"So we're talking about Cuba," Tyler said, "and you thought of me because I've been there."

"I thought of you 'cause horses do what you tell 'em. I recall though," Charlie Burke said, still in no hurry, "your daddy ran a sugar mill down there, when you were a kid."

"The mill," Tyler said, "what they call a sugar plantation.

The mill itself they call the central. Yeah, I was nine years old the summer we went to visit."

"I thought you lived there a while."

"One summer's all. My dad wanted us with him, but my mother said she'd lay across the railroad tracks if he didn't book us passage home. My mother generally had her way. She was afraid if we stayed through the rainy season we'd all die of yellow fever. Seven years later her and both my sisters died of influenza. And my dad, he came back to New Orleans to run a sugarhouse out in the parish, the old Belle Alliance, and was killed in an accident out there."

Charlie Burke took time to suck on his chewing tobacco, raise up the chair and spit a stream of juice at the hard-packed street.

"You recall much of Cuba?"

"I remember it being green and humid, nothing like this hard scrabble land. Cuba, you can always find shade when you want some. The only thing ugly are the sugar mills, black smoke pouring out the chimneys…"

"You have a feeling for that place, don't you?"

"Sixteen years old, I was either going back to Cuba or come out here, and hopping a freight was cheaper than taking a boat."

"Well, this trip won't cost you a cent, and you'll make a pile of money before you're through."

Tyler said, "What about the war going on down there? It was in the paper the whole time I was at Yuma, the Cubans fighting for their independence."