Cuba Libre

"The sugarhouse my dad ran was south of there, near a place called Limonar."

"You'll be right at home then, won't you? How many mares can you put on the train by the end of the month, say around fifty?"

"Be more like half that, even with help. Hire some trackers out of White Tanks. You want 'em by the end of the month, huh?"

"How about Galveston the middle of February the latest?" Charlie Burke brought out a billfold from inside his coat. "You sign the passport application-I brought one along-I'll have it by the time you come to Galveston." He handed Tyler a packet of U.S. scrip with a bank strap around it, the price of doing business already calculated. "That'll cover your expenses, get you a couple of must angers and put the horses on the train, you'll have enough left to buy yourself some town clothes and a new hat. You aren't a poor workaday fa

Looking at the money, Tyler said, "What's this man paying for range stock?"

"Hundred and fifty a head." "You serious?"

"The man wants cutting horses to use for polo; he's a famous polo player."

"Who pays expenses?"

"We do."

"What's it come to?"

"Let's see, freight costs? Train and boat would run close to thirty-six dollars a head plus feed, wharfage, loading, veterinary inspection. Get to Cuba there's an eighty-five-dollar a head duty the Spanish make on horses. What's that come to?" Charlie Burke said, looking right at Tyler, wanting to see if he was as smart as he used to be.

It took him maybe four seconds. "You aren't selling horses." "What am I doing?"

"I wouldn't be surprised you're ru

Now Charlie Burke was shaking his head. "I'm not joining the fight or stirring up insurrection, that's filibustering. I'm delivering merchandise, that's all, as a business. This trip, a hundred and fifty shotguns. Two hundred Smith amp; Wesson44s, both the regular model and the Russian. Like the one you have if I'm not mistaken, except these are copies made in Spain and shipped to Mexico. I'm also delivering a couple hundred Krag-Jorgensen carbines, five hundred rounds for each weapon, and we're throwing in a pile of machetes picked up used."

"You bankroll all that?"

"Their man in Mexico buys the arms. What'd you pay for your. 44 Russian?"

"Fifteen dollars, like new. I bought it off a fella use to be in the cavalry."

"Their man in Mexico picked up two hundred brand-new for ten apiece, still had factory oil on them."

"Stolen."

"I imagine. All the weapons are bought in Mexico and shipped out of Matamoros. See, what happened, this particular Cuban sees me delivering cows, he asks me what side I favor in the revolution. I said well, if I had to pick one it wouldn't be Spain. He says what're the chances of bringing his friend Mfiximo some guns?"

"Mfiximo Gomez?"

"Head of insurgents. How would I like to run guns for the rebels? But as a business, without taking sides or contributing to the cause. There's no outlay of money either. This delivery coming up will cost the insurgents about twelve thousand. So what they can do, they send a message to one of the sugar planters: "Give us twelve thousand pesos or see your mill burned to the ground." The peso being worth ninety-two cents on the dollar right now. They raise the money that way or get it from people supporting the movement-Cuban cigar rollers in Tampa and Key West. Two-thirds of the money goes for the purchase of weapons, covers expenses and pays the crew of the cattle boat, the Vamoose; and the rest we get for risking our necks. It's against the law; yeah, you can go to jail, but that ain't as bad as if the dons catch you. You either get stood against a wall or they use the garrote on you: strangle you to death."

Tyler watched him rub the back of his neck, like he was feeling to see if he needed a haircut.

"Half the crew of the Vamoose are Mexicans and half are Cubans, the kind of fellas you don't have to worry about.

They load the weapons aboard off a lighter and come up to Galveston for the cows and horses. There isn't much of a duty on beef, they're so glad to get it, so we ship fifty or so head and make a few dollars there. By the time the Vamoose gets to Matanzas the guns are underneath a deck covered with manure. We bring the horses and cows ashore, the Cuban custom inspector takes a quick look below and leaves with a few pesos but without getting anything on his shoes. So now the Vamoose heads east along the coast to where it's been arranged to drop the weapons. A Spanish gunboat stops them beforehand, they can show they've been inspected and cleared customs."

"You've done this already," Tyler said.

"One trip with guns. The next one after this, the fella in Mexico is lining up a Hotchkiss 12-pounder and that Sims Dudley dynamite gun. Artillery's what the insurgents want more'n anything. Or machine guns. Get your hands on some machine guns, you can ask anything you want."

Tyler said, "I don't see what you need me for."

"The horses."

"You can get all the horses you want in Texas." "I'd have to pay for 'em." "Come off-why me?"

"This business makes me edgy and you have nerve." "You think I've done it?"

"No, but you've rode the high country and had a price on your head. I feel if I'm go

TWO

They brought the horses ashore at Regla, across the harbor from Havana: led them out of dim confinement into sunlight and down a ramp to the wharf, the horses poky, disoriented after five days at sea. Tyler and the Mexican stock handlers from the Vamoose brought the animals single file through rows of cargo stacked high and covered with tarps-hogsheads of sugar and molasses, stalks of bananas-the smell of coffee taking Ben Tyler back to the summer he spent here. It reminded him some of New Orleans, too, that same coffee aroma on the wharves along the river. Negro dock hands stood to look at the parade of horses, some of them smiling, reaching out. There were merchants and officials in town clothes and all kinds of hats-straw boaters among them-who "took their time moving out of the way. Tyler came to a Spanish soldier, an officer in a pale gray uniform that seemed familiar: red facings on the collar, a white shirt and loosely knotted black necktie beneath the jacket, his hat a pre shaped military straw set squarely on his head.

Tyler held the dun by a hackamore. He said, "Excuse me." Willing to say it once.

Now they were eye-to-eye, each with his own measure of curiosity, the man's hat shading a tired expression, tired or bored; or it was his mustache, the way it drooped over the corners of his mouth, that gave him that look. He turned and walked away, showing no interest in the horses, a man armed with a sword, his hand resting on the hilt.

Tyler felt himself waking up from what had been his life among cowhands and convicts, neighbor to reservation people once nomads, on occasion visiting bartenders and whores who passed for old friends. It seemed a thinly populated life to what he saw here, this mix of people and sounds and colors in a place he imagined Africa might be like: familiar smells, like the coffee, and customs that never changed. It was a country run by soldiers from another land and worked by people bought and sold only a dozen years ago, slavery not abolished here until '86-a fact he'd forgot until reading Harper's at the Charles Crooker reminded him, made him realize all those people working at his father's sugarhouse and in the fields had been slaves. These dock hands too.