Dorothy Garlock - [Tucker Family] (24 page)

During breakfast, the day had taken a considerable turn
for the better. The dewdrops that clung to blades of grass, panes of glass, and even the cobwebs woven between the wire fence
sparkled in the sunlight. At her feet, purple locoweed flowers spread their petals skyward, somehow managing to avoid being
stomped in the hustle and bustle all around them. The breeze was pleasant, rustling Charlotte’s blond curls.

“I can hear you back there,” Hannah singsonged over her shoulder.

“I wasn’t trying to hide from you.”

“You weren’t?” she said with a playful grin. “You could have fooled me.”

Up close, Charlotte was startled as always by how closely Hannah resembled Owen, though she shouldn’t have been surprised;
they were twins after all. But where Owen’s face was rugged, his sister’s similar looks, from the curve of her jawline to
the small creases in the corners of her eyes, were softer, alluring, and enticing. There wasn’t much doubt why Hale was so
smitten.

“I wanted to talk to you but thought that I should wait until we could be alone.”

“Is it a secret?” Hannah asked hopefully.

“Sort of,” Charlotte answered. “Owen and I were wondering if you wanted to come with us to the roller-skating rink tonight.”

“You and
Owen
were wondering?” she asked, a curious smile blossoming across her face, her eyes sparkling mischievously.

Charlotte nodded. Ever since she and Owen had shared their first kiss, she had wondered what, if anything, he would tell his
sister. In the time since Charlotte had arrived at the ranch, she and Hannah had grown close, a friendship she was happy to
have. She wouldn’t have been embarrassed to have Hannah know about their relationship, but clearly Owen had chosen to remain
silent.

“I thought that my brother was doing his best to drive you crazy, with all of the teasing and whatnot.”

“He still teases me sometimes,” Charlotte admitted, “but then there are other times when…” She couldn’t say more and blushed
instead.

“Did he tell you… about us?” Hannah asked hesitantly.

“He told me the reason why you came to Oklahoma. He told me what he believes happened to your mother.”

Hannah nodded. “I don’t agree with everything Owen has done.” His sister sighed. “I’m still not used to having a different
name. I keep expecting to blurt out ‘Wallace’ and give the whole thing away.”

“I imagine it would be hard.”

“Even with my job at the lawyer’s office, I’m always frightened that my snooping will be found out and I’ll be fired. Thankfully
Barnaby is quite messy, so he has enough trouble sorting through the papers covering his desk, he doesn’t notice when a file
isn’t just where it’s supposed to be.”

Charlotte wanted to press further, to learn whether
Hannah saw the same things her brother did in the scant evidence she had found in the lawyer’s office, but she couldn’t bring
herself to press.

“Going skating
does
seem like it would be fun,” Hannah admitted. “Certainly better than my usual nights.”

Charlotte brightened. “What we’re proposing is a break from your everyday work and worries. It’s a chance to take a night
out on the town, do something different, and have fun.”

Hannah’s smile grew brighter. “But what I don’t understand is why you would want me to come along with the two of you. When
a couple wants some time together, especially if they’re in the mood for romance, the last thing they need is another person
tagging along.”

“It’s not like that between Owen and me.”

“Why ever not?”

“The reason that we were asking you,” Charlotte explained, ignoring Hannah’s teasing, “was because that first day we drove
into town together, the day they were putting in the rink, you seemed so excited about it that it wouldn’t seem right for
us to go without you. Besides, I was hoping that…”

“Hoping what?” Hannah asked, hands on her hips.

Charlotte paused; it was ironic that, when the moment arrived to tell Hannah of her intentions, she ended up as flustered
as Hale, unable to say what she wanted. She wondered if this was what he always went through, a tongue-tied, nervous feeling
that he just couldn’t shake.

“I thought… I thought that maybe… you’d like to go skating with Hale.”

“Hale McCoy?”

A sickening feeling of disappointment spread in Charlotte’s gut at the realization that there was no way that Hannah would
accept. She felt like a fool. She could only hope that Hannah wouldn’t choose to tease Hale even more than she did, lording
his offer over him in mean-spirited humor. But then Hannah’s expression softened, if only a fraction.

“Did he put you up to this?”

