Incident in San Francisco - Page 79/138

The store had obviously been there for a long time, judging by the worn, scarred pine floor and old counters. And it definitely had Western wear - in fact, there was not an article in the place which would not be at home on the range. Men's and women's clothing ran the gamut from simple, everyday working cowboy wear, to flashy square dance costumes, to elegant dresses and suits of Western cut. One entire side wall held cowboy boots in every imaginable leather, from plain rough-out suede to alligator to ostrich. Women's boots were more colorful, with more exotic patterns on the shafts, in reds, blues, greens, as well as the traditional browns and blacks. Racks on the other side held cowboy hats, again with the women's hats styled the same as men's but in a variety of colors besides the white, brown, and black of men's hats. Glass cases held a huge assortment of Western accessories and jewelry - oval belt buckles in silver and gold, with embossed patterns or Western scenes, tie pins and earrings in the shapes of saddles, boots, horses, Longhorn steer heads. It was all so overwhelming that Laura hardly knew where to begin.

Her thinking had been that she would try to find perhaps just a Western-style blouse or shirt. Despite the plethora of choices, she quickly settled on a long-sleeved shirt in a pale creamy yellow, with narrow vertical stripes in a medium brown. It had Western-style yokes front and back, light bronze pearl snaps, and was cut to fit perfectly over the swell of her breasts and was tapered to hug her small waist. The mirror showed her that the colors set off her dark hair perfectly. However, she was wearing the blue dress slacks that she'd worn to class today, and while she could visualize that new top with her jeans of last night, she suddenly wanted something a little dressier than jeans. As she remembered again how handsome her seat companion was last night, she blushed slightly as the thought popped unbidden into her head - she also wanted to look a little sexier.

While many of the women in the audience at the performance last night had been wearing jeans, and most of them looked very good in jeans, a sizeable number did wear skirts or dresses. While wandering around the concession stand area before and after the performance, she had noticed a few long-legged young women who wore very short denim miniskirts. These girls were accompanied by much older men who looked like wealthy ranchers away from home without their wives: she doubted these girls were their nieces. But she had also noticed a few women with good legs who wore skirts or dresses which were more modest in length, and they looked very good.