Broken Road

Broken Road

By: Char Marie Adles

© 2011

Chapter One

Winthrop Canter was awakened by what sounded like the cry of some small animal outside. He rubbed his sleep dusted eyes and rolled back over with a groan.

   Twenty minutes later the crying had grown and so had his irritation.

   Muttering a curse under his breath he rose from his bed and made his way down the creaky ancient stairs. Walking through the giant empty ranch house gave him a chill down his spine. It was a warning later he would have wished he had listened to.

   Scowling he pulled the screen door open and looked out into the night and the porch. He didn’t see a thing nor hear another cry. Not even from where it had come.

   Not seeing anything he settled into a glower and being awoken for nothing in the middle of the night.

   Just as he turned to go back in and up to his bed, he heard a single wail that stopped him dead in his tracks. He swung around as fast as his feet would carry him and looked down.

   That hadn’t been the wail of any small animal he had ever heard or seen before. It was the wail of a baby.

   And there in a box of blankets laid a baby.

   Winthrop froze.

   There was a baby on the ranch. On his ranch. In front of him.

   He eyed the baby warily as if it were a snake ready to spring and bite him.

   There was only men on his ranch for no woman had stepped foot on the ranch since his mother had left when he was thirteen. So since that ruled out the kid from being anyone’s on the ranch the kid didn’t belong to any of his men.

   “Oh hell,” he cursed under his breath.

   The child had been abandon. On his front porch no less.

   He took a few steps towards the box and peered at the baby within who was crying for the entire world to hear fighting with the blanket he was covered with.

   The moment the kid’s eyes met his, the child stopped crying. Instead the baby smiled, cooed at him and lifted a waving fist at him.

   There was a stirring in his chest at the sight of the poor kid in the box and he bent down. Winthrop took the kid up in his arms and marveled at it.

   By the looks of it the child had Native American blood in him for the child had rusty tan skin like Winthrop himself. Jet black hair as well and startling ice blue eyes.

   Eyes the same shade of blue his brother’s had been. The every brother who had been killed less then a month before.

   “Oh hell,” he cursed for the second time that night.

   In the distance lighting lit the sky followed by the roar of thunder.