“Oh!” There was a significant silence before Eaton asked the question in his mind. “I’ve seen her pictures in the papers. Does she look like them?”
His chief knew what was behind the question, and he knew, too, that Eaton might be taken to represent public opinion. The world would cast an eye of review over his varied and discreditable record with women. It would imagine the story of those three days of enforced confinement together, and it would look to the woman in the case for an answer to its suspicions. That she was young, lovely, and yet had sold herself to an old man for his millions, would go far in itself to condemn her; and he was aware that there were many who would accept her very childish innocence as the sophistication of an artist.
Waring Ridgway put his arms akimbo on the table and leaned across with his steady eyes fastened on his friend.
“Steve, I’m going to answer that question. I haven’t seen any pictures of her in the papers, but if they show a face as pure and true as the face of God himself then they are like her. You know me. I’ve got no apologies or explanations to make for the life I’ve led. That’s my business. But you’re my friend, and I tell you I would rather be hacked in pieces by Apaches than soil that child’s white soul by a single unclean breath. There mustn’t be any talk. Do you understand? Keep the story out of the newspapers. Don’t let any of our people gossip about it. I have told you because I want you to know the truth. If any one should speak lightly about this thing stop him at once. This is the one point on which Simon Harley and I will pull together. Any man who joins that child’s name with mine loosely will have to leave this camp—and suddenly.”
“It won’t be the men—it will be the women that will talk.”
“Then garble the story. Change that three days to three hours, Steve. Anything to stop their foul-clacking tongues!”
“Oh, well! I dare say the story won’t get out at all, but if it does I’ll see the gossips get the right version. I suppose Sam Yesler will back it up.”
“Of course. He’s a white man. And I don’t need to tell you that I’ll be a whole lot obliged to you, Stevie.”
“That’s all right. Sometimes I’m a white man, too, Waring,” laughed Steve. Ridgway circled the table and put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder affectionately. Steve Eaton was the one of all his associates for whom he had the closest personal feeling.
“I don’t need to be told that, old pal,” he said quietly.