The compartment door opened and Fuentes and Novis were standing in the aisle looking in. "What's going on out there?" "You want me to, I find out."

"Yes, I want you to. Go on." Boudreaux said to Amelia, "Why does he think I called him?"

Novis, still in the doorway, said, "You don't mind my saying, it's 'cause they're stupid, all of 'em."

Now as Amelia watched, Fuentes appeared on the platform and approached one of the soldiers, an officer. "That's Lionel Tavalera," Boudreaux said. "He fought the Berbers in North Africa before coming here. You want someone to tell you something and he refuses, you hand him over to Tavalera." Amelia was looking at Boudreaux now. "They say he hates Americans, but he and I get along just dandy. What it comes down to, despite political differences, is mutual respect. They can be mean, those Guardia Civil-some say barbaric-but they get it done."

Amelia turned her head to watch Fuentes in his white suit talking to the Guardia officer towering over him. Earlier, when they were waiting to board the train, Boudreaux called Fuentes over and said to Amelia, "This is Victor, he's supposed to be my segundo, but all he does is argue with me. Victor, I'm putting Miss Brown in your care. You understand? Miss Brown wants something, you make sure she gets it." They looked at each other as Boudreaux spoke, Amelia sensing that Victor was sizing her up, curious, wanting to know who she was rather than waste his time fawning, trying to make an impression. Amelia smiled and Victor seemed surprised.

Now, as Fuentes spoke to him, the Guardia officer was looking this way. Boudreaux said in the open window, "Major," giving him kind of a salute and called to his man, "Victor, if you'll come over here, please."

Fuentes glanced over but continued talking to Tavalera, gesturing, telling him something in earnest.

Novis said, "I'll get the squirt."

But now Boudreaux raised his voice to Victor: "Goddamn it, get over here." And this time he came, concerned, though, glancing back at the two prisoners.

"The Guardia officer say they insurgents, but I don't think so."

Amelia watched Boudreaux as he asked Fuentes if he knew them.

"I know they work for you and live on the mill. They cut cane, both of them." He looked at Amelia and for a moment held her gaze. "I tell this Guardia, but he doesn't believe me." Boudreaux said, "You're sure?" "Yes, I'm sure."

Amelia waited for Rollie to call to the officer now and put in a word for the two men, clear up an apparent misunderstanding. But he didn't. He said, "They could still be mambis, couldn't they?"

Amelia's gaze moved to Victor, close to the open window. He said, "How can I see them in the field fighting the cane every day if they someplace else fighting these people?"

Boudreaux nodded, thinking about it. He said to Novis, "You ever see those two before?"

"I may ave, but how can you tell?" Novis said. "All these squirts look alike to me."

Boudreaux turned to Fuentes again. "What're they arguing about?"

"They need the two men to stand on something," Fuentes said, "they can pull out from under their feet when they hang them. One of the soldiers say a baggage cart. No, too high. Somebody say lay a hogshead on its side. No, much too high. A trunk, the kind you put clothes in. No, too high standing up, too low on its side. Whatever they say is that way, either too high or too low. Now somebody say put them on horses. But the horses, running from under them, whose horses you want to use?"

Novis said, "Hell, yank on the ropes and pull 'em up by hand."

Amelia watched Boudreaux look past Victor to Tavalera standing by the two prisoners, Amelia certain Rollie would now straighten out what appeared to be a misunderstanding. Yes, calling to Tavalera, "Major, if I could have a word with you…

The Guardia officer came over to the window, touching the brim of his hat and smiling as he noticed Amelia. He said to Boudreaux, "Yes, how can I be of service?"

"Victor says these two work for me."

"Oh, is that so? I'm sorry, because we pretty sure these are bad people who fight us."

"But you're not sure."

"No, I say we pretty sure. What's the same as pretty sure? Quite sure? Very sure? Let's say I'm as sure as I have to be."

Boudreaux said, "Well, if you're that sure…" and smiled slightly.

Tavalera started to turn, but stopped as Amelia said, "Wait a minute," amazed that Rollie was letting it go. "Victor's just as sure they're not insurgents. There must be a way to resolve this kind of situation. Isn't there?"

"Yes, of course," Tavalera said. "What we say is, why take a chance of making a mistake?" He turned from the window, motioned his men out of the way as he approached the two prisoners, removed the ropes from around their necks and placed the men one in front of the other, as though to march them off the platform. Now he drew his revolver and shot each one, barn barn, like that, in the right temple.

Tavalera did not look at the train window again. His men did when he said something to them in Spanish, but Tavalera walked away without looking back.

Fuentes watched him, then turned to the window as Boudreaux said, "Well." And said, "I guess that's that."

Fuentes looked at Amelia. In the moment she was looking back at him with no expression, nothing, her face drained of color, and yet each knew what the other was thinking.

Before they came to the road where the horses were waiting, Amelia used another compartment to change into boots and a riding skirt. It was the middle of the afternoon. Fuentes knocked on the door for her luggage, which would follow the horses in a wagon.

She said to him, "Tell me something about Mr. Boudreaux. What side is he on?"

Fuentes said, "Excuse me?"

"You know what I mean."

Fuentes looked at her directly and said, "The government or the insurrectos, the insurgents?" Amelia nodded. "Which?" "The wrong side," Fuentes said. "What kind of man is he?"

"Like the rest of them. He knows only his own kind."

The tea this time was served in the inner courtyard of Lorraine's home in Vedado, jade plants in pots, decorative blue tile on the walls, pillars that gave the courtyard the look of a cloister.

"For supper," Amelia said, "we might have soup, rice, eggs, plantain, a crab salad, roast peacock, guava, cheese and some kind of pudding."

"Peacock?" Lorraine said. "Peacock. Like the Romans." "What does it taste like, chicken?"

"Turkey. Then for breakfast we might have soup, rice, eggs, plantain, fried crabs, guava, cheese and coffee. Breakfast is really dinner, the midday meal. The cook's name is Cimbana, she's from the Congo and keeps cigar butts in her turban, among other things."

"It's different here, isn't it?"

"Very different."

"What about the house?"

"There's the sugarhouse," Amelia said, "full of machinery they shove the cane into to make sugar… " She paused. "If the mill doesn't have a centrifuge it can only make brown sugar. Did you know that? And there's the vivien da the residence, built in 1848. It has a red tile roof, verandas on three sides of both floors-kind of like old plantation homes but not as Greek Revival-looking. More austere, and without trees close around it. The living quarters are upstairsmdining room, sitting room, everything-offices and the servants' quarters downstairs, and a hall full of saddles, bridles and guns locked in cabinets. The kitchen's in back."

Amelia looked up at the courtyard's high ceiling and the second-floor balcony.

"I like your house better. It's warmer."

Lorraine said, "Can I ask you something?"

Amelia was still looking around. "Rollie's house has glass panes in the windows and doors, but they're always open; flies come in and out as they please. There're a few shrubs, tropical plants, a lot of banana trees, a few mango, vegetable plots and twenty thousand acres of sugarcane, three estates Rollie bought and combined into one. They call them estates, but what they are really are little towns with the main house in the center, the sugarhouse with its big ugly smokestacks, and streets of stone houses for the workers, a Negro quarter, a Creole quarter, a street that's all Chinese and a nicer area where the higher-ups, the people in charge, have their homes: the estate manager, another man who's a chemist and runs the sugarhouse-I think he's the one they call the sugar master-and a few others who work directly under him, engineers, machinists… Rollie has over a million and a half in just the land, and spent another hundred thousand to modernize the sugarhouse, put in all the newest machinery. If it's a good year, you know how much sugar he'll produce and ship?" "Amelia?"