Bushy a romance founded on fact
“Since we need meat, suppose you and Bushy try to-day for the goat,”
said Mr. Sukolt, just before shouldering his tools for a trip to the
mine. “Take Rover along with you and bring in anything you can find.”
So it was arranged. Tom and Bushy were soon climbing the peaks and
looking down hundreds of feet into the chasms. They went through
caverns and crossed ravines; they made bridges of tree-trunks and
climbed over rocks that were so steep that they could not keep from
falling except by taking off their shoes and clinging to the surface in
their stocking feet. Finally they reached a place high in the cliffs
where Tom said a herd of goats lived. Just below was a deep gorge,
through which a torrent of water madly plunged, at last spreading out
into a calm and glistening stream in the valley below.
“There they are,” cried Bushy, suddenly, but Tom was looking down the
deep ravine and did not hear. Bushy’s eyes danced, for she thought she
could climb behind one of the bowlders and while Tom was searching
below, perhaps head off the herd and get a good shot. When the sheep
bounded down the mountain-side, she fairly hugged herself with delight
that Tom was going directly away from the herd. “They are not more than
fifty feet from me,” cried Bushy to herself. Softly, softly she crawled
forward. Oh, how steep it was! She must scale one of those smooth red
rocks. By going around it she would surely miss getting a shot, but if
she could only climb to the top of it and surprise them, her bet would
be won.
Up, up she went, with her eyes watching both sides, and her rifle in
hand ready to fire on short notice. When almost at the top, she grew
careless and slipped. Ah, that was dangerous! “Oh, Tom, I am falling,”
she cried, but Tom was out of hearing, and down she rolled over and
over, bumpity bump to the very bottom, where a scraggly tree which had
worked its way through a crack in the rock caught her, and with its dry
branches held her fast.
“Well, I’m much obliged to you, Mr. Tree,” said Bushy, as she scrambled
to her feet and looked down the precipice where she would surely have
fallen several hundred feet had not her buckskin blouse been clutched
by the queer-looking pine-branch.
She was a little scratched but not badly hurt. She took off her
stockings, as she should have done in the first place, and began the
ascent again. She found the rifle half way up, where she had dropped
it when trying to get a hold on the rock to check her fall. Bushy
succeeded in reaching a small pine-tree near the top, and there,
stretched at full length, she clung to its trunk, drew herself to the
very edge and looked over.
The herd was within rifle range, and Bushy grew so excited that she
almost had a second tumble. She fired before she was really in a steady
position. The rifle bar struck against the edge of the rock and the
bullet was sent way to the left of where she had intended it should go.
She frightened the sheep, lost her hold, and went sliding way to the
bottom of the steep rock again. It was very easy to slide down safely
when the sliding was not unexpected, for she spread her arms out and
slipped slowly to a point where she could get a good foothold, then
with rifle in her right hand she crawled along the very edge of the
precipice, hoping to intercept some of the sheep as they would bound
by. These sheep are very queer animals. They have such great horns
and the head is so well protected with thick wool, too, that they can
jump from place to place and fall on their horns, folding their front
feet up close to their body, quite hiding and protecting them in the
thick woolly coat they wear. Bushy knew they could easily descend, even
though she could not.
She passed the steep place and reached a spot where the mountain
sloped more gently. “Ah, there is where they will go by,” she said,
and planting her feet against the root of a tree that looked as if it
had spent the greater part of its life trying to keep from sliding
down hill, she reloaded, raised her rifle to her shoulder and waited.
A minute later a shout from Tom and wild barking from Rover as they
appeared on the grade one hundred feet below, sent the sheep dashing
about in a violent flurry, and, as Bushy had anticipated, they crossed
her path not fifty feet away. They were wild with fright, and seemed to
fairly fly down the precipice, falling with a thump and a bump from one
steep place to another. She waited until one beautiful specimen leaped
from the rock above her as if to land on a kind of shelf below.
“Those are the horns for me,” she said, and fired when the sheep was
in mid-air. The bullet went straight, and the poor fellow fell not far
from where Tom and Rover stood watching below. The fall sent his body
bouncing down, until Tom and Bushy felt their hearts sink with fear
that it would land in some of the gloomy dark gorges where they could
never get it.
“You have won,” cried Tom, and he took off his cap and waved it and
hallooed with joy. He seemed to rejoice that he had lost, though he
really and truly meant to win if he could.
“Not yet,” answered Bushy from her high position on the great red-rock
slide. “The Padre said we must have a steak, and Shanks asked for the
horns.”
“Come down,” yelled Tom; “we will try and find him.”
By sliding and jumping and rolling, Bushy finally reached Tom and
Rover, and then, after she had put on her stockings and moccasins,
slowly and carefully they descended.
When they were about to give up the hunt they came plump upon the
sheep’s soft body all in a heap where the horns had checked it by
catching on to some low brush.
Tom laughed and so did Bushy. They were as happy as two little children
over her success. By the aid of the lariat the sheep was lowered down
the steepest places, and at other times they bound it on to two sticks
and dragged it over the rough rocks without tearing the skin the least
bit. It took them four hours to reach the foot of the mountains and get
into the path that led directly without obstruction into the camp.
