Dorothy Garlock - [Tucker Family] (2 page)

With his arrival, the crowd began shouting in explanation, a jumble of voices where only bits could be heard.

“… and then that man laid hands on her…”

“… was only defendin’ herself!”

“… and it’s just like she done said, ’cause I seen the whole darned thing!”

“Now, now, now, let’s everybody quiet down!” the police officer shouted, putting a quick end to the rising chatter. Turning
to Charlotte, he asked, “Is what these here people is sayin’ true, miss? Was this chap botherin’ you?”

Charlotte nodded, explaining the man’s repugnant suggestion that they find a hotel room. “And that’s when I slapped him,”
she added.

The police officer laughed heartily. “Can’t say I blame ya for it!”

“But… but… but what she’s saying isn’t true, Officer,” the man protested, assuming the innocent look he had unsuccessfully
used just after Charlotte slapped him. “I’d never so much as spoken a word to her before she walked up and slapped—”

“Now why don’t you and I head on back to the depot office,” the officer said as he clamped a vicelike grip on the man’s wrist
while wiggling his watchman’s stick threateningly. “That way we can have ourselves a little chat ’bout the whole thing.

“Sorry for the problem, miss,” he added to Charlotte as he led the man away.

A small smile crept across Charlotte’s lips at the
satisfaction of having the disgusting man led away to his just punishment, but just as she was feeling smug about her victory,
she glanced up at the large clock at the far end of the depot, and realized that she was about to be late. Snatching up her
bags, she turned on her heel and dashed toward her rail line.

She had a train to catch.

Settling breathlessly into her seat, Charlotte thanked her lucky stars that she hadn’t missed her train. Out on the platform,
the conductor shouted, “All aboard!” Moments later, the engine’s shrill whistle pierced the air of the busy depot and the
train began to pick up speed and head toward its destination.

“We’re moving, Mommy! We’re moving!” the little girl in the seat ahead said in excitement.

“Yes, dear, we sure are,” her mother answered.

Charlotte smiled and settled into her seat.

Outside her window, the hustle and bustle of Kansas City, the cars and trucks and trolley cars, the buildings and construction
that strained upward toward the summer sky, soon began to fall away, replaced first by houses and then by tall stalks of corn
and endless fields of cattle as the city gave way to the countryside.

Removing her white hat, Charlotte pulled a small mirrored compact from her purse and began fixing her long, tousled blond
curls. For a moment she paused, examining her bright blue eyes, high cheekbones, and pert nose.
Accepting compliments, welcome or otherwise, had always been difficult for Charlotte, even if she knew she had some beauty.
All her life, she had been told that she was the image of her mother, Alice, who had died while giving birth to her.

With a sigh, Charlotte closed her compact, smoothed the soft fabric of her white blouse and dark blue skirt, and settled back
into her seat, thankful that her ordeal on the platform was over.

I’ve come a long way from Minnesota…

In her purse, folded carefully, was the telegram sent to her from Sawyer, a small town out in northern Oklahoma, hiring her
to teach in their school. Her hands had shaken, with equal parts of excitement and nervousness, when she stood in the telegraph
office at Lancaster College to send her acceptance. From that moment to now, traveling to her brand-new job, she had walked
on air.

All her life, Charlotte had wanted to get away, to see what the world had to offer her. Growing up in Carlson, Minnesota,
little more than a hiccup of a town north of the Twin Cities, she’d spent her childhood days playing in the woods that lined
the shores of Lake Washington. But even before she went away to teachers’ college, she had yearned to see more of the world.

And that telegram from Oklahoma promised the opportunity to be independent in a new environment.

But excited as she was over what lay ahead, she knew
that there were things she’d miss about the life she was leaving behind.

