"But you should not stay alone," warned her aunt. "I should not be satisfied to have you."
"I'll have the burro with me," answered Mary Lee half smiling.
"Great company, indeed," scoffed Nan. "You might see a rattlesnake or a tarantula."
"I might just the same if I were not by myself. I'd rather see them than ride another mile up the mountain on that stubborn little beast. I don't know what minute his heels might fly up and I be pitched clean over his head, or suppose he should take a notion to sit down on that fearsome trail, I'd die of fright. I'd as soon be bitten by a rattlesnake as to be tossed to eternity down the side of a cañon. No, sirree, I don't go up that mountain with Mars Burro. It will be as much as I can do to make the journey home from here. You all travel as far as you want to go and I'll wait for you. I'd much rather than not."
Miss Helen turned to the guide. "Do you think it is safe?"
"I don't see why not," he answered. "There ain't no creeturs likely to come around in daylight, nothin' that ought to skeer her, and we won't be gone more'n an hour or so."
"I'll change burros with you," said Carter, but to this Mary Lee would not listen. She was determined to go no further and further she would not go, so at last, after much parleying and the offer of one after another to stay with her, all departed and she was left sitting on a fallen log to feast her eyes upon the wonders of the forest. Here were great white-trunked sycamores draped with mistletoe, glossy-leaved live oaks, great alders and willows by the brawling stream and a flowery wilderness of blossoms in the open, alfiliria, bluish pink; golden poppies, lavender lilies, violets, tulips, a paradise for the wandering bees.
It was when the voices of her friends came only faintly from afar and she was watching the brown bees booming among the blossoms that Mary Lee first detected the monotonous strokes of an axe cleaving some huge tree. She was not the only human being in the wilderness then. At first she decided not to venture from her place, but after half an hour had passed she became a little lonely and the idea of human companionship seemed rather pleasant to contemplate. The bees, in their busy gathering of honey, droned so sleepily that they offered no excitement, although at first it had been interesting to watch them. Mary Lee loved all animals and would have tried to make friends with any who might have appeared, but beyond the friskings of an agile squirrel once in a while she had not seen any.
After some hesitation, as the steady chopping kept on, she arose from her seat and cautiously made her way toward the spot from whence the noise came. After a time she saw a man who was bringing his axe down with mighty strokes and who was too intent upon his work to notice the little figure so near till a voice by his side said: "That's a mighty big tree you're cutting down."
"Great fathers!" cried the man dropping his axe and looking at the little girl. "Where under the sun did you come from?"