Mrs. Marie
Moore, General Delivery, Sacramento, was all that Alpine learned
of her.
It is not surprising then, that the subject was talked out long
before Bud or Cash came down into the town more than two months
later. It is not surprising, either, that no one thought to look
up-stream for the baby, or that they failed to consider any
possible fate for him save drowning. That nibbled piece of
cracker on the very edge of the river threw them all off in their
reasoning. They took it for granted that the baby had fallen into
the river at the place where they found the cracker. If he had
done so, he would have been swept away instantly. No one could
look at the river and doubt that--therefore no one did doubt
it. That a squaw should find him sitting down where he had
fallen, two hundred yards above the town and in the edge of the
thick timber, never entered their minds at all. That she should
pick him up with the intention at first of stopping his crying,
and should yield to the temptingness of him just as Bud bad
yielded, would have seemed to Alpine still more unlikely; because
no Indian had ever kidnapped a white child in that neighborhood.
So much for the habit of thinking along grooves established by
precedent
Marie went to Sacramento merely because that was the closest
town of any size, where she could wait for the news she dreaded
to receive yet must receive before she could even begin to face
her tragedy.
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