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."

"Mariel is still believed to be an invasion point. Land there and take Havana."

They sat in silence for several minutes, staring.

"When you were on the train," Tavalera said, "you don't know if they had opened the hammock. But what about their faces? Did they express a particular kind of feeling to you? Their attitude, their state of mind?"

"You want to know," Osma said, "were they joyous or were they depressed, their faces hanging? This cowboy has a gun in my belly. You think I'm making a study of their faces?"

Tavalera said nothing and they were silent again, Osma staring at the drug shop. Now Tavalera closed his eyes.

He sat without moving, hands folded in his lap. He heard in his mind the words: Oh God… Listen, if You let this man be Victor Fuentes and he takes me to the hammock and inside is forty thousand dollars, American funds… if in Your divine generosity You make this happen, I will give to the Church that portion of the money I was going to give Osma, who is an atheist with the manners of a fucking goat and is unworthy.

Though he had not yet decided how much he'd give Osma, he realized the amount wouldn't seem enough to pledge to Holy Mother Church. No, he would have to give something else. Perhaps offer an act of mortification. He thought about it and when he continued to pray said:

Oh God, grant my petition and whenever I go to Mass, I promise to fall on my knees at the Consecration and remain there until after the Communion, which I will receive, after I go to Confession.

He saw himself at Mass, perhaps the only man on his knees in the entire Havana cathedral, his head bowed in supplication.

0sma turned to look at him.

"What are you doing, sleeping?"

Tyler decided against riding the dun. He saddled Amelia's sorrel and brought it through the grove of broad green leaves to the yard behind the main house.

Miss Janes in her sun hat was there, and Amelia, at a wooden table where the twelve lepers who lived here stood in line and Miss Janes, from Gretna, Louisiana, would speak to each one in turn, touching them, applying medication, passing them on to Amelia, who bandaged the ones with open sores. The lepers with missing toes hobbled off. The man with elephantiasis moved past on his enormous legs and Tyler saw Amelia looking at him. She said something to Miss Janes, rose from the table and came over.

"You've made up your mind."

"He's been gone too long."

"You said yourself he was up to something. Whatever it is, there's nothing we can do about it. Is there?"

"You can tell me whatever you want to say and I'll listen,"

Tyler said, "but I'm going. I'll ask at the drug shop if he was there. Victor told me how to find it. I'll look around, stick my head in a cafe-he's got friends here, you knowmand if I don't see him I'll come right back."