“Now, Tom, carry him,” said Bushy, “and I will take the firearms and
ropes.” So Tom, with Bushy’s help, got the body thrown across his
shoulders, and grasping the fore feet in one hand and the hind feet in
the other he bravely got over the quarter of a mile. He threw the
sheep down before Mr. Sukolt and Shanks with the exclamation, “You are
in for it, boys. Bushy has won the day. She goes to school, Shanks, at
your expense for a year.”
Mr. Sukolt cried, “Bravo for the Queen of the Mountains! Tom, you must
be a ninny to have let her beat you.”
“I am,” he said, “my back is almost broken and my head feels balder
than ever. No wig, no glory, and out of pocket a lot of gold-dust for
jewelry.” His pretended disappointment set them all laughing, and the
rest of the evening was spent in preparing the skin for mounting,
eating delicious steak at supper, and listening to Bushy’s account
of how she allowed Tom to go directly away from the sheep while she
advanced toward them. Tom didn’t mind a joke at his own expense and
laughed as heartily as the rest over his discomfiture.
CHAPTER XVII
“The supply-wagons are ten days late,” said Mr. Sukolt, anxiously; “and
I am beginning to grow uneasy, for we are getting out of everything to
eat, as well as powder and fuse for the mine.”
Mr. Sukolt, Shanks, and Tom were talking the matter over one night
after they had returned from the mine, and had half concluded that if
the wagons did not make their appearance by the next evening somebody
ought to go down to the fort for news of them.
“It might be,” said Shanks, “that the Indians have overtaken the
freight teams, killed the teamsters and carried off the mules and
supplies.”
“Wal, there ain’t no use waitin’; a feller can’t work without he’s
got grub that’ll stick to his ribs,” spoke up Tom. Shanks suggested,
however, that they hang on until the last of the week and then take a
load of ore with them to the valley. It was then Monday evening.
“I guess you are right, Tom,” Shanks laughingly admitted. “I feel
myself as if I’d forgotten how potatoes taste, and if you don’t go
soon, I’ll forget how they look.”
“I think you had better go,” said Mr. Sukolt, turning to Shanks,
“because, should there be need of a doctor’s service, you know what to
do.”
“Oh, please hurry and go,” chimed in Bushy, who was helping her father
clean and polish his old musket and listening to what was said with the
interest she always paid to subjects pertaining to the welfare of the
camp. “I’m so tired, too, eating bear and johnny-cake all the time. I
wish we had some flour so Tom could give us some more of those biscuits
that are so good with molasses.”
The men all laughed as they gazed on Bushy’s eager face, and her father
declared that Shanks should go in the morning if she was as hungry as
she looked at that moment.
“Oh, no, Padre, I didn’t mean to be so selfish as that sounded,” she
cried, as she kissed his bronze cheek and gave him a bearish hug. “I
can eat what the rest eat; but I was so afraid that you were going
to wait till the last of the week, and there is only the tiniest bit
of molasses in the keg, and you men folks won’t eat johnny-cake or
flapjacks without it.”
The next day wore slowly away. The hours seemed very long indeed to
Bushy, who was longing for the good things in the wagons that were
expected. Mr. Sukolt went out a dozen times to a high point on the
mountain-side that overlooked the winding road. He swept the landscape
far and near with a powerful field-glass, but he could see no signs
of the freight wagons. So Shanks started for the fort early the next
morning. It would take him four days to make the trip and perhaps
longer, for it was agreed that if he did not meet the wagons he was to
get a few supplies from the fort. In that case he would have to walk
and pack the things on his pony.
Work was slack at the mine, for they were entirely out of blasting
powder by this time, so when Bushy suddenly broke into her game of
“cat’s cradle” with Tom, and cried: “Padre, Padre, let’s go berrying!”
her father and Tom gladly assented. Buckets were soon ready, and Ned
was saddled so that Bushy could ride. It was four miles up the gulch
to where the berries grew. They were wild raspberries of a beautiful
luscious red, which no tame raspberry can equal in flavor. They grow
on the steepest mountains, choosing to push their hardy roots under
great rocks and nestling close to fallen timbers, as if trying to hide
themselves altogether.
The prickly, dwarfed bushes were bending almost to the ground beneath
their load of fruit. Bushy could scarcely wait to tie Ned, she was so
eager to be picking.
“Now, Bushy, you stay here by Ned and pick in this patch, and Tom and
I will go farther up,” said Mr. Sukolt, as he handed her two small tin
pails.
“All right,” said Bushy; “I’ll race both of you, and let’s see who gets
a pailful first.”
She began very well and picked hard for five minutes, but then forgot
all about the race, and a great many more berries found their way into
her pretty mouth than into the pail. She picked on for perhaps an hour,
but even then one pail was still empty, and the other only half full.
She had forgotten all about her father and Tom, she was so interested
in crushing the largest and plumpest berries between her lips, when all
at once she was startled by a great snort from Ned.
Springing to her feet she looked wildly around. Ned was pulling at his
halter, rearing and plunging, snorting and trembling. His eyes seemed
to be starting from their sockets. Bushy’s heart was beating fast, and