Dorothy Garlock - [Tucker Family] (14 page)

“Lots of folks think I ain’t the brightest feller they ever met, but you’ve gotta be some special kind of fool not to understand
what I’m sayin’ to you,” Hale said. He squatted on his haunches so that he could look Owen in the eye. “I ain’t gonna hit
you no more, Owen, but you listen up and listen good. I ever see you talkin’ to Charlotte the way you did today, what just
happened is gonna seem like fallin’ out of bed compared to the state I’ll put you in. That’s a damn promise, understand?”

And Owen did.

Without another word, Hale walked over and took down the oil lamp, using it to light his way to the barn doors and out into
the night, leaving Owen to be swallowed by the darkness.

Alone, Owen found himself laughing. Everyone on the ranch knew that Hale was in love with Hannah. To insinuate that he was
attracted to Charlotte was ridiculous, a charge Owen knew was not true.

As for his own feelings for her, that was another matter.

*   *   *

Carter Herrick stood on the small landing that jutted out from his second story office, the cigar in his hand slowly sending
smoke drifting up into the sky. Before him was the land that had been passed to him by his father, had given him his immense
wealth, and had caused his to be a name feared. Besides the opulent house, buildings of all shapes and sizes dotted the gently
rolling hillsides, standing watch over pens of cattle. Men worked hard at their tasks, employees all, every one of them mindful
enough not to be caught looking in his direction.

None of this matters… not a damn bit now that I cannot pass it on to my son…

Ever since he had decided to destroy John Grant, to make him pay for what he had denied him, what he had stolen and taken
away, Carter had still not managed to find relief for the ache that filled him. It burned his gut day and night, a constant
gnawing.

But it was not for lack of trying.

There had been hopes for the fire; imagining the Grant Ranch utterly engulfed in flames, becoming a towering funeral pyre
for that rotten son of a bitch, was a comforting possibility. Carter had wanted to be able to watch from his landing, whiskey
in hand, as everything John Grant had amassed was taken from him, burned to the ground, nothing left but ash. It had seemed
the most pleasant of dreams, but had proven as difficult to grasp.

But it could have been, if not for my man’s failure…

Months ago, it had come to Herrick’s attention that one
of Grant’s men had acquired a gambling debt he could not hope to pay. A string of bad luck had created an unshakeable belief
that the next hand of cards would surely offer salvation for his troubles, but believing in that lie had only sunken him deeper.
One night, when the man had been leaving Sawyer’s lone tavern, he’d been jumped by a couple of rowdies and been beaten up
a bit, a warning to pay up.

And that was when Carter Herrick had stepped in…

The offer he had made to Grant’s man, to cancel all of his debts outright, had proven far too tempting to turn down. Accepting
had put the man in Herrick’s pocket, a tool to be used however he saw fit. In the beginning, he’d asked the man to do little,
a petty theft here, a harmless lie there, just enough to get him used to doing as he had been told. Setting the fire had been
his first real test, and the results had been significantly less than Herrick had hoped.

Herrick had believed the man to be capable of executing such a simple task, but his incompetence had proven too much to overcome.
He’d lit the fire, but somehow his conscience had gotten the better of him. Another of Herrick’s spies on the ranch had reported
that the man had even gone so far as to battle feverishly against the blaze
he
had created. The damn fool was only making matters worse for himself.

Another gamble like that would cost the man his life.

Since the fire had failed, another act against Grant would need to be planned, something that would sow
seeds of distrust among the bastard’s ranch hands. Whatever was settled upon, Herrick was sure his new hireling would argue
against it, fearful that it would draw attention to his own involvement, but the man’s protests would be ignored.
Why should I give a damn about his reputation? He should have thought of what the consequences might have been before running
up such a gambling debt! He will do as I tell him!

All that mattered was ruining Grant.

