l. Facing the street was the
railroad, with the station farther up at the edge of the timber. Across
the railroad was the little, rushing river, swollen now with rains that
had been snow on the higher slopes of the mountain behind the town.

Marie did not go near the river at first. Some instinct of dread made
her shun even the possibility that Lovin Child had headed that way. But
a man told her, when she broke down her diffidence and inquired, that he
had seen a little tot in a red suit and cap going off that way. He had
not thought anything of it. He was a stranger himself, he said, and he
supposed the kid belonged there, maybe.

Marie flew to the river, the man running beside her, and three or four
others coming out of buildings to see what was the matter. She did not
find Lovin Child, but she did find half of the cracker she had given
him. It was lying so close to a deep, swirly place under the bank that
Marie gave a scream when she saw it, and the man caught her by the arm
for fear she meant to jump in.

Thereafter, the whole of Alpine turned out and searched the river bank
as far down as they could get into the box canyon through which it
roared to the sage-covered hills beyond. No one doubted that Lovin Child
had been swept away in that tearing, rock-churned current. No one had
any hope of finding his body, though they searched just as diligently as
if they were certain.

Marie walked the bank all that day, calling and crying and fighting off
despair. She walked the floor of her little room all night, the
door locked against sympathy that seemed to her nothing but a prying
curiosity over her torment, fighting back the hysterical cries that kept
struggling for outlet.

The next day she was too exhausted to do anything more than climb up the
steps of the train when it stopped there. Towns and ranches on the
river below had been warned by wire and telephone and a dozen officious
citizens of Alpine assured her over and over that she would be notified
at once if anything was discovered; meaning, of course, the body of her
child. She did not talk. Beyond telling the station agent her name, and
that she was going to stay in Sacramento until she heard something, she
shrank behind her silence and would reveal nothing of her errand there
in Alpine, nothing whatever concerning herself. Mrs. Marie Moore,
General Delivery, Sacramento, was all that Alpine learned of her.

It is not surprising then, that the subject was t