“Why should it die? What’s the matter with it? It was all right this morning, wasn’t it?” he answered, feeling that there were mysteries here he did not grasp.
“It’ll die because it don’t get nothing to eat,” she cried desperately. “I’ve nothing for it. I’m too sick! I’m too sick! And it’ll starve. Oh, my poor baby!”
She burst into the wild, weak tears of exhaustion, her sobs mingling with the now strident yells of the hungry baby.
The two men looked at each other, sheepishly, beginning to understand the situation. The enfeebled condition of the mother made it impossible for her to nourish the child. It was a predicament for which even the resourceful mind of Fletcher had no remedy. He pushed back his cap, and, scratching slowly at the front of his head, looked at his mate with solemn perplexity, while the cabin echoed to sounds of misery unlike any that had ever before resounded within its peaceful walls.
“Can—can—we get anything?” said Moreau at length—“any—any—sort of food, meat, eggs—er—er any sort of stuff for it to eat?”
“Eat?” exclaimed Fletcher scornfully; “how can it eat? It hasn’t a tooth.”
“How would it do if Fletcher went into Hangtown and brought the doctor?” suggested Moreau, soothingly. “It’ll take twenty-four hours, but he’s a good doctor.”
The woman shook her head.
“A goat,” she sobbed, the menace to her offspring having given her a fictitious courage. “If you could get a goat.”
“A goat!”