Carter Herrick had been a much younger man when his dream had been stolen from him, but the pain lingered through the years,
as fresh as if it had only happened yesterday. When Caroline Wallace had left Sawyer, rejected him, a piece of his heart had
gone with her. Though he had spent a small fortune desperately trying to find her, it had been to no avail. When he had finally,
reluctantly agreed to take a wife, as his overbearing father had demanded, little pleasure had come from it. Not until the
arrival of Carter’s son had the ice in his chest thawed, but with the boy’s death, winter had returned, a blizzard from the
midst of which he had no hopes that spring would ever come again.

Behind him in his office, a pistol lay on the ink blotter of his oak desk. Carter didn’t need to look at it to know it was
there. He had received it years ago as a gift and had come to enjoy keeping it well cleaned and polished enough to see his
reflection in its ivory grip. Now he saw it for what it was: an instrument to be used for his deliverance,
its iron as hard and cold as his son in the Oklahoma earth. Most nights, whiskey in hand, Carter contemplated using it, thought
about ending all of his misery and heartache.

What a relief to be rid of this world…

Where once he had been a broad, robust man who thrived on his conviction and personal strength, he had been transformed against
his will; heavy, dark circles hung beneath his green eyes, his once-broad shoulders slumped under a weight he could not possibly
carry, and even his clothing was shabbier than he would once have ever considered wearing. He was a shell of the man he had
been. He was nearing the end. There was no use in denying that he’d soon join his wife and son in death, though his would
be because of his own choice and at his own hand. Carter Herrick vowed but one thing.

Before I go, I’m going to make sure I’m not alone…

C
HARLOTTE STOOD IN HER CLASSROOM
on the school’s second floor and looked out the window as the sun cleared the trees on the eastern horizon. It was a beautiful
day, a majestic August morning without a cloud in the sky but with a breeze that she hoped would keep the heat at bay. Throwing
open the windows, she breathed deeply of the fresh prairie air and tried in vain to settle her nerves.

To say that Charlotte was anxious would have been a tremendous understatement. She should have been tired, could not have
had more than an hour of sleep the night before because she couldn’t stop wondering what this day would be like, but she was
so full of nervous energy that she swore she could have
run
from the ranch to Sawyer.

Everything that she had done in her life had been in preparation for this moment: all of the time spent at her
teaching college in Minnesota, all of the encouragement she had gotten from Rachel and her father, Christina and her grandmother,
and also all of her hopes and dreams. Today was why she had come to Oklahoma. Today was the day in which it would all come
together, when she would begin her life as a teacher.

So why can’t I stop thinking about Owen?

It had been almost a week since the fire and in that time she had only ever seen him from a distance, walking from the corrals
to a horse barn or slowly sauntering back to his cabin. Not once had he come to dinner at the main house, and Charlotte suspected
that Mrs. Grant was fixing him a plate to take to the cabin. He had also stopped driving Charlotte into town. Hannah took
her brother’s eccentricities in stride, saying that Owen was just being Owen, but there was no doubt in Charlotte’s mind that
he was avoiding her. She wasn’t, however, about to swallow her pride and seek him out.

The truth was that she was still mad at him. There was no excuse for his treating her as he had during the fire. Whenever
Charlotte thought of the words he had spoken in anger, it made her heart race in an unsettling way. Still, she couldn’t completely
suppress her excitement, particularly when she remembered his lips so close to her own, but all that did was thoroughly confuse
her more.

Tenaciously, she clung to what Del had told her on the steps: that when things didn’t go your way, you had to pick up the
pieces and start at the beginning. She wasn’t sure
exactly what it was she had with Owen, only that they needed a fresh start.

But how do I do that? Should I just confront him or will that only embarrass us both?

Behind her, Charlotte heard the sound of a throat clearing. She turned quickly, a bright smile on her face as a welcome greeting
to her first arriving student, but was surprised to find an older woman standing in her doorway, her arms folded across her
chest and her face stern.

“I suppose that you are Miss Tucker,” the woman declared.

“I am,” Charlotte replied. “And… you are…?”

“My name is Paige Spratt, but you will call me Mrs. Spratt,” she answered, apparently offended that Charlotte had presumed
to ask.

“I’m the new teacher.” She smiled uneasily.

That smile was not returned.

