The Invitation (Montgomery/Taggert 19)

“No,” she said, her voice sounding desperate. “No one has seen me until now. If I go into town there will be women there.”

He gave her a look that told her he thought she was crazy. “You have been wearing your nightgown in front of men. Isn’t that worse than being seen by women?”

Why were men so stupid? she wondered. How in the world did their mothers teach them to tie their shoes when they had no brains? She gave him a look of great patience. “Men like to see women in nightgowns. Even in my limited experience I know that.” Her tone asked why he didn’t know that. “Women laugh at other women riding into town wearing nothing but a dirty nightgown.”

Cole’s jaw dropped in astonishment. “Four dangerous men are ready to kill you and you’re worried about women laughing at you?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s a matter of dignity.”

“This is a matter of life and death.” He ran his hand over his face. Had any man ever understood a woman? “Take a look at that place down there,” he said, looking over her shoulder at the town below them. Only about eight buildings were still standing. A couple of them were burned-out shells, and one looked as though the roof had been blown off. Signs hung at precarious angles; boardwalks had long sections missing. Even while they watched, three men started shooting at each other and within seconds one of them was dead. The rest of the people milling about didn’t so much as pause in what they were doing at this very usual sight of bloodshed. A man who looked to be the undertaker dragged the dead man out of the street.

“We’re about to ride into that and you’re concerned about being seen in a nightgown?” He grinned at the back of her head. “Afraid they won’t let you into the local ladies’ society if you’re seen improperly attired?”

Obviously, Cole was not understanding her at all. With one lithe motion, she slipped off the horse and told him she was not going to enter the town wearing only her nightgown. Nothing he said persuaded her to reconsider.

“Dorie,” he said with exaggerated patience, “you’re wearing more clothes now than any other woman in town. You’re not indecently exposed.”

She wasn’t going to answer him because even to her she wasn’t making sense. But she did know that she could not ride into that odd little town wearing about fifteen yards of nearly white cotton.

“Dorie, you—” Cole began.

“Go get her a dress,” Ford said, looking at one of his men and motioning with his gun toward the town.

At that, Cole exchanged a look with Ford that was age-old. It said that no man had or ever wou

ld understand a woman and there was no use trying.

Dorie, glad to be off the horse, went to the only bit of shade in the area, under a piñon tree, and sat down, smoothing the folds of her nightgown about her in a way that would befit the lady she knew she was.

Cole threw up his good arm in a gesture of helplessness, then took the canteen from the horse and went to her to offer her water. He didn’t dare say a word to her for fear that he might completely lose his temper. If she was this stubborn over something trivial, would she refuse to do what she must when they tried to escape?

After a while he stretched out on the grass behind her, put his hat over his face, and promptly went to sleep, not waking until he heard the thunder of a horse riding toward them. Automatically he reached for his gun, then winced in pain when his injured arm hurt and his gun wasn’t there.

“I got it,” one of Ford’s men was saying, his voice as eager as a boy’s. No doubt this was the first—and if Cole had his way, his last—time to buy a dress for a lady. The man had dismounted and was talking to Ford, his face looking as happy as though he’d just completed his first bank job. “It ain’t hardly been worn. I got it from Ellie ’cause she’s the only one in town that’s little like this one. Ellie didn’t want to give it up, but I told her it was for you so she did. She said she didn’t want no blood on it, though.” Proudly he held up a pile of dark red velvet and a canvas bag of underwear. “It come all the way from Paris,” he said.

Cole gave a laugh of derision. “Paris, Tennessee?” he asked, looking at the dress the man was holding up. It was a dress for a prostitute: very little above the waist, then sleek over the hips, with an exaggerated bustle to emphasize a woman’s backside curves. “Take it back,” he said. “She won’t wear it.”

“Oh, yes, I will,” Dorie said, stepping forward and grabbing the dress from the man’s grubby hands.

“You will not!” Cole said indignantly. “There’s nothing to the top half of that thing. You’ll be…You’ll be exposed.”

“You sound worse than the preacher in Willoughby.”

That threw Cole for a loop. “Willoughby?”

“Where I live, where the gold is,” she said pointedly.

Cole was annoyed about the dress, but he was downright angry that she had made such a statement and he hadn’t caught on right away. This girl was getting out of hand. “You’re not going to wear that dress,” he said, snatching it from her.

“Yes, I am.” She tried to take it from him, but he held it behind his back.

She started to grab it, but when he held it out of her reach, she turned her back on him and folded her arms over her chest. “If I can’t wear that dress, I won’t go into town and no one will ever get any gold.”

Cole had never in his life dealt with a problem like this one. Because of his good looks, he’d never had trouble persuading a woman to say yes to him. But then, he’d never been stupid enough to forbid a woman to do something she obviously wanted to do.

Instinctively he turned to the other men, but to his disgust he saw that they were watching as though he and Dorie were traveling players putting on a show just for their entertainment. Even Ford, trimming his nails with a knife big enough to skin buffalo, seemed to be in no hurry for the argument to be settled.

“Dorie, you must listen to reason,” Cole said, taking a step toward her.