"Oh, I never thought of him," replied Mrs. Starr with a feeling of relief.
"If Mike isn't about the clearing you can rest assured that he has Babs with him, and she is as safe as she would be in bed," said Mr. Starr, going out of the office to inquire about Mike at the cook's quarters.
As Mike had not been seen about for an hour, there was no doubt that Babs and he were out together.
Now Mike had loped silently over the frozen ground toward the direction of the timber cutting, without ever looking behind him. Had he glanced back he might have seen a tiny little girl making great efforts to follow after him. Mike was too entirely a creature of nature to walk in a beaten path when a short-cut through the woods saved so many steps. Therefore, Babs found her path beset by many obstacles as she tried to follow exactly in the way Mike had chosen.
Her short little legs could not keep up with his agile old ones, and soon Babs was left behind. Try as she would she could not run fast enough to find Mike again. She could barely remember in which direction she last saw him going, and finally, she sat down upon a flat rock and cried. She was tired, she was hungry, she wanted to go home, and she wanted Mike. But not one of these wants were satisfied, and she cried lustily for someone to come and find her.
Since living in the forest, Mother had often warned the children never to go out of sight of the clearing, for there might be bears about the woods. To add to her fear of being lost, came a queer sound among the underbrush.
"Oh, it's a bear!" wailed Babs, trying to locate the wild beast and seeking shelter behind a huge tree.
She hugged the immense trunk of the pine while she poked her yellow head out to see if the bear was in sight, but he had not yet come into view.
She stood behind the tree until wearied of inaction, and as the noise could no longer be heard, crept out of hiding, and Babs started off in a direction she hoped would bring her to Mike. She stumbled and fell over roots, got up and went on again; dodged between the thick growth of pine trees, and finally came to the road that was broken out by the men when they first came to camp—the road that led to the trail running into town.
Babs was thankful to find a road but not sure which direction to take, and when a little girl is very tired and hungry and forlorn the work of thinking hard is apt to put her to sleep, especially if she sits down upon a large pile of pine needles and leans against a stump to think. And so it was with Babs. She leaned her tousled curls against the stump and closed her eyes.