Madeline: Bride of Nebraska (American Mail-Order Bride 37) Read Free Page A

and go back to sleep.
    After a moment of lying there with his arm over his eyes, he remembered that today was his wedding day. Suddenly wide awake, Caleb nearly sprang from the bed in his excitement, even though he knew it would be at least six hours before the train with his fiancé on board arrived in Bayard, if it even arrived on time. They were notoriously late quite often.
    He started to make his bed, which usually consisted of merely pulling the covers up over the pillows, but suddenly stopped midway through. He tried to remember when he had last changed the sheets on the bed, and found that he had no idea. Certain his bride would prefer clean sheets, he stripped the bed before he got dressed and left the sheets and blankets in a pile on the floor. He fully expected to get to them after he had done his morning chores and had some breakfast.
    Caleb barely had pulled his pants on when a shout of alarm from one of the ranch hands came from behind the barn. He grabbed a shirt and pulled it on as he ran down the stairs and out the back door. If his men were up this early and shouting loud enough to be heard from inside the house, something had to be seriously wrong.
    He was not certain what he had been expecting, but what he saw when he rounded the corner of the barn was definitely not something he would have ever expected to see. George, his three year old nephew, was standing in front of Hank, his senior ranch hand, with his hands over his ears.
    Caleb’s first thought was to wonder why his nephew was there at the ranch without his parents. Then he noticed the look of sheer horror that was stamped on George’s sweet little face and his blood ran cold. George was smeared with blood, from the top of his little blond head to the bottom of his dirty bare feet. The boy was wearing his night shirt, as though he had been wakened from sleep.
    Caleb raced to his nephew and knelt before him with his heart in his throat. He searched George over in an attempt to see if the boy had injured himself on the walk to the ranch. Had he fallen and gotten a cut? Had he been attacked by a wild animal? Where was all this blood coming from?
    Other than the blood, George appeared unharmed. That meant that the blood belonged to someone or something else. “Georgie,” Caleb said softly to the boy as he tried to get his attention. George merely stared off into space, lost in shock, his hands still clamped tight over his ears.
    Caleb put his hands on George’s cheeks and tried to get the boy to look him in the eyes. “Georgie, it’s me. Uncle Caleb. What’s wrong? Where’s your ma and pa?”
    At that, George’s lower lip trembled and his eyes focused on his uncle for the first time. He took a deep, tremulous breath and began to scream uncontrollably.
    Not knowing what else to do, Caleb gathered his nephew into his arms and held him tight. He looked to Hank, who nodded and went into the barn to saddle up some horses. Both men knew that something terrible must have happened, and they needed to get to Caleb’s brother’s house as fast as they could.
    By that time, the other men began streaming out of the bunkhouse. Between the earlier shouting and now the boy’s screaming, they knew that something serious was happening.
    Walter, one of the younger ranch hands who had younger siblings of his own back home, took in the sight of little George and rushed over to take him from Caleb without a word. All the ranch hands knew Caleb’s brother Ben and his family well enough, and it was clear that Caleb needed to get to Ben’s house immediately. It was also clear that George would not be offering up any helpful information any time soon.
    Caleb nodded his thanks to Walter and hurried into the barn with the others. He knew that George would be safe with Walter while he went to investigate what had happened. Horses were quickly saddled and guns were retrieved from their various resting places.
    As soon as he had mounted his horse, Caleb began issuing