Osma said, "So you think it's time for him to come in again?"
"It would seem so."
"All that quinine, the patient must be better by now. Wouldn't you think?"
"He should continue to take it," the clerk said, "to make sure. And if I think of the other medicine he bought, I'll tell you."
"That's all right," Osma said, and went to find Tavalera.
TWENTY-THREE
The leper home sat in a jungle of banana trees: an acre of trees ten feet high fronting on the Imperial Road by several acres deep, extending back to a creek where a rickety structure stood among cottonwoods, an old hay barn from another time. They stabled the horses here, water and graze close to the shelter. Every day Tyler would go back there to look at the horses, once in a while rubbed them down and gave them a hunk of sugarcane to chew on. They kept their tack in the shelter, ready to throw on saddles and ride out if the search for them ever came too close.
Tyler was with the horses when Fuentes appeared, the old man dressed for town, wearing a necktie with his coat and hat, saddlebags over his shoulder. "One last trip to the drug shop," Fuentes said, taking his revolver from his waist and slipping it into a saddlebag.
"Amelia looks to be out of the woods," Tyler said. "Why take the chance if she doesn't need anything?" "Yes, she's been helping the woman this morning, that Miss Janes, and appears well, but you can't be sure. Listen, I hear the troops in Las Villas are going to Oriente, where they expect your army to come. So now the risk is nothing to speak of. If we going to leave soon I should get more quinine."
"You're tired of sitting around, that's all."
"Maybe that's it, tired of doing nothing after doing so much, uh?" He slipped the bridle over his horse's muzzle.
"Did you think we would make it through all that?"
"I thought I came here to sell horses."
"And some guns," Fuentes said, "that put you in prison and what happens, a pretty girl gets you out. When Amelia told you of the money, did you think she wanted to steal it?"
"We don't see it as stealing."
"Whatever pleases you to call it. But were you surprised?"
"At first, but not once I got to know her. She wanted to, I believe Amelia could rob banks and make a good living."
"She's young," Fuentes said, "as you are. The two of you have fifty years to do what you want. I look in the future, is not so clear. Oh, I see a nice house, a garden. I see a woman who's not old but not young either, one who's just right for me. I sit down in my house and for the rest of my life the woman waits on me and I don't move."
"I can't see you sitting still."
"Well, once in a while I think of it and take the woman to bed. That's what I'm going to do with my life after this, nothing."
Fuentes saddled the horse as he spoke, Tyler watching him pull up on the cinch strap and loop it through the ring. He said, "Did you ever think I might run off with the money, being a bank robber at one time?"
Fuentes looked at him now. "You? Of course not, you are a man of honor. And you have Amelia. Could you think of leaving her? You be crazy."
"I've wondered if she'll leave me."
"You are crazy, I mean to think that. You going to get married and be together always forever." "I don't know about that." "She think so, she told me." "She did?"
"Why you so surprised?"
"I haven't asked her."
"What is that? Some things you know without asking. I would know it even if she don't tell me."
"That we'll get married?"
"Yes, of course." Fuentes glanced over. "It's nothing to be afraid of."
Tyler watched him throw on the saddlebags, more of a bulge to them than that Colt that he'd slipped into one side.
"What've you got in there, clothes?"
"A poncho for the rain."
"The sky's clear blue, all the way up."
"You don't know Cuba, not yet."
"The way you're talking," Tyler said, "you make it sound like this business is over with and there's nothing to worry about."
"We close to it. Listen, yesterday I saw a man on the road I know from old times. He tells me of an American ship, the Eagle, not a big one but I don't know what kind, I think has a 6-pound gun. The ship is blockading the harbor of Cienfuegos off Colorados Point. A Spanish torpedo boat, the Galicia, goes out to fight it and the Eagle blows the smoke pipe from the Galicia and destroys its boiler. Listen, whenever the panchos try to stand before the Americans they can't do it. It will happen that way when your army comes-my friend say on the south coast of Oriente, near Santiago de Cuba. They don't have time for us here no more, even the Guardias of Tavalera will be going."
"But you saw Osma."
"That was some time ago. Listen, I know him. If Osma don't have to fight, why should he?"
They walked back through the banana forest, Fuentes leading his horse, to the house where Amelia stayed.
"I could grow this fruit," Fuentes said. "That doctor say they ready to pick in eight months from the time you plant, and you can make as much as fifteen hundred dollars an acre."
"You said you were gonna just sit."
"Yes, I have my woman pick the bananas."
Amelia came out, a hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun: Amelia looking pale and scrawny in a faded blue dress too big for her. Fuentes told her she never looked more beautiful and she touched her crop of short hair and seemed to pose to show them her profile, a woman in an advertisement, her slender nose in the air. Amelia almost herself again.
Tyler watched them together, Fuentes giving Amelia a hug and kissing her cheek. Tyler watched the old man step into his saddle, and as he rode out past the main house toward the road, raise his hand to wave.
Amelia came over to take Tyler's arm and press herself against him. They watched Fuentes turn into the road.
"That's the first time he's ever waved," Tyler said. "It's like he's saying goodbye."
"Victor sometimes shows a sense of drama," Amelia said.
"He offers a fond farewell on the chance that, I guess after all we've been through together, we might not see him again." "Or he doesn't expect us to." "Why wouldn't he?"
Tyler stared at the road, empty now.
"He's an old patriot, and he left here armed. I think he has some kind of scheme in mind, maybe even thinking to shoot somebody."
"A last desperate act in the name of freedom," Amelia said, sounding sad. "I hope you're wrong."
The cafe where Tavalera and Osma waited was on a corner, on the opposite side of the street from the drug shop halfway down the block. They sat outside beneath the portico, behind the rows of Greek columns that extended along the curb. This was the third day of observing the drug shop, most of the time Osma standing watch, dedicated to the task, anxious to meet that cowboy again face-to-face. Tavalera would send Guardias to relieve him and stop by himself from time to time, Tavalera as anxious as Osma, wanting with all his heart the old man who came in to buy the Lydia Pinkham and quinine would turn out to be Victor Fuentes.
"Once," Osma said, "the old man bought a third medicine, but the clerk couldn't remember what it was. I could go ask, see if it returned to his memory." "Do you think it matters?" "I doubt it."
They watched the drug shop hoping to see the clerk come out to lower the awning over the front windows, the signal that would tell them the old man had returned and was inside. This morning they were distracted by the noise of people cheering, illegal guns going off all over the citymthough not on this street with Guardias waiting in doorways, horses tethered on the side street around the corner from the cafe Tavalera took a sip of his cold coffee. "This is my last day." "You said that yesterday."
"Now it's true. I can't stay here." "You like Santiago? That's where you'll go."
"Now my orders are return to Havana."
"So you can protect the captain-general. Btanco must be shitting his pants by now."