The Invitation (30 page)

“Did,” Cole said. “He died nearly a year ago.”

“Oh? I hadn't heard,” the sheriff said, letting Cole know that he'd like to hear more. But Cole had always accused him of being an old gossip and wasn't about to give him any information.

“What about his wife?” Cole asked.

“I heard he bought her too. He went back east for a few months and returned with her.” The sheriff paused to smile. “I hear she was the most beautiful woman most men had ever seen. I talked to a cowboy that used to work for them, and he said there wasn't one man that could say a word when she was around. All of 'em just stood and stared at her.”

“And she had a daughter who looked just like her,” Cole said softly.

The sheriff chuckled. “Yeah, a real beauty, and then she had one that looked just like him. Must've been a real disappointment to them.”

Cole wasn't sure whether he should defend the brat or not. Part of him thought he should, but then he thought of “aging gunslinger” and he didn't defend her. Next time some whippersnapper challenged him to a duel, he ought to sic Miss Latham on him. Her words could make him bleed more than Cole's bullets.

It was when he was whittling the fourth stick away to nothing that the commotion started. Right under the sleepy nose of the sheriff and the unwatchful eye of Cole, four men had ridden up to the bank, pulled bandannas up over their faces, and proceeded to rob the bank. The first the sheriff knew of it was a gunshot, then a man staggering out, holding a bloody hand over his stomach.

Cole had never thought that a bank robbery was any of his business. First of all, he might find himself shooting at people he considered his friends, men he had shared campfires with, so he left do-gooding to men stupid enough to pin a badge on. Yesterday he would have sat where he was on the porch and watched while the sheriff jumped up and started running, his young deputy coming from inside the sheriff's office to run behind him.

But today something was different. Today the words
She's in there
echoed in his head. That didn't make sense, of course, because he had no interest in her. If it had been Nina or someone else he knew, that might have made sense; this did not.

He didn't take time to think. In spite of his imaginary paunch and his advancing age and his failing eyesight, he bolted over the hitching rail and took off running, a full twenty-five feet in front of the sheriff. He was like a snake, one minute lazy and still in the sun, and the next moment moving so quickly it was difficult to see him.

The robbers hadn't counted on a man with the reputation of Cole Hunter trying to prevent them from robbing the Abilene bank. They thought they'd have to deal with one fat sheriff and one green deputy and a lot of disinterested citizens. After all, it was a small bank, not of much interest to more than a dozen people. The thieves thought this heist would be easy, that they'd be in and out in a matter of minutes. But things had gone wrong from the first. One of the farmers had decided to play hero, and the youngest and most nervous of the robbers had been frightened into shooting him.

“Let's get out of here,” one of the gang shouted, grabbing the saddlebags full of money and heading for the door. It was the last thing he ever did. Cole Hunter smashed the door open with his foot, then stood back to get away from the barrage of gunfire. When it had calmed down he went in, two guns blazing, and when the smoke had cleared, there were three dead men on the floor.

The fourth robber grabbed the nearest available person to use as a shield, and this happened to be Miss Latham.

“Put the guns down or she gets it in the head,” the man said from behind his mask, holding his gun to the woman's head.

Cole was glad to see that she didn't look terrified. He didn't want to say anything to her to let the man know that he knew her; he didn't want to give him any advantages. When the sheriff and his deputy arrived, he motioned them to stay outside. “They're down,” Cole said quietly, stooping to drop his guns, all the while keeping his eyes on the man as he began to make his way toward the door. There was another gun, a one-shot derringer in his belt. He could get to it and shoot, but he had to move Miss Latham out of the way. He wished he could think of a way to tell Miss Latham to pull away from the gunman.

“What are you doin' in this, Hunter?” the robber said. “You're usually on our side.”

Yesterday Cole would have been pleased by that remark, would even have agreed with it, but today something was different. Maybe it was Miss Latham's eyes looking at him with absolute trust. She'd said he was a hero.

“Just happened by,” he said, “and I needed a little excitement. A man's gotta roll with the punches, keep himself from getting bored.”

The robber had smiling eyes over the mask. “I understand that,” he said, still easing toward the door, pushing Miss Latham ahead of him.

Just when Cole was sure that his hint about “rolling” had not gotten through to Miss Latham, she bit the robber's arm, and when, in surprise, he released his hold on her, she dropped to the floor and rolled away. Cole drew his derringer and fired—but not before the robber did the same. His bullet hit Cole in the right forearm a split second after Cole's gun went off.