Saying good-bye to her family, especially her parents, was hard. They were in tears the whole way to the depot. For Rachel,
her mother’s younger sister who had raised Charlotte and then married her father, the separation was particularly painful.
Though there was no doubt that Rachel wanted her “daughter” to go out in the world and succeed, she still felt as if she were
losing her little girl. Leaving her father, Mason, brought back some of Charlotte’s earliest memories. For her first six years,
she had believed, as had the rest of Carlson, that her father had perished on some unknown battlefield in France during the
Great War. When he finally returned, his face terribly scarred by an exploding shell, Charlotte had been the one to find him,
deathly sick in a shack in the woods. To have him returned to her life, to watch as he smiled over her accomplishments and
he worried at her failures, was a greater joy than she could ever have imagined. Seeing him at the depot, his dark hair growing
white at the temples, affection beaming from his face, was a memory that Charlotte would carry with her to Oklahoma.

Even her grandmother, Eliza, who had helped Rachel raise her, had come to the depot to see her off. She had often chastised
Charlotte for the troubles she caused as a child, but Eliza was now proud at what her granddaughter had achieved.

The hardest person to say good-bye to had been her half sister, Christina, younger by seven years, and her closest friend.
There were many differences between the two of them physically; Christina had black hair and piercing green eyes and an even
temperament while Charlotte was far more prone to fly off the handle, but the bond between them had always been unshakeable.
All the hours they spent together, talking about their dreams and hopes, seemed to have passed by in an instant. To watch
her older sister set off on the course of her life had prompted Christina to count the days until she could do the same.

And so, two days earlier, the twenty-year-old Charlotte Tucker had waved farewell to all that she had known. Through tears,
she imagined that those who had passed away from her life—her mother, old Uncle Otis who had died one night in his sleep with
a beaming smile across his face, and even Jasper, the mangy mutt who used to follow Charlotte on her many adventures around
Carlson—were all watching down approvingly from Heaven above.

What lay ahead Charlotte couldn’t know, but she couldn’t wait to get to Oklahoma and begin her new life. Whether it was teaching
schoolchildren, seeing new sights, meeting new people, or even, as impossible as it was to imagine, falling in love, she was
ready to enjoy every step of the way.

As the reddish yellow sun, as full as a saucer, began its descent on the far distant horizon and stars crowded the edges of
the sky announcing the coming of the night,
Charlotte closed her eyes, relaxing with the gentle rocking and swaying of the train car, and slowly drifted to sleep.

One of the first days of the rest of her life was finally drawing to an end.

Charlotte awoke to bright rays of sunlight streaming through the window onto her face and the sounds of her few fellow passengers
as they began to stir. Her sleep hadn’t been peaceful; a man’s snoring had wakened her and she had the vague memory of gazing
out her window upon the shimmering surface of a slow-moving river silvered by moonlight. Fortunately, she’d been able to fall
back to sleep. She rubbed at her neck, stiff from the discomfort of having to sleep sitting up.

Outside, the landscape had changed as the train sped through the night; gone were the gently rolling hills of prairie grass,
replaced by a mostly flat scrabble occasionally spotted by squat, clumpy hills of much-redder soil than any she had ever seen
before. Tufts of buffalo grass sprang up here and there, far taller than the rest of the short, parched-looking grass. Trees
were few and far between, with bunches of scrub bushes scattered about.

Having grown up on the shores of a large lake, surrounded by majestic maple, elm, and pine trees and the thick woods full
of wildlife, Charlotte found the many differences of the Oklahoma landscape startling, yet beautiful at the same time. She
wondered whether the people she
would meet in Sawyer would be so different from those at home.

Suddenly, Charlotte spotted one of them. Up on a rocky rise, sitting atop a tan and white horse, was a cowboy. When he caught
sight of the passengers looking up at him, he took off his dusty hat and gave them a hearty wave. Charlotte managed to wave
in return, but only after the train had moved on and the cowboy had fallen from sight.

At the front of the train car, the door opened and in walked the train’s conductor, a portly man with a thick, bushy white
mustache wider than the small hat sitting atop his head. Checking a pocket watch connected by a chain fob to his vest, he
nodded to passengers as he made his way down the narrow aisle.

“How much longer until the train arrives in Sawyer?” Charlotte asked.

“Next stop.” He thumbed in the direction the train was heading. “By my watch we should be there in just under twelve minutes.”

