and thread in twelve individual stitches as he lay facedown across her bed. She asked why the wound was in the back of his head if he had been facing the enemy. She could ask him that in his weakened state, but got no answer. She finished her sewing before discovering he had passed out sometime while she worked, from the pain or loss of blood. The bed looked as though a woman had given birth in it. She put ice in a towel and placed it against his wound while he slept through the day. In the evening, when he opened his eyes and knew the day was gone, he said, "I failed."
She didn't know what he meant-failed at what?-but didn't ask. He wanted to know if Osma had returned and she shook her head. Now he was angry, wanting to blame her because Osma hadn't returned. She brought him whiskey. He sat up to drink it, but soon closed his eyes, telling her his head was spinning. She left him alone and he again fell asleep.
Isabela sat in the front room, leaving him alone in the bed, and fell asleep with her head resting on her arms on the surface of the table. Sometime during the night she awoke to the sound of a horse outside, approaching the house. She waited, but now there were no sounds, nothing. Finally she went to the door and opened it.