C
ole leaned back against the bed, his eyes shut against the glare of the darkened room. It was difficult to believe, but his mood was worse than the pain in his head and belly, not to mention the throbbing in his right forearm. Yesterday he'd drunk a prodigious amount of whiskey because the doctor had spent what seemed like hours taking out that bastard's bullet. And when the doc was done, he'd informed Cole that the bullet had hit the bone, cracking it so severely that his arm would be out of commission for months, first in a cast and then more time as he regained the use of his shooting arm.

It had taken all of Cole's self-control not to rage in front of the doctor and the sheriff. Considering how drunk he was when he heard the news, he should have been given a medal for his restraint. All he'd been able to think of was the fact that he wouldn't be able to take on his next two jobs. One was easy: a rich man wanted to own more land so he'd hired Cole to persuade some little farmer that he and his family would be better off selling their few acres to the rich man. It was the kind of thing that Cole was good at, because all he had to do was talk and paint a splendid picture of land elsewhere. Usually, all it took was mentioning that there was the possibility of gold somewhere else and the overworked farmer was more than ready to leave his plow behind.

The second job was more difficult. A rancher was running some cattle through the territory of an enemy and he was hiring several men with guns to protect the cows and his wranglers.

So how could Cole do either job with his shooting arm in a cast? He couldn't go to the first rancher and tell him the truth: he could do the job without a gun. If that news spread, pretty soon the men would hire the local preacher to do the talking. If he wanted to keep getting clients, he had to make them believe that each job was dangerous and needed a man with a fast gun.

But now he would be laid up for months. And why? Because some snippet of a woman had said some things that had hurt his feelings, that was why. He felt about as old as a first grader, getting his first bad score on an arithmetic test. And that's what the skinny little Miss Latham reminded him of: his first teacher, an unhappy old buzzard who used to tell him and the other students that they were nothing and would never amount to anything. Miss Latham had made him feel that he had to prove himself to her and maybe to himself as well. She'd made him want to show her that he wasn't a criminal.

Right now questions were echoing in his head about whether he'd been shot because his eyesight was failing or because his reaction time was too slow—both problems due to his great age.

Shifting his position in the bed, trying to make his body comfortable even if his mind wasn't, he opened his eyes a crack, then almost gave a yelp of surprise. Standing silently by the bed in the darkened room, looking like a ghost, was Miss Latham.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded and his voice conveyed his conviction that everything was her fault, that he wouldn't be where he was now if it hadn't been for her.

“I came to offer my apologies,” she said, her voice calm, not giving him any idea of what she was thinking. He was used to women who wept and threw themselves on him in anguish, saying things like “Help me. Help me.” But this little fish was as cold as ice.

“And to offer my thanks,” she said. “If you hadn't interfered I don't know what would have happened to me.”

He was almost mollified by her statement and was about to mumble something nice when she said, “Of course if you hadn't barged into the bank, guns blazing, the robber would never have grabbed me. But I guess it's the thought that counts.”

Cole put his head back against the pillow and rolled his eyes skyward. “It looks as though I'm going to spend some time in hell before I get there.” He looked back at her. “Miss Latham, if you want to help me, why don't you show me your train ticket out of this town? I hope you are going somewhere very far away from me and I hope you go soon, because I still have a good arm and two legs left, and I'm afraid that you might make something bad happen to them.”

She didn't seem to realize that he was being sarcastic because she said, “Excuse me,” turned her back to him, pulled up her skirt, and removed a leather wallet from where it had been secreted in a hidden pocket, then turned back and handed it to him.

At first he didn't know what she had given him, and when he peered at it in the dim light, she went to the window and sent the shade flying upward. Cole had to bite down on a comment that his eyesight was perfectly all right, in spite of the fact that she'd said nothing about his inability to read in the dark room.

“What is this?” he asked sharply.

“My train ticket.”

“I can see that, but this is to Waco, Texas, and just what is this devil's list?” To his disgust his voice rose on the last few words. Stuck to the top of the ticket was a list of every desperate, dangerous, cutthroat, rob-his-own-mother criminal it had ever been his misfortune to meet. In fact he'd shot one of them.

“What have you got to do with these men? And why is this ticket to Waco? Why aren't you going home to wherever it is you live?”

“I am going to Waco because I hope to find the Waco Kid there.”

Cole started to speak, then collapsed and let his head fall back against the pillow. “Would you mind telling me what you want with a dog-eating killer like the Waco Kid?” But before she could answer, he turned to her, eyes blazing. “You don't mean to offer to marry
him,
do you?” he sputtered.

