Teo said, "Yes?"

He didn't get it.

"What I mean," Tyler said, "if you're not helpless, you can saddle it yourself. I'm not your rnozo."

He understood that, staring at Tyler as if he couldn't believe anyone would speak to him this way. Now he was talking a mile a minute to the other hussar officers and to Tavalera, including him; Tyler seeing how a spoiled kid from Spain acted when the help talked back and he didn't get his way-no different than spoiled kids Tyler had seen at home. Now Fuentes was hurrying over, stooping to pick up the saddle.

Tyler placed a boot on it.

"Who's putting it on, you or him?"

"I can do it; it's nothing to saddle a horse."

"We don't work for him," Tyler said.

Fuentes shook his head. "You take it too far."

Teo was yelling, gesturing to Lionel Tavalera, who was listening to him, nodding, and seemed interested. But then he shrugged, shaking his head, and said to Tyler, "He wants me to give you my sword. Teo believes you insulted him."

Tyler said, "He wants me to sword fight with him?" Grinning, because it sounded funny, like he was talking about playing a kids' game.

"That's enough," Fuentes said. "All right? Please, let's go, we finished here."

"Go on with your business," Tavalera said. "I can speak to him, tell him to behave as a gentleman."

Fuentes said, "We have to go to the customhouse before they close."

Tavalera said, "Yes, go. I can take care of this, it's nothing."

All Charlie Burke said to Tyler was, "You're some horse trader. Pick up your chair and let's go."

Tyler swung the saddle to his shoulder and stood there looking at Lionel Tavalera and the hussar officers. He said to Fuentes, "They won't bother the horses, will they?"

"They don't want any horses today, they change their mind," Fuentes said. He hurried Tyler and Charlie Burke away from there, out of the field and along the road to the customhouse, telling them he would speak to the custom people and to leave the filling in of the declaration to him. "We finish and take the ferry to Havana. Mr. Boudreaux say he can see you tonight at the hotel. He look at the horses tomorrow, pay you, we put the horses aboard the ship again and go to Matanzas. Is not very far." He said to Tyler, "You been there, uh?"