About twenty minutes later, Walters and his lawyer emerged. Walters seemed to be in a much better mood, a small smile on his face.
Williams saw his chance. Standing up, he approached Walters and introduced himself.
“Nice to meet you, Colonel,” Walters replied. “What do you want?”
He certainly is to the point, Williams thought. “I am looking for a woman, the wife of this man here,” he said, pointing to Alejandro. “We think that you may have bought her last week at Mr. Johnson’s market. If she is indeed in your service, we’d like to see if there’s some way we could buy her from you.”
Walters looked at Williams for a moment before saying, “This woman you seek, is she American?”
Williams shook his head, “She is Cuban.”
Walters nodded. “Then I know who you’re talking about. I bought three people last week, all of them women, but there was one I bought, a tall, slender, darker-skinned woman in her early thirties, who has done nothing but cry in the past week. You’re welcome to come back with me to my estate to make sure that she is the right one. Then, we can discuss a suitable financial arrangement.” His eyes lit up greedily when he said the final three words.
Williams suddenly had the feeling that it was going to be far more expensive to rescue Maria than it had been to rescue Alejandro. “Very well,” he answered, “we’ll follow you back to your estate. We’ll have to walk back to the market to get my cart, though. Where should we meet?”
“Back here. My coach is right outside, and I will wait for you.”
Williams agreed, and he, Roderick, and Alejandro all headed back to the market to pick up the cart. Within twenty minutes, they had returned back to the town hall. Walters and his coach waited there. Without a word, he climbed inside. The driver cracked the whip over the two horses that pulled it, and the coach sprang forward. Williams followed in the cart, wondering how far they would have to go and whether they would be able to come to any sort of good agreement to a man who had so far shown himself selfish. The ride to Walters’ estate took twenty minutes. No one spoke on the way.
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