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.