She was crying with the pain and the beauty of it when she
heard the first high, chirpy notes of a baby--her baby. Lovin
Child was picketed to a young cedar near the mouth of the Blind
ledge tunnel, and he was throwing rocks at a chipmunk that kept
coming toward him in little rushes, hoping with each rush to get
a crumb of the bread and butter that Lovin Child had flung down.
Lovin Child was squealing and jabbering, with now and then a real
word that he had learned from Bud and Cash. Not particularly nice
words--"Doggone" was one and several times he called the
chipmunk a "sunny-gun." And of course he frequently announced
that he would "Tell a worl'" something. His head was bare and
shone in the sun like the gold for which Cash and his Daddy Bud
were digging, away back in the dark hole. He had on a pair of
faded overalls trimmed with red, mates of the ones on the rope
line, and he threw rocks impartially with first his right hand
and then his left, and sometimes with both at once; which did not
greatly distress the chipmunk, who knew Lovin Child of old and
had learned how wide the rocks always went of their mark.
Upon this scene Marie came, still crying. She had always been
an impulsive young woman, and now she forgot that Lovin Child had
not seen her for six months or so, and that baby memories are
short.
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