Dorothy Garlock - [Tucker Family] by Keep a Little Secret Page A

the task with everything she could muster. She would be a teacher. But before she could say as much, John Grant
     burst into the cabin and shouted, “Charlotte! We gotta go right now!”
    “What… what’s wrong?”
    “The prairie’s on fire!”

Chapter Nine
    J OHN G RANT DROVE the truck recklessly down the dirt road, his eyes surveying the sky through the dusty windshield. Unlike the trip to the
     Becks’ ramshackle cabin, a gentle drive that gave him and Charlotte plenty of time to look at the beautiful yet rugged landscape,
     they now hurtled sharply around corners, wheels sliding in the scrabbly, loose dirt, and bouncing over the many rocks and
     ruts that littered their path. Charlotte clung tightly to the truck’s door frame, her feet pushed hard against the floorboards
     as she desperately tried to keep from bouncing off the seat. She wasn’t brave enough to guess how fast they were going.
    From somewhere close by, somewhere over the gentle rises of the hills before them, dark tendrils of smoke rose steadily upward
     to the cloudless sky, faintly billowing and spreading in the soft breeze. Charlotte couldn’t beabsolutely certain, but she thought that the plume came from near the ranch; still, to her eyes it didn’t look particularly
     threatening, certainly not enough to have caused John to react in such a panicked way. Regardless, they continued to race
     onward.
    “Is the fire near the ranch?” she asked worriedly as the truck roared around a tight corner.
    “On or near,” John answered grimly, his jaw clenched and his forehead deeply furrowed with concern.
    “Could it be someone burning a brush pile?”
    “It ain’t. Too spread out.”
    “But I’ve seen plenty of little fires around the ranch,” Charlotte kept on, gritting her teeth as they shot so quickly over
     a rise in the road that she would have sworn the truck’s wheels had left the road. “It’s probably nothing more than Hale getting
     ready to shoe a couple of horses or…” She paused momentarily, another sudden, treacherous turn silencing her tongue before
     continuing. “Or one of the cook fires is smokier than usual. I’d hate for us to get in an accident over something as simple
     as that.”
    John turned quickly to her, his eyes only leaving the road for a second, but Charlotte could clearly see how serious he was.
     “I’ve spent too many years ranchin’ not to know when things ain’t right. Lyin’ to myself ain’t gonna make it go away no matter
     how much I wish it were so.”
    Charlotte opened her mouth to speak but instead fell silent; she wished that there were words she could offer that would lessen
     his worry and stop their recklessness,but she knew there was nothing that would take John Grant’s foot off the gas pedal. She remembered that they had been discussing
     wildfires on the way to the Becks’ cabin; it seemed impossible that one could have just sprung to life. Scanning the growing
     smoke to which they drew ever closer, she could only hope that the rancher’s worry really
was
for nothing.
    No matter how preoccupied she was with her own safety, Charlotte’s thoughts kept returning to her meeting with Sarah Beck.
     The thought of the young girl’s burden weighed heavily as unbidden questions pressed for answers she did not have.
    Why are the Becks staying on John Grant’s property?
    Who is the father of Sarah’s unborn child?
    Am I going to be able to teach Sarah enough before the baby comes?
    Charlotte knew that the answers to these questions, as well as many others, would come only when she had the chance to have
     a long and very honest conversation with John, but now was not that time.
    Crossing the narrow bridge that spanned the gurgling creek as it skirted to the south of the ranch, they raced around a gentle
     turn, drove down into a depression, and then shot up out of it as the ranch finally came into view. Charlotte couldn’t suppress
     her gasp.
    “Oh, my Lord!”
    “Damn it all to