"It's beautiful," Amelia said.
"You're so lucky. How long, if I may ask, have you known Ben?"
It was the first time the woman had asked Amelia anything about herself.
"I've known him all my life," Amelia said.
It was a few minutes later the woman straightened, cocking her head in the sun hat, listening.
"What was that?"
Amelia was up from the table. She said, "Gunshots," running to the house where she stayed.
TWENTY-FOUR
They saw him. they ran out to the street and saw the awning down and saw him swinging up on the horse and riding away from them. Tavalera looked toward the side street, waving for the horses.
Osma, his gaze holding on the horseman in white, was shaking his head.
"It's not the old one."
Now Tavalera was studying the figure becoming smaller up the street.
"Not Fuentes, no. It's the cowboy."
"That one rides a dun."
"It's the cowboy," Tavalera said. "Believe me."
Four Guardias came running with the horses and now Tavalera was deliberate in the way he mounted, careful not to appear eager. His troop behind him, he rode to the drug shop, where the clerk was in the street with his arms raised calling for them to stop. It slowed them to a dogtrot and now the clerk ran along close to the riders, pointing, telling them to go to San Lfizaro, the home of the lepers on the Imperial Road, two kilometers past the bridge, the clerk calling, repeating, "San Lfizaro!" as they rode away from him, Tavalera raising his voice to Osma: "What did I tell you. Under our nose."
So they would go to the leper home, not have to waste time looking up and down streets. They kept to a good pace and were coming onto the stone bridge when they saw him, the cowboy not more than a few blocks ahead of them. Osma pulled his pistol, a Broomhandle Mauser, extended it as he rode and began firing at the cowboy. He had little chance of hitting him, but it satisfied Osma to pull the trigger and hear the reports. Now they appeared to be gaining on him; he was looking back.
Saying follow me, Tavalera thought. Follow me and don't go to the leper home.
Now the cowboy was running hard again, continuing up the road past the grove of banana trees. Tavalera brought his troop to a halt at the entrance to the property, the leper home in there at the end of the lane.
He said to Osma, "You see what he's doing? He wants us to follow him, not go in this place. They're in there because no one searched it. Isn't that true?"
"I didn't sech it," Osma said. "Did you?"
"If I had knc/wn it was here," Tavalera said. "What is it, you're afraid to go in there?"
"It's not that I'm afraid," Osma said, "it's because I know better than to be among lepers. You have enough men, you can go in without me."
"Or I bring them out," Tavalera said, already knowing what he would do, certain the cowboy was close by and would try to come to the house. He might run away leaving Fuentes-what was Fuentes to him?-but he wouldn't leave Amelia and that hammock they risked their lives to steal. He said to Osma, "The cowboy will find a way to come around behind the property and approach the house from back there. I give you two men, you go in the banana trees and wait for him."
"I can shoot him?"
"Of course, shoot him. Go on, while I speak to someone at the house. Negotiate," Tavalera said. "Offer them a way to remain alive."
Amelia, holding a carbine, watched from a front window of the main house, her view: through the shaded porch to the lane that reached some fifty meters to the road. Miss Janes, behind Amelia and across the room, stood at the dining table where they had gathered the lepers.
Now Tavalera appeared in the lane, two Guardias with Mausers behind him. He came halfway to the house, stopped and called in English, "Send the lepers out!"
Amelia turned her head. "Did you hear him?"
Miss Janes said, "But why?" with that tone of anguish in her voice again.
"I suppose he'd like them out of the way."
"But what does he want?"
"The." Amelia's voice trailing off as she said, "And Ben and Victor… wherever they are."
She heard the woman ask, "How does he know you're here?"
And then Tavalera again: "Are they coming or not?" Amelia turned to Mary Lou. "We have to do it," and said to the frail black woman who had fed and nursed her, "Lourdes, take everyone outside."
For the twelve to get up from the table and file through the door took several minutes: Lourdes with a hand on her husband's arm leading them, her husband lifting his tree-trunk legs one and then the other, the lepers creeping along behind them, across the porch.
Amelia watched Tavalera wave at them to come on, hurry up. She raised the carbine and put the front sight on his chest, Tavalera standing in full view, hands now on his hips. She hesitated and now the twelve were in the lane, coming between Tavalera and the front sight. She could see him gesturing again, separating the lepers, some of them to one side of the lane, the rest to the other side, getting them out of the way mall but Lourdes's husband. Tavalera took him by the arm, pushing Lourdes away, and turned him to face the house.
Now the front sight was on Tavalera again as he called to the house in English, "Amelia? Come out now, dear, or I begin to shoot these poor people."
She kept the carbine steady as she aimed, the oiled-wood smell of the stock against her cheek, and his voice called out again:
"Do you believe me? If you don't, I show you." Tavalera drew his pistol and, still holding the man with elephantiasis ly the arm, shot him through the head. Amelia saw the man fall and saw Lourdes, crying out, try to throw herself on his body, but Tavalera caught her by the arm, pulled her over to him and placed his pistol at her head. This time there was a singsong air to his voice as he called:
"Amelia, dear, I don't see you."
She stepped out to the porch, unarmed. Tavalera released the black woman and came toward the house.
"Let them go," Amelia said.
Tavalera gestured with his hands. "Of course."
Tyler was back in the cottonwoods, at the hay barn they used for a stable. He was putting Amelia's saddle on the dun when he heard the pistol shot, that hard thin pop coming from the direction of the leper house. Tyler stood listening. He saw Amelia pull a gun out of her skirt and one of them shoot her. But then thought, No, she did that they'd all let go at her. Or she would've got one before they got her and that still would're been more than one shot.
He had recognized Lionel and the one called Osma, looking back to see the little drug clerk son of a bitch running along by their horses. Then on the road he was able to count six of them. Now some were at the leper house and some would've followed him… Unless Lionel looked at it, couldn't see him leaving Amelia and Victor, and all that money, and knew he'd come sneaking back. So Lionelwouldn't he put some of his men in the grove to wait?
He might already have Victor.
But that little clerk son of a bitch said he saw Victor yesterday talking to another old man. It could're been some fella from the old days, up on what was going on. Tyler wondered if Victor might not've found out then the American army was in Cuba. But if he did, and that's why he acted like this business was about over… Yeah? Why didn't he mention it?
Tyler told himself that was enough thinking for one day. He slipped a sixth cartridge into each of his. 44 Russians. He had two horses ready. But should he bring both of them? No, not with what he had to do. There'd be horses, all kinds of horses, if he did this right and didn't get shot first. This time heed his cutting horse, the dun, out of the shelter and mounted.