He was silent before this ill for which he had no remedy, and she wailed again in the agony of her spirit:
“I can’t, I can’t. If I could only die! But now there’s the baby, and I can’t even die.”
He got up feeling sick at heart at sight of this hopeless despair. What could he suggest to the unfortunate creature? He felt that anything he could say would be an insult in the face of such a position.
“Oh God, why can’t we die?” she groaned—“why can’t we die?”
As she said the words the sound of approaching voices came through the open door. Her husband’s struck through her agony and froze it. She stiffened and lifted her face full of an animal look of listening. Moreau noticed her blunt and knotted hands, pitiful in their record of toil, as she held them up in the transfixed attitude of strained attention.
“What now?” she said to herself.
The pioneer, Fletcher and Bessie came slowly round the corner of the cabin. Bessie looked sleepily anxious, Fletcher lazily amused. As Moreau stepped out of the doorway toward them he realized that they had come to some decision.
“Well,” said the man, “we got to travel.”
“You’re going on?” said Moreau. “How about the wagon?”
“We’re goin’ to leave the wagon, and I’ll come back for it from Hangtown. It’s the only thing to do.”