The first thought Charlotte had when looking at Paige Spratt was an unpleasant one: she resembled a buzzard. Thin to the point
of looking sickly, even emaciated, she seemed to be all sharp angles and bones, swimming in a black, unfashionable dress.
Her brownish hair, pulled back into the tightest bun Charlotte had ever seen, was touched by grey at the temples. A long neck,
bulbous nose, protruding lips, and too prominent teeth completed the picture. Other than a slight hunching of her shoulders,
she stood ramrod straight, prim and proper in her carriage as well as dress. Even her black shoes were matronly, one of
them tapping a cadence out on the floor just outside the door, as if the threshold of Charlotte’s classroom were a line Mrs.
Spratt wasn’t particularly interested in crossing.

“I would have thought that you would have sought me out by now,” Mrs. Spratt continued, her face as sour as if she had bit
into a lemon. “After all, I’ve been teaching here for over twenty years and might have been able to give you a bit of advice
about what you should expect. I would have thought you eager for knowledge from my years of experience.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you in any way,” Charlotte explained, “but when I was hired, I wasn’t given much information about
whom I should contact once I arrived in town. I was told that someone would contact me.”

“Well, we all know what happens when assumptions are made,” Mrs. Spratt cut her off dismissively.

Charlotte couldn’t stop her temper from boiling at the audacity of the woman’s words. The truth was that, ever since Charlotte
could remember, she’d had a short fuse, eager to jump into a confrontation and defend herself. At that particular moment,
she wanted nothing more than to correct Paige Spratt’s misconceptions, to give every bit as good as she got, but decorum or
politeness held her back. After all, letting her oversize temper run wild was what had landed her in trouble with Owen, and
maybe she should try a different tack.

“Again, I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,” she offered neutrally.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about offending me, my dear,” Mrs. Spratt replied in obvious insincerity. “I’ve seen many a young girl
like yourself come and go through these parts in my time. Little Miss Know-It-Alls thinking that they have all the answers
when the truth is they have a brain the size of an egg. Few of them make it more than a school year or two, rushing back to
wherever it was they came from or scurrying off to marry the first foolish man who gave them any attention. Truthfully, I
usually don’t even bother to remember their names.”

“It’s my intention to be here for a considerable time,” Charlotte answered defensively, giving voice to feelings she was not
even sure she’d had before she spoke of them.

“I’m sure that right now, standing here talking to me, you honestly believe that to be true, which is wonderful, my dear,
just wonderful,” Mrs. Spratt said with a sweetness that was as false as it was sickening. “But if you really want it to be
true, you have an awful lot of things to learn about… your clothes, for instance.”

“What about them?” she asked, suddenly self-conscious.

“Just look at you!”

Charlotte did just that, looking down at the outfit she had carefully picked out for such a very special day. Rachel had bought
it for her as a graduation gift in St. Paul, at a marvelous little shop whose owner was an older man with a handlebar mustache.
One of her most prized possessions, it was delicately wrapped and put in the bottom
of her steamer trunk, only worn when needed. The blouse was white, embroidered at the cuff with a delicate blue frill that
ran an inch up the wrist. Pleated along the front, it had ivory buttons that shone in the sunlight. A dark blue skirt fell
to mid-calf. She couldn’t imagine what could be wrong about her clothes.

“I… I don’t understand…”

“No proper young woman goes about with the top button of her collar undone unless she’s advertising what’s to be found beneath
the fabric!”

“How dare you say that…” Charlotte began, her hand involuntarily flying up to her open collar, a fashion trend that all of
the girls she knew followed.

“And the color doesn’t do a thing but distract the children from the important lessons,” Mrs. Spratt continued, her list of
complaints not in the least bit out of steam. “That sort of meandering pattern is too noticeable, too vulgar. You truthfully
should be no more noticeable than the blackboard! Their time here with us should be as fundamentally sound as their days in
church. A proper school instruction shouldn’t be about having fun, being entertained, laughing and whatnot, but filling their
empty little heads with knowledge. Anything else is simply a waste of time.”