“Of course,” she said calmly.

“Somebody ought to lock you up, you know that? Somebody ought to protect you from yourself. Do you know anything about the men on this list?”

“Since I received my sister's letter telling of her impending visit, I've had time to research only you, Mr. Hunter. In spite of the fear you seem to engender in some people, those you helped had only good words to say about you. I assumed there were others like you.”

“You mean that you think that all gunslingers have a heart of gold?” He hadn't meant to say it quite like that, implying that
he
had a heart of gold, but he would be damned if he'd take his words back once they were out.

“I can't very well think that a man who makes his living with a gun has any heart at all. But that is between you and the Creator. You will have to answer to Him, not to me.”

“Lady,” Cole said through clenched teeth, “you can insult a man until he doesn't know which end of him is up. It's a good thing you weren't born a man or you wouldn't have lived past twenty. Now tell me what you're planning to do with this list of names.”

“I hardly think that is any of your business, Mr. Hunter. All I owe you is an apology and…and this.” She held out a little leather bag, and by the weight and clink of it, he knew it was full of gold coins. When he did not extend his hand to take the bag, she set it on the table beside the bed. “What has happened to you is my fault, and I like to pay my debts. I doubt that a man like you has saved anything for a rainy day, so the money will enable you to live until you are again able to shoot people. I cannot bear to think of you living on the street or in the forest because of me.”

Once again she had rendered Cole speechless. It was true that he'd never saved a penny. Why should he when in his line of work he never knew whether he was going to be alive from one day to the next? Never mind that in the last year he had begun to get sick of sleeping on the ground and to yearn for a bed of his own. In fact, he'd recently started to want to own things, like a chair that fit his body. And maybe he'd like to have a place to keep more than the two shirts that were all he'd ever had in his life.

It didn't matter that what she was saying was the truth, he didn't want to hear it. “I can assure you, miss, that I can take care of myself.” He knew that the best defense was to attack, so he held up her list of outlaws. If she'd worked at it, she couldn't have prepared a more horrible roster.

He pointed to the first name on the list. There was nastiness in his tone when he spoke. “This man shoots people in the back of the head. You let him in the house and he'll steal everything you own and leave you dead. This next one is in prison; this third one is dead.” He moved his finger down the list. “This one: dead. Dead. Prison. Hanged. I killed this one yesterday in the bank.” He raised his eyebrows in an I-told-you-so look. “This one is meaner 'n a snake. This one was shot six months ago for cheating at cards. No. No.
Where
did you get this list? Did you copy it from wanted posters?”

“For most of them I just asked some of the ladies in town who were the most exciting men they had ever met.”

“Ladies?” he asked. “Do they by chance live in the house next door to the Golden Garter Saloon?”

“Yes, they do,” she said seriously.

“Someone should protect you from yourself. Why don't you go home and let your sister choose a husband for you? Unless she drags a man off the gallows, she can't do worse than these men. You can't let any of these men into your rich house.”

Slowly, with no expression on her face, she took the ticket and the list from him. “You are, of course, right. Besides, my sister would never believe that a man would marry me for any reason except money, so my search is rather useless anyway.” She looked down at her hands, tugging at her gloves that helped cover every inch of her skin below the neck. On her head was perched the most awful little hat; it made him wonder if she'd found it in a missionary barrel.

“Oh, hell,” he muttered under his breath. This bland little woman with a tongue that could slice steel was getting under his skin. “You're not so bad,” he heard himself saying. “I'll bet that if you wore some bright colors and a hat with a blue feather in it you'd be pretty. Any man would be glad to have you. Why, I've seen women so ugly the birds fly away in horror, but they were married and had those six kids hanging on to their skirts.”

She gave him a little half smile. “How very kind you are, Mr. Hunter, but I can't even buy a husband.” Before he could say anything, her head came up. “Thank you so much for everything, sir. I appreciate it. I understand even better now why people love my sister so much. It is quite…thrilling to be on the receiving side of heroism. It makes a person feel valuable to have someone risk his life to save you.” She had never sat down during this time, and, as before, she had left the door open the prescribed six inches. Now she walked to the door; then, her hand on the knob, she turned back toward him. As he watched, a look of surprise came over her face, and when it did, in that instant when she wasn't guarded, didn't have her features under iron control, she was almost pretty. Quickly, and giving in to an impulse that he was sure she rarely felt, much less obeyed, she walked back to the bed, bent forward and kissed his cheek. Then she was gone, as silently as she had come.