Bushy a romance founded on fact
panther might,” she reasoned, as she held her breath and shivered every
time the nose touched her.
“Padre, I am here in the tall grass,” she tried to say, but the words
stuck in her parched throat. “I must have been here a long time,” she
thought, “or panthers would not be prowling about.”
One eye was so clotted with blood that she could not open it. Again
the nose and hot breath frightened her. “I’ll shoot if I can find my
revolver,” but she could not get herself disentangled from the blanket
for fully a minute, and in that time, which seemed ages, she suffered
more than she had in her whole life before.
“Padre!” again she screamed, and this time it was loud enough to be
understood by the animal that was nosing her about, and what do you
think was the reply?
A soft neigh of delight from the Indian pony Jip!
Bushy screamed with joy, and with renewed strength floundered in the
blanket until her head got out, and then followed her hands and arms,
which she flung crazily about trying to clasp them around the neck of
her faithful friend.
“Jip, Jip! You dear old darling! you will take me to Padre? Down on
your knees, old fellow! help me, because the redskin has done something
to my head that makes me feel so queer; and I am all over blood, Jip,
so I can’t exactly tell whether I am Bushy or a dead bear.”
Jip knelt and patiently waited for her to mount. Bushy staggered to her
feet, and all the world turned black and the stars came out, she said,
and shot all about in such strange fashion.
“Keep still, Jip, old man. I don’t think I can stay on your back if
things cut up in this way. Jip, dear, where is the Padre? Did the
Indian catch him, too?” She then tried to climb on Jip’s back, turned,
and thus faced the Indian who had been carrying her off. The sight was
a great shock. He sat up stiff and straight and his eyes were staring
at her wide open in death. The horror of the picture came upon her with
such force that in her weak state of mind she became flighty--quite out
of her head.
She lost her balance, tumbled off Jip, and rolled down a slight incline
away from the Indian, calling “Jip, come Jip! Let us play circus!” then
lost consciousness.
Jip may have been extraordinarily intelligent, or may have thought this
only a repetition of the circus games that Bushy had so often played by
the day with him, but he did his part remarkably well.
The Indians had all fled and carried with them their dead, with the
exception of this one who had tried to carry off Bushy. The only other
redskin who had known of his crawling under the wagon was the one that
fell dead from the last shot fired by the soldier. The other Indians
had taken the latter, and under cover of the darkness that had fallen
so suddenly upon them, they all had hastened north while the soldiers
and miners had hurried to the east. Thus Bushy and the dead Indian who
had held on to the blanket-swing in which she was bound were the only
beings left on the field of battle.
When Jip could not rouse Bushy by his second nosing about, he must have
concluded that she wanted him to carry her as he had done in the play
days. I sometimes feel that Jip knew everything and fully realized the
condition that Bushy was in, but Mr. Sukolt, who was a particularly
wise and learned man, said afterward, that the horse had no thought
beyond that of pleasing his little mistress in performing the trick
that he had been taught.
He evidently had much trouble getting her up the slight incline, down
which she had rolled, for there were left great gashes in the green
grass showing where his hoofs had dug and cut into the ground on both
sides of the spot where she had lain, and the sward was marked with
blood that had flowed from the fresh bleeding of her head after she had
fallen from the horse.
The soldiers, on learning that the miner’s little daughter was missing,
immediately formed one band for searching the ground where they were
attacked last, and another for a continued journey until the escaped
red men should be killed, or Bushy rescued. There was no doubt in their
minds that the little girl had been carried off.
Mr. Sukolt could scarcely sit on his horse, yet he was the first in the
band to strike out for the woods. Tom and Shanks carried lanterns to be
used in the search, though their hearts told them that there was little
hope of finding her alive.
“It will kill the old man,” said Tom. “Just look at his face; it is
twenty years older already.”
“Something coming this way,” cried the leader, turning his horse and
riding back to where Tom and Shanks brought up the rear. The three men
got down and listened, placing their ears to the ground.
The captain ordered a halt. Mr. Sukolt so far had not uttered a word;
his heart seemed broken; he only looked wistfully at the soldiers, and
seemed to pray that the delay might not be a long one.
“It is one horse walking so irregularly that I imagine it is wounded,”
said one of the soldiers.
“Well, there’s no danger for us in one horse,” said the captain;
“forward!”
They dashed around the bend, and soon, far in the darkness, they could
make out the form of a horse coming slowly toward them. He had stopped
the odd trot which the soldiers thought he must have been in when they
heard the sound of his hoofs. Rover was capering like mad about him
and the object he carried in his mouth.
“Thank God!” burst from the lips of Mr. Sukolt, and with one wild leap
he left his horse and ran to Jip, for it was Jip, carrying Bushy by his
teeth. He had slipped her belt over his lower jaw and was holding his
head as high as he could, so she would not drag very much on the ground.
“Is she alive?” asked the whole group of men at once.
“I don’t know,” answered her father as he clasped her in his arms. “God
help me if she is not.”