“Not at all,” she answered truthfully… depending on how you chose to look at it.

“I hope that you don’t think I’m a fool, Charlotte.”

“I would never think such a thing.”

“Because you would have to be deaf, blind, dumb, and likely dead to not realize how smitten Hale is with me,” Hannah explained.
“From the first time I ever met him, not an hour off the train from Colorado, I could see that he was more than an enormous
ox of a man with a voice louder than thunder but also a bashful, bumbling boy unable to string five words together without
blushing like a beet.

“But I’d also have to be without any of my senses not to see that he’s a good man with a heart that’s almost always in the
right place. I always figured that someday he’d screw up enough courage to start talking to me.

“I suppose I’ve tortured him long enough. I can’t say
that I haven’t had my fun.” Hannah sighed, and then gave a quick laugh. “All right, I’ll go.”

Charlotte was delighted. Besides her hope that Hale and Hannah might finally be able to spend some time together, she also
wanted Hale to see Owen in a different light, to know him better and to realize that he was not capable of fouling the well
with kerosene. Now, there would at least be the chance.

“Hale really didn’t put you up to this?” Hannah asked. “He wasn’t so shy that he couldn’t do it himself?”

“It’s not like that at all! Honest, it’s not!”

“Then that must mean that he doesn’t know you’ve asked me.”

“I didn’t want to say anything to him until after I’d had a chance to talk to you first,” Charlotte explained. “There didn’t
seem to be any point in getting his hopes up if you didn’t want to go.”

“That makes sense,” she agreed, “although I would give just about anything to see his face when you tell him that he’s going
on a date with me. I hope that you don’t expect me to stop teasing him just because I agreed to this.”

“Not in the least.”

“Good.” Hannah laughed. “Because I wouldn’t even if you did!”

They made plans for when to be ready out in front of the main house for the drive into town. Charlotte had just begun to walk
away, to go tell Hale the surprising and exciting news, when Hannah called to her.

“When you talk to Hale, you might want to step back from him a little ways.”

“What for?”

“Because he’s going to do one of two things,” she explained. “He’s going to either pass out or throw up on your shoes.”

For a minute, Charlotte thought one of Hannah’s predictions was going to come true; Hale wobbled, his knees suddenly going
slack, eyeballs bulging out of his head, jaw hanging open. He looked as if he were drunk. Odds were that he would have collapsed
at her feet had it not been for the conveniently close fence post that he clung to.

“Hale?” she asked, concerned. “Are you going to be all right?”

“We’re goin’ roller-skatin’?” Charlotte would have thought that Hale would have been over the moon with excitement at the
prospect of going out for the evening with Hannah, but instead he looked sick.

“Take a deep breath.”

He tried to oblige.

Charlotte had found him standing alone beside the largest of the ranch’s horse corrals. Within the fenced enclosure, there
was not a single horse to be seen; it had been emptied because the ranch was scheduled to receive twenty new horses later
that afternoon, wrangled by Dave Powell and a couple of the other men, from Willingston, a town a few miles to the north.
The ranch hands had
been busy preparing for them for days. Owen had been among a group of men when she had arrived, and though he hadn’t acknowledged
her, she felt his eyes upon her, unwavering.

Hale had been happy to see her… until she started talking. Wide-eyed, he had listened as she recounted most of her conversation
with Hannah; she thought it wise to leave out the parts where Hannah had known about his infatuation from the beginning, as
well as the fact that she enjoyed mercilessly teasing him; if Hannah wanted to tell him all of that, it would be up to her
to do so. The effect of her words was almost instantaneous.

“I… I can’t believe you did that!” Hale exclaimed. “I just can’t believe it!”

“But she said that she would go with you,” Charlotte argued. “How can that possibly make you so upset?”

“Don’t you understand? Now I gotta come up with somethin’ for us to talk about, figure out what sorts of compliments I can
give her, and even find me some clean clothes,” he explained. “I can’t rightfully take out a girl like Hannah with work stains
up and down my shirt and britches!”

“It’s not that bad!”

“That don’t even take into ’count that I smell like a horse stall!”

Charlotte could barely suppress a smile. Hannah was certainly right about one thing: Hale’s heart was definitely in the right
place.

