“Very good! And her name?”
“You know the name.”
“Perhaps, but I like my bargains with witness, and they must witness the name.”
“Jocasta––” There was a slight hesitation, and Rotil interrupted.
“She has been known as Señora Jocasta Perez, is it not so?”
“Well––yes,” came the slow reply, “but that was foolishness of the peons on my estates. They called her that.”
“Very good! One woman called Jocasta Perez is offered to me in trade with the guns. José Perez, have you not seen that the Doña Jocasta Perez is even now mistress of Soledad, and that my men and I are as her servants?”
Jocasta on the other side of the door strangled a half sob as she heard him, and crept nearer the door.
“Oh, you are a good one at a bargain, Ramon Rotil! You try to pretend the woman cannot count in this trade, but women always count,––women like Jocasta!”
“So? Then we will certainly take count of the woman––one woman! Now to guns and ammunition. How many, and where?”