She smiled again. She threw into her smile all the blandness her sex alone can command.
"I guess you're right. It's Lorson all right. It's too good to let slip. Well?"
"Too good? Well, I'd smile. Too good? Gee!" Nicol was wholly deceived as Keeko intended him to be. He turned abruptly away to the counter where the bottle of rye whisky stood and helped himself to a full measure of it. He drank it down at a gulp. He had won the day. He had swept aside the antagonism he had felt threatened his ultimate purposes. He was on the high road to achieving all he had promised the dead mother in her tortured moments. He felt that Keeko was dazzled. He was buying her as he believed he could buy any woman. The rest would be easy. It only needed a little patience, a little care. So he drank without fear of the potent spirit he loved.
He staggered back to the stove and stood swaying beside the girl. And he rested one powerful hand on her buckskin-clad shoulder while his lewd fingers moved, gently caressing the soft flesh underneath. A wild, panicky desire set Keeko half mad to fling his filthy hand from its contact. But she resisted the impulse. She knew she dared not risk it in his present mood and condition. Filled with unutterable loathing she submitted to it.
"Well?" she demanded, while she forced the smile to her eyes again.
The man leered down at her out of his inflamed eyes. He shook his head with maudlin indulgence.
"You don't need to know any more," he said thickly. "What's the use? You're a gal with clean notions. Guess my hands are used to the dirty sort of work Lorson needs."
"Then it is Lorson?"
"Lorson? Sure it's Lorson. Is there any other dirty swine in the North ready to buy the lives of men?"
"Life?"