The first signs of Sawyer soon began to come into view. There were ranches with enormous steers and dozens of horses all lazing
behind sturdy fences. As the train passed by one ranch, a battered pickup truck pulled out and followed alongside Charlotte’s
car, its tires kicking up enormous plumes of dust, before finally turning away just short of town.

Craning her neck out the window to get a better view, Charlotte could see the center of town ahead. Except for
its water tower, it didn’t appear to be much different from Carlson. Businesses lined the main street, their signs and awnings
announcing their wares, as people milled about on their daily business. On the far side of town rose a church spire, stark
white against the brilliance of the blue sky. A group of children, with a yapping dog in tow, did their best to keep up with
the train as it slowed. Near the small train depot, its iron wheels screamed against the iron tracks. With another blast of
its whistle, it shuddered to a stop.

Gathering her things, Charlotte hurried into the aisle, scarcely able to contain the nervous excitement that coursed through
her. Up ahead, a man groaned exhaustedly as he heaved himself out of his seat, planted his cowboy hat over his sun-burned
head, and headed for the door, stopping when he saw Charlotte approach.

“Ma’am,” he said with a nod of his hat, letting her go by.

“Thank you,” she replied.

Once she had passed, Charlotte stifled a smile at the thought that the man looked as if he would have been much more comfortable
on the back of a horse than inside the train. She wondered if he wasn’t the source of the snoring that had woken her in the
night!

Finally, she was before the door. Pausing until a box was placed beneath the steps, Charlotte took a deep breath, accepted
the assisting hand of the conductor, and stepped out onto the platform.

T
HE EARLY AFTERNOON
summer sun felt warm upon Charlotte’s skin as she futilely tried to shade her eyes from the bright glare. A sniffing wind
swirled the scattered dust at her feet. The air felt dry and heavy, a far cry from the oppressive humidity of Minnesota, but
no less hot.

Sawyer’s train platform lacked the activity of the depot in Kansas City; besides the cowboy who had nodded to her, the only
other passenger who disembarked was an older woman, her shoulders hunched low from the weight of the pair of heavy bags she
carried.

At first glance, Charlotte saw no one waiting for her.

“Miss Tucker?” a loud voice asked, startling her.

Charlotte looked up as a middle-aged man, well-worn cowboy hat in his hand, strode toward her from deep shadows inside the
depot. Trailing behind him was another man.

“Yes?” she replied cautiously.

Smiling broadly, the man stretched out his hand in greeting. “I’m John Grant. You’ll be stayin’ at my ranch while you’re here
in Sawyer.”

Immediately, Charlotte felt at ease. She had received a letter weeks earlier from Mr. Grant, offering her a place in his home
on a horse ranch. Apparently, he rented out a couple of rooms in much the same way her grandmother had at her boardinghouse
in Carlson. Having grown up in such an environment, Charlotte had readily accepted his offer.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Grant,” she answered.

“Now, the only men I ever knew that went by ‘Mr. Grant’ was my pa and my grandpappy before him, and since I ain’t half the
man either one of them managed to be, it just don’t seem right for me to be takin’ their names. I’d like it best if you’d
call me John.”

“Only if you call me Charlotte,” she replied, taking his offered hand.

“Then you got yourself a deal.”

John Grant made a strong first impression with his neatly combed, snow-white hair, his deep-set, sparkling blue eyes, and
his broad, welcoming smile. But the ruggedness of a rancher was hard to disguise. The many lines and wrinkles on his weathered
face, his hands worn and calloused, and his bronzed skin were the result of his days spent working beneath the hot Oklahoma
sun. With his shirt, pants, and boots caked with dust he would never be mistaken for a banker or lawyer.

“This is one of my men, Del Grissom,” John explained, introducing Charlotte to the man who had followed him from the depot.

“Nice to meet you,” Del offered with a tip of his dusty hat. He was much younger than his boss; his thick coal black hair
fell from beneath the hat’s brim and framed a worn, narrow face. Occasionally, his left eye gave a sort of nervous tic, all
of its own accord. Still, he looked to Charlotte to be a hardworking, pleasant man.

“Your trip weren’t too hard, I hope,” John said.

“Not at all,” she said. “It was wonderful to see a different landscape. It sure is a far cry from what we have in Minnesota.”