A morning came and Amelia knew she was recovering, that she could get up from this cot and pretty soon would be herself again. She asked Tyler, "How long have I been lying here?"
He said, "Just over a month."
She said, "My God, that long?" And said, "I think in a day or so we'll be able to leave."
Tyler shook his head. "They're still looking for us."
She said, "You told me you love me." He said, "I give you my word, I do."
Osma wondered if the woman they were looking for could be among the women who bathed in the stream.
It served as a public bath for the poor, a time reserved for men and another for women. From the stone bridge on the Imperial Road, Osma would observe the women through binoculars, searching for pale skin and finding most of it as dark as his own. A few women stripped to the waist to bathe; the rest removed almost none of their clothes, allowing parts of their bodies to remain filthy. Some would do their laundry along the edge of the stream; some would sun themselves on the rocks, like lizards. If it was the men's turn Osma would take one look and leave to ride up and down the streets of Las Villas or sit with Tavalera, who said they had to be here still. But where? They had searched the hospital-Osma believing the woman to be ill-churches, a girls' school, hotels, inns, the homes of people suspected of being mambi sympathizers, and several estates close to the city.
The Guardias Civiles stood in pairs in the shade of porticoes and galries, inspecting all who passed. Osma saw this as no different-than what Guardias always did. They stood about to be looked at, but no one dared look at them except Osma. He would walk up to a pair and see them shuffle in their boots or cock a hip to one side as he came, getting ready for him. He'd ask them, "Have you seen any gringo cowboys today? One tried to put a hole in me"-Osma touching his side-"but his bullet only took off some fat, here, that I don't need."
Tavalera was seldom found at the Guardia Civil barracks, on the property of the governor's palace. Word had come from Havana ordering him to bring his corps back to the capital. He wired his reply saying a spy had informed him of a mambi plan to attack Las Villas and he insisted on being here when they came. It could be true. At any rate it was the story he used to remain here and search for the old man, the woman and the cowboy. He had moved into a house that suited him, keeping on the retired couple who lived there as his servants. In the evening he would sit in the garden and drink whiskey, sometimes with Osma, the major no longer wearing the bandage around his head. Some of the things he said while drinking:
"When we find them, they'll be right under our nose all the time. We'll wonder why we didn't think to look there as soon as we came."
"We should look for the dun horse. Perhaps he sold it to someone here."
"When we think we see him, look again, because he will have changed his appearance."
"Look for the spurs he wears. Or listen for them."
"He could be posing as someone else, not American, perhaps Inglds. But he won't speak the same as the Inglds."
Tavalera was no longer eager to talk about the war or to find his place in it. He said there had been a naval engagement in the Philippines and a small one off Cienfuegos. He said it required months of planning to assemble an army. Spies had reported ships waiting at Port of Tampa and the movement of troops there from other parts of America. He said there was still time before an army came.
"But how long can these three hide and not be seen by anyone? Seven weeks now."
One evening he spent with Tavalera, Osma drank too much whiskey listening to him. The next day he went to a drug shop for a bottle of Bromo-Seltzer or some stomach bitters. He stood waiting in the shop as the young clerk in a smock told a male customer about an old man who had come in twice to buy Lydia Pinkham medicine. Twice, the only times in the history of the drug shop a man had asked for Lydia Pinkham. The clerk said he wanted to ask the old man if it was for him. It would be funny, but the druggist would say he was disrespectful, even though the old man was mulatto. Several other times, the clerk said, the old man came in to buy quinine.
Osma said to the clerk, "Several times, uh?" thinking of the woman he had thought was ill by the way she rode her horse-weeks ago, but a picture of it still clear in his mind: her head lolling up and down with the horse's gait. "What was the quinine for, malaria?"
The clerk said, "No, yellow fever."
"I heard you don't have yellow fever here."
"Not many cases, no."
"Do you know him, this old mulatto?"
The clerk said he didn't, and Osma asked when he was in last. The clerk said oh, perhaps two weeks ago. He came in three times for the quinine and each time was two weeks from the time before. "One of the times," the clerk said, "he wanted another medicine also, but now I can't remember what it was."