sort of
apology to Cash, under the guise of speaking to Lovin Child, for still
keeping the baby in camp.

"I've got a blame good notion to pack you to town to-day, Boy, and
try and find out where you belong," he said, while he was feeding him
oatmeal mush with sugar and canned milk. "It's pretty cold, though..."
He cast a slant-eyed glance at Cash, dourly frying his own hotcakes.
"We'll see what it looks like after a while. I sure have got to hunt up
your folks soon as I can. Ain't I, old-timer?"

That salved his conscience a little, and freed him of the uneasy
conviction that Cash believed him a kidnapper. The weather did the rest.
An hour after breakfast, just when Bud was downheartedly thinking he
could not much longer put off starting without betraying how hard it was
going to be for him to give up the baby, the wind shifted the clouds
and herded them down to the Big Mountain and held them there until they
began to sift snow down upon the burdened pines.

"Gee, it's going to storm again!" Bud blustered in. "It'll be snowing
like all git-out in another hour. I'll tell a cruel world I wouldn't
take a dog out such weather as this. Your folks may be worrying about
yuh, Boy, but they ain't going to climb my carcass for packing yuh
fifteen miles in a snow-storm and letting yuh freeze, maybe. I guess the
cabin's big enough to hold yuh another day--what?"

Cash lifted his eyebrows and pinched in his lips under his beard. It did
not seem to occur to Bud that one of them could stay in the cabin
with the baby while the other carried to Alpine the news of the baby's
whereabouts and its safety. Or if it did occur to Bud, he was careful
not to consider it a feasible plan. Cash wondered if Bud thought he was
pulling the wool over anybody's eyes. Bud did not want to give up that
kid, and he was tickled to death because the storm gave him an excuse
for keeping it. Cash was cynically amused at Bud's transparency. But
the kid was none of his business, and he did not intend to make any
suggestions that probably would not be taken anyway. Let Bud pretend he
was anxious to give up the baby, if that made him feel any better about
it.

That day went merrily to the music of Lovin Child's chuckling laugh and
his unintelligible chatter. Bud made the discovery that "Boy" was trying
to say Lovin Child when he wanted to be taken and rocked, and declared
that he would tell the world the name fit, like a saddle on a duck's
back. Lovin Child