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.
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