"Well, the least bit; but more like Peter Pan."
"I was getting tired of being just Dorothy. That was all very well when I wasn't able to ride and camp and do all sorts of adventures.
"And that isn't all," she continued. "I weigh twelve pounds more than I did last summer. Mr. Shoop weighed me on the store scales. I wanted to weigh him. He made an awful pun, but he wouldn't budge."
Bronson nodded. "I wouldn't ride farther than the Big Spring, Peter. It's getting hot now."
"All right, daddy. I wish that horrid old story was finished. You never ride with me."
"You'll have some one to ride with you when Alice comes."
Bronson laughed, and she scolded him with her eyes. Just then Lorry appeared.
Bronson stooped and kissed her. "And don't ride too far," he cautioned.
Lorry drove the pack-animals toward Bronson's cabin. He dismounted to tighten the cinch on Chinook's saddle.
The little cavalcade moved out across the mesa. Dorothy rode behind the pack-animals, who knew their work too well to need a lead-rope. It was _her_ adventure. At the Big Spring, she would graciously allow Lorry to take charge of the expedition.
Lorry, riding behind her, turned as they entered the forest, and waved farewell to Bronson.
To ride the high trails of the Arizona hills is in itself an unadulterated joy. To ride these wooded uplands, eight thousand feet above the world, with a sprightly Peter Pan clad in silver-gray corduroys and chatting happily, is an enchantment. In such companionship, when the morning sunlight dapples the dun forest carpet with pools of gold, when vista after vista unfolds beneath the high arches of the rusty-brown giants of the woodlands; when somewhere above there is the open sky and the marching sun, the twilight underworld of the green-roofed caverns is a magic land.
The ponies plodded slowly upward, to turn and plod up the next angle of the trail, without loitering and without haste. When Dorothy checked her pony to gaze at some new vista, the pack-animals rested, waiting for the word to go on again. Lorry, awakened to a new charm in Dorothy, rode in a silence that needed no interpreter.
At a bend in the trail, Dorothy reined up. "Oh, I just noticed! You are wearing your chaps this morning."