“That’s a date, then,” Joe said. “We’ll be up for you Thursday evening.”
But when Thursday arrived, I did not have the courage to go through with the plan. Here was I, a lonely, poverty-stricken old woman with only a sacred trust left to me out of all the world, a trust that most people spoke of as an ‘obsession’ or a ‘fixation.’ Yet now I must go to see what the world thought of me as a national beauty, a scandalous home-wrecker and a luxury-loving doll. I could not face it. If I had sinned, I had paid a sufficiently high price for my sins without deliberately giving myself further heartache. I sent down a message to the village that I could not go.
Meanwhile, shortly after the premiere of the movie in Denver, I saw Father Horgan approaching with two men. When anybody knocked at my cabin, I always peeked out of the window to see who was there before admitting them. As I raised the burlap curtain sewed in heavy stitches of twine and recognized him, I asked:
“Whom have you got with you?”
“Two lawyers from Denver who want to talk to you about signing a paper—a business matter.”
“Very well,” I said. “Since you brought them—you know I don’t like strangers. But I’ll see them for your sake.”
They entered and sat down in my humble quarters. I always kept the cabin very neat with a small shrine fastened to the far wall, my boxes, table and bed arranged around the room and the stove near the lean-to. It was December and very cold. They unfastened their coats and broached their offer by saying:
“How would you like to make $50,000?”
“You want to lease the Matchless?”
“No. We think your character has been damaged in the motion picture founded on your life and that you should sue for libel.”