Elmore Leonard: Cuba Libre

In the main house Miss Janes sat at the dining table with her hands folded. Lourdes thought she looked to be asleep with her eyes open. Or in a trance, having seen a man put to death.

One of the women who had waited brought a machete from the folds of her skirt. She told Lourdes that Amelia had taken the officer back to the house she was using. The second woman came out of the kitchen with a machete in one hand, a butcher knife in the other. Lourdes was fifty-two and loved her dead husband. She chose the machete.

She looked out the window to see the two Guardias on the porch undoing the front of their trousers. Now both were pissing from the end of the porch into a flower bed.

Osma, well into the grove now with the two Guardias Tavalera had given him, stopped to speak to them for the first time. He said, "The cowboy is close enough that he heard the shot. He doesn't know what it means, but it will make him more anxious to reach the house, from wherever he is back there."

The Guardias looked around them as Osma spoke, maybe listening to him, maybe not. They were both veterans of three years fighting mambis, their eyes dull, their full mustaches covering their mouths. One said to the other, "Who did he shoot, a leperH."

The other one said, "Of course. He won't shoot the woman. Maybe the old one, but not the woman. Would you shoot her?"

"I don't think so, but I know I would fuck her," the first one said.

"Listen to me," Osma said. He waited for these veterans to look at him with their weary eyes, tired and red perhaps from drink. "This one, this cowboy, he makes up his mind, he doesn't wait, he does it. He wants to be a hero and save his companions. But he knows he has to be careful and creep through these trees like a cat. But look at this growth." They weren't looking, they were gazing about. So Osma kicked at the weeds and dry dead leaves with his boot. "You see? They don't clear between the rows. That's good, so we can hear him coming. We spread out and wait. You over there," Osma pointing, "and you over that way, thirty, forty meters between us, and we wait. Like waiting for deer. We don't move. You understand? We don't want to shoot each other, so we only shoot at whoever is moving, and that will be the cowboy. My friends, we have the best part of this game."

"You know," one of the Guardias said, "we have had nothing to eat today. You think there's food in that house?"

The other one said, "Are you crazy? You want to eat food prepared by lepers?"

They moved off together talking of food, the one asking the other, "What do lepers eat? I wonder, because I've never seen a fat leper."

Osma hissed at them, "We have to separate, spread out!" But they continued walking away, paying no attention to him, and now they were hidden among the trees. Osma moved off in the other direction, not far, took out his Broomhandle Mauser and squatted down among the hanging fronds to sit on his heels. He could still hear the Guardias moving in the leaves. That kind-they didn't argue or even speak to him, because he was mulatto. It was the way it was, here and even with Americans. He had heard that they blew up their own ship, the Maine, so they could blame the panchos and have reason to declare war on them; and it was all right to destroy the ship because most of the crew were Negroes and all. the officers, who were of course white, had gone ashore. From his own experience Osma believed it could be true. He checked the Broomhandle Mauser now, feeling the weight of it, twenty rounds in the magazine that extended down from in front of the trigger guard. He loved this gun Tavalera had got for him.

You could shoot this beauty all day without having to reload. He heard something and got to his feet. Not the Guardias, not from that direction.

It sounded like… It was, a horse coming, Christ, running hard, cutting through the trees, those big leaves waving, breaking and there he was, the cowboy on the dun coming right at him. Osma extended the Mauser, wanting so bad to shoot him, but in that moment saw the revolver pointing at him, saw the smoke burst from the muzzle as it fired and felt himself punched in the chest so hard he took a step back, still on his feet as the dun rode him down, slammed him flat on his back to lie in the dead leaves. Now he was looking at green ones hanging over him and part of the sky, not knowing how this could have happened. He said to himself, I was ready. Wasn't I ready? I was watching… 0sma had time to think this before he saw the cowboy standing over him blocking the sky. He tasted blood in his mouth but couldn't swallow and felt it warm on his cheek. He saw the cowboy-his face with a beard he didn't have before, on the train, and a different hat-come closer to him to say in a voice he could barely hear, "This one's gonna do it, partner. Your luck's run out."

The two Guardias squatting in the shade looked at each other, waiting to hear the mulatto call out that he got him. One shot. He had spoken forever about the Broomhandle and the twenty rounds it held and now he would boast of having to use only one to kill the cowboy. They rose, pushing up on their carbines. Now, waiting in the silence that hung over the grove, the two Guardias looked at each other again. One of them shrugged and called out, "Osma?"

They waited, beginning to look about them.

Amelia and Tavalera had come to the one-room house where she stayed. Both were looking at the thatched ceiling that began low on the wall and rose to a peak. Tavalera, holding his hat in one hand, pointed with the other. "There?" "Higher."

Amelia saying no more than she had to, and even this required an effort.

"I need something to stand on," Tavalera said, still looking at the ceiling as the sound of a gunshot came from out in the grove.

Amelia turned to the window facing the wall of trees and stood waiting.

Tavalera didn't move, his face still raised, listening now. Finally he said, "Only one shot," and looked at Amelia. "One or a dozen, uh? It makes no difference. Your cowboy is no more to be." For several moments he held his hat to his chest; but when Amelia failed to turn around he threw his hat on the cot and began looking around the room again.

"What can I stand on? Not the cot-what else?"

Amelia offered no help. She turned to see him walk to the door, look toward the main house and call out a man's name, and then another. He waited and called the names again and waited a few moments before turning from the doorway. "I think they with the horses. I know they won't go in that house with the lepers. No, they would choose to be with horses." He looked around again. "You don't have a chair in here?" He said, "Excuse me, I have to get the one outside, by the table."

He left and Amelia turned to the window again, to the wall of trees, their broad leaves hanging motionless, then beginning to stir as a breeze came through the grove. She heard him in the house again, and when he said, "Here?" turned to see Tavalera standing on the chair, reaching up to pull out clumps of straw. She said, "How do you know the shot was for Tyler and not one of your men?"

He didn't answer, busy pulling out straw, tearing at it until the rolled, rope-tied hammock appeared, part of it hanging out of the thatch. He tugged at it, leaned aside, and the hammock dropped to the floor.

Amelia stood watching as Tavalera came off the chair saying, "All that work, uh?" and went to his knees on the floor. Untying the rope, he said, "I trust Rollie sent the money and not played a joke." And said, "What's the matter with me? Of course it's money, or you wouldn't hide it."

Amelia looked up to see Lourdes watching from the doorway.

The dun began sniffing at Osma, and Tyler led her off through the rows of trees to what he believed was the middle of the grove, those broad leaves close around him. He looked up at the sky to make sure he knew which way he was facing: due south, the way back to the cottonwoods and the hay barn.