“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!” The two men looked at each other, horror-stricken at the magnitude of the suggestion. “She might as well ask us to get an elephant,” muttered Fletcher morosely. “There’s not a goat nearer than San Francisco.” “And it would take us two weeks anyway to get one up from there and across the mountains from Sacramento,” said Moreau. “By the time you got it here it’d be the most expensive goat you ever bucked up against,” said his partner disdainfully. “A cow!” exclaimed Moreau. “Say, Lucy, would a cow do?” “A cow!” came the muffled answer; “oh, it don’t need a whole cow.” “But a cow would do? If I could get a cow the baby could be fed on the milk, couldn’t it?” “Oh, yes; it ’ud do first-rate.” “Very well, I’ll get a cow. Don’t you bother any more; I’ll have a cow here by to-morrow noon. The baby’ll have to hold out till then, for, not having a decent horse, I can’t get it here any sooner.” “And where do you calk’late to get a cow?” demanded Fletcher; “cows ain’t much more common than goats round these parts.” “On the Porter ranch. It’s twelve miles off. I can go in to-night, rest there a bit, and by noon be here with the cow.” “And is that baby goin’ to yell like this from now till to-morrow noon? You might’s well have a mountain lion tied up in the bunk.” The difficulty was indeed only half solved. The infant’s lusty cries were unabated. The miserable mother, with tear-drenched face and quivering chin, sat up in the bunk and tried to rise and go to it, but was restrained by Moreau’s hand on her shoulder. “You stay here and I’ll get it,” he said, then crossed to the other bunk, and gingerly lifted with his huge, hairy hands the shrieking bundle, from which protruded two tiny, red fists, jerking and clawing about, and carried it to its mother. Her practised hand hushed it for a moment, but its pangs were beyond temporary alleviation, and its cries soon broke forth. “If I could git up and mix it some flour and water,” she said, feebly attempting to rise. “What’s the matter with us doing that?” queried Moreau. “How do you do it? Just give us the proportions and we’ll dish it up as if we were born to it.” Under her direction he put flour in one of the dippers, and handed Fletcher a tin cup with the order to fill it with water at the spring. Both men were deeply interested, and Fletcher rushed back from the spring with a dripping cup, as if fearful that the infant would die unless the work of feeding was promptly begun. “Now go on,” said Moreau, armed with the dipper and a tin teaspoon; “what’s next?” “Sugar,” she said; “if you put a touch of sugar in it tastes better to them.”