Cabin Fever

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.