CHAPTER XXII
Rover went almost wild over her recovery, even if she did look more
dead than alive, as they tenderly put her in Mr. Sukolt’s arms
and hastened back to the fort for medical aid. She soon recovered
consciousness. Though she was dizzy and faint from loss of blood and
fright, they saw, to their great relief, that their darling would be
all right in a few days.
Her father sat by her bedside all night, keeping her little hand in his
and listening to the babbling words she spoke in her feverish sleep.
The glaring eyes of the Indian and the hot breath of what she had
thought a panther seemed to be ever in her mind. It was not until the
following morning that he heard all the story about his little girl’s
escape.
“I was so afraid I would have to part with my scalp, like Tom, and have
to wear a black cap, instead of my hair, for the rest of my life. Oh, I
am so glad I shot him before he could take it,” she concluded, with a
smile and a sigh, as she nestled closer to her father.
Mr. Sukolt took her in his arms, thinking how near he had come to
losing her, and what a lonely life his little girl was leading.
They had been at Hold Up Fort three days when Mr. Sukolt called Bushy
to him and said: “You must not go far from the fort. It is unsafe now,
on account of more Indians moving northward.”
“Oh, Padre, how could I stop here all day long while you are away
drawing your old maps?” replied Bushy, with the most woe-begone face.
“Jip and I will both die, sure as we live.” This funny remark sent Mr.
Sukolt on his way, laughing most heartily.
For three days Bushy obeyed very faithfully, and did not lose sight
of the wagons. When she stepped out into the sunshine on the morning
of the fourth day, however, she felt as if she could not endure the
imprisonment any longer. The wound in her head did not trouble her very
much; it had been done up so carefully that now it seemed almost well.
Why should she stay in the fort all day? The singing birds were free,
the insects buzzing in the air were free, even the trees were free to
wave their branches as they liked, and she, the most active of all the
busy beings about, was told to sit down and keep still. She, who had
such swift feet, and a swifter pony when she got tired of walking--was
a prisoner.
“Ah!” argued Bushy, as she walked out to the stall where Jip fretted
and pawed and snorted to get out, “this is very wrong, indeed. Padre
has forgotten all about his little girl, Jip,” she murmured. “Don’t
you wish we could go out as we used to? I should like to go after some
flowers. The soldier captain said such beauties grew at the foot of the
mountain, and I am sure that Padre would like some to press in his old
botany book. I don’t think he would mind it much if we went out there,
do you, Jip? You know that Padre just loves flowers. I think that we
can go; shall we Jip?”
Jip neighed, stamped his feet, bowed his head, and showed such anxiety
to get out that it quite settled the question. So Bushy jumped on his
back, and tried to buckle her revolver into her belt, but in her hurry
broke the clasp. “Oh, well, never mind!” she said aloud. “I don’t need
a revolver to pick flowers, anyway,” and she thrust it into her blouse
waist and let it fall to the belt line, where it swung as if in a
pocket.
They galloped through the long grass, scaring the birds and chasing
the rabbits before them, both hilarious with joy, at their recovered
freedom.
“We have been in jail, Jip, haven’t we? And the sun seems brighter and
the grass fresher and greener than when the Indians played us the bad
tricks. And, oh, look, Jip, at the blue sky out there! It is beckoning
us to come on.”
She gave the reins to Jip, and he fairly flew forward. Not a twinge of
remorse disturbed Bushy, for was she not out solely to gather specimens
for her father’s botany book? In the woods she dismounted, and, leading
Jip by the bridle, walked briskly over the velvet moss, and ran and
skipped from stone to stone, often making it difficult for Jip to
follow her. She adorned the pony with flowers and then made a crown
for herself, keeping up a constant chatter, Jip answering in his own
peculiar way.
“Now, Jip,” said Bushy at last, as she sat down on the mossy mountain
side, “I am going to make a trimming of wild flowers to go all around
my blouse.” The joy of her freedom had blown Bushy’s usual good sense
to the four winds. Without realizing it she had wandered far out of
sight of the fort and the place was strange to her and time seemed to
fly on wings. It was not until the trimming grew into yards and yards
that she stopped to think.
Jip was making for the grass growing at a little distance--his dinner
was all ready for him, but little girls can’t make a dinner on grass;
and oh, she was so hungry! For some minutes she sat very still. All was
silent about her, with only the insect buzzing, and Jip nibbling the
grass, and a bough cracking here and there as a squirrel passed over
it. The sunbeams fell through the leaves overhead and drew ever-varying
patterns of light and shade on the grassy mound at her feet. Bushy
thought, “I can’t see the fort anywhere,” and she began to feel uneasy.
“Jip,” she called, and the pony, ever watchful, trotted up to her.
“Guess we had better run home, old fellow, and get something to eat
besides grass. I am awful hungry.” Jip neighed a yes and knelt for her
to mount him. Off they went again, right down toward the valley; at
least, that is what Bushy thought. But after they had gone on and on
to her great surprise she came to a brook that leaped merrily over the
stones, making beautiful little waterfalls that Bushy could never have
seen before and forgotten. “How lovely!” she exclaimed; yet at the same
time her face grew serious, and checking the pony she looked all about
her.
“I do declare, Jip, we have taken the wrong way! Oh, of course, we