Lovin Child was in his most romping, rambunctious mood, and Marie's head
ached so badly that she was not quite so watchful of his movements as
usual. She gave him a cracker and left him alone to investigate the tiny
room while she laid down for just a minute on the bed, grateful because
the sun shone in warmly through the window and she did not feel the
absence of a fire. She had no intention whatever of going to sleep--she
did not believe that she could sleep if she had wanted to. Fall asleep
she did, however, and she must have slept for at least half an hour,
perhaps longer.
When she sat up with that startled sensation that follows unexpected,
undesired slumber, the door was open, and Lovin Child was gone. She had
not believed that he could open the door, but she discovered that its
latch had a very precarious hold upon the worn facing, and that a slight
twist of the knob was all it needed to swing the door open. She rushed
out, of course, to look for him, though, unaware of how long she had
slept, she was not greatly disturbed. Marie had run after Lovin Child
too often to be alarmed at a little thing like that.
I don't know when fear first took hold of her, or when fear was swept
away by the keen agony of loss. She went the whole length of the one
little street, and looked in all the open doorways, and traversed the
one short alley that led behind the hotel. 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.