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.
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