“You’ll have plenty of time to get cleaned up,” she
explained. “All the way until seven o’clock. That’s when Owen and I will meet the two of you at the ranch house and from there
we can drive to town.”

“You and Owen?”

This was the one part of the story that Charlotte had neglected to tell him, choosing instead to focus on the fact that Hannah
had agreed to accompany him to the roller-skating rink.

“We’re all going to go together,” she explained cheerfully.

Hale frowned. “I don’t know about that, Charlotte.”

“Are you telling me that you would give up a date with Hannah, the girl you have been pining away for from the first day she
arrived here, all because you’re unsettled by the idea of being around Owen, who, I might add, is the girl-of-your-dreams’
brother?”

“It ain’t that simple…”

“Do tell!”

“I ain’t tryin’ to upset you, but I got me a responsibility to John Grant and the ranch to make sure all’s well. Just like
I already told you, far as I’m concerned, Owen’s the one most likely to have ruined that well, regardless of the fact that
he’s Hannah’s brother.”

Ever since she had seen Hale at the breakfast table, Charlotte had been hoping that he had found a reason to absolve Owen,
some evidence that was contrary to his earlier accusation of guilt. She was disappointed that Hale was as suspicious as ever.

“I told you before that I thought you were looking at the wrong man,” she reminded him, straightening her back in a clear
indication that she meant to stand her ground. “I just think that if you spent some time with Owen, if you really let yourself
get to know him a bit, you’d soon realize that he couldn’t possibly be responsible for what you’re accusing him of.”

“I know you think kindly on him,” Hale said, looking down on her with eyes that were filled with confusion, “maybe even a
bit more strongly than that, least from where I’m standin’, but I think you should be careful. I’ve come to care for you an
awful lot since you’ve been here, like a brother would a sister,” he hastily added out of fear she might take it the wrong
way, “so I’m gonna do my best to look out for you.”

“Then come to the roller-skating rink. What better way to ensure that Owen doesn’t make any untoward advances?”

Hale sighed heavily, realizing that he was never going to be allowed to win the argument. “All right, you win.” He threw up
his hands. “But don’t think that I ain’t gonna be watchin’ you like a hawk.”

“If you can manage to take your eyes off Hannah long enough!”

Charlotte found Hale’s overprotectiveness flattering and rose up on her tiptoes to give him a kiss on the cheek; she wondered
if Owen was still watching them and if what she was doing made him nervous.

Before Hale could so much as mumble a form of reply, a shout rose up from somewhere close by; all heads turned to see Dave
Powell leading the ranch’s latest batch of horses to their new home. It was quite the sight to behold; dozens upon dozens
of hooves pounded the earth as the horses, their ears pricked high and whinnies rumbling in their throats, came toward her
and Hale. Dave and the other men kept circling the horses tightly, not allowing them much room to maneuver. Charlotte’s breath
caught in her throat. To see so many beautiful creatures together was a sight she was thankful to behold.

“Hold ’um, men!” Hale bellowed, springing into action.

The ranch yard was alive with activity. Men worked furiously at a multitude of tasks, whistling and shouting, pulling open
gates, whirling coils of rope over their heads, and waving their hats this way and that. Owen stood opposite her, he and another
man ready to funnel a number of the horses into the largest corral. John Grant supervised them nearby with Del, the two of
them enjoying the spectacle.

And on the horses came…

Large and majestic, taut muscles straining at their forequarters, the horses surged forward. Charlotte marveled at their many
colors: dirty white and tan, coal black, mottled grey, earthy brown, and every shade in between. Though she had been at the
ranch for several weeks, she hadn’t managed to lose her sense of wonder when she saw them and she had never seen this many
at one time.

Stepping up on the bottom rung of the nearest corral fence, Charlotte strained to survey all the activity. The lead horses,
just behind Dave Powell’s saddled mare, entered into the narrow space between the first two corrals. Now the task was to move
them into the corrals.

From where Charlotte stood, she could see nearly to the end of the train of horses. She found herself smiling uncontrollably,
but just as she was thinking how wonderful it would be for Christina to see something like this, she caught sight of something
troubling at the rear of the procession.