Bushy a romance founded on fact
and leading the men to the spot where the woman lay so still.
“He’s all right,” said Shanks after examining the cut on Willie’s head;
“and your wife, Mr. Goodwin,” he added, turning to Willie’s father,
“will be herself in a little while; I imagine she fainted more from
fright than from the blow on the head.”
“Who killed the Indian?” asked Mr. Goodwin, gazing with astonishment at
the dead redskin.
“I was too slow, Padre, but they were a long way from me when the
Indian grabbed Willie. Will the beautiful lady be angry with me, do you
think, because I did not shoot quicker?”
“I don’t think so,” was all her father could say as he clasped her to
his breast.
“My brave little girl must be taken out of this kind of life,” he
added, after they had returned to the wagons and Bushy had fallen
asleep with her arms clasped tight about his neck. “I’ll send her to
school in Central City if I ever get her there.”
CHAPTER XXV
Three days after Willie’s narrow escape, Mr. Sukolt and his party
arrived at Silver City, a mining camp consisting of seven cabins and
one paying mine.
“I must stay here one day to give the horses and mules a rest and
have a chance to look over this district,” said Mr. Sukolt to Tom and
Shanks early in the morning as their wagons drew up to the spring about
which were gathered all the men of the little place. The animals were
unhitched. The miners were only too glad to have Mr. Sukolt examine the
property. They wanted the children to go along with them to the mines,
but both preferred amusing themselves in their own way.
“We will take Rover with us and have some fun,” said Bushy to Willie.
“Tom says there is no fear of Indians about here, because they are
afraid of the white men when there are a lot living together.”
“They did not get me and my mamma, did they, Bushy?” laughed Willie
as he felt for the tender spot on his head where the cruel knife had
slashed through the skin.
“You look awful funny, Willie, with two big curls gone. Why don’t you
cut them all off and give me half to remember you by?”
“I like you, Bushy, and will give them all to you; won’t you cut them
off?”
Willie looked so pleadingly into Bushy’s face that she tried to think
she ought to take them, yet in her heart she felt guilty over coveting
the fair hair. “If you want them cut off very, very much, why I can do
it for you, but they are awfully pretty curls, Willie.”
Bushy felt better after saying that.
“Never mind, you cut them all the same,” cried Willie. “Let us go up
the canyon where nobody will know it before it is all over with.”
“Perhaps we had better tell the Padre,” remarked Bushy, timidly. But
Willie had fled around the corner of the wagon and diving his hand
into the provision box that was still on the camp ground had secured
a pair of dull scissors that the men used for cutting canvas and rope
fastenings. “Here,” he cried, thrusting them into her hand; “now, let’s
hurry. Rover, come Rover, we want you!”
The children ran off, chasing butterflies, gathering flowers, and
forgetting all about the hair-cutting scheme.
It was fully half an hour before a peal of thunder announced that,
as Bushy put it, “the clouds were fighting.” The children were now
following a path which led close to a precipice. Great trees grew on
the mountain-side a little way above, and Willie broke from Bushy’s
clinging hand and sought shelter underneath the branches of the largest
one.
“Oh, Willie, Willie, don’t do that. Don’t you know if the lightning
strikes, it will surely take the tall trees and you would be killed.
Come away! do, Willie; don’t be afraid of the rain; it won’t hurt you.”
By this time the water was coming down in great sheets. Bushy could
scarcely see Willie. The thunder roared and bellowed, and though Bushy
called to the boy again, she knew he could not hear her. The lightning
kept up a continual flashing. Willie cried and clung with both arms to
the trunk of the pine-tree.
“I’ll go pull him away; he must not stay there,” thought Bushy as she
started up the mountain-side. Just then there was a flash of lightning
that not only blinded her but threw her flat upon the ground.
“Ah, that struck somewhere close.” A scream from Willie relieved her,
yet it seemed a long time before she could get on her feet and look for
him. “Oh! Willie, that is worse than ever,” she cried, as he, in his
fright, fled from the first tree and sought shelter under one close to
the path. Another flash, accompanied by a cracking and crashing and a
whirl of wind, told Bushy one of those awful mountain wind-storms was
on them.
“Throw yourself on the ground,” screamed Bushy, but Willie could not
hear. In his alarm he started again to run and Bushy ran after him,
begging him to stop and let them hide behind some of the great rocks
near. A deafening peal of thunder made him seek a tree again and throw
his arm around it.
The wind now rushed upon them, and at times would lift Bushy entirely
from her feet and hurl her roughly against the rocks; once she almost
went over the cliff.
“Oh! if Willie would only mind,” she thought as she struggled on to
overtake him; “we may both be killed if we keep in the open path this
way.”
“Padre mio! what was that?” she tumbled all in a heap and could not get
up. Something heavy had rolled down upon her buckskin jacket and held
her fast. It was the heavy limb of a tree broken off by the wind. Peal
after peal of thunder rattled until she could not think, and lightning
played around her in the most alarming manner. “The scissors! the
scissors!” she screamed. “They are doing all this.” With an effort she
cast them from her belt.
A loud barking filled her heart with joy. “Rover, has come! Rover,
here, Rover!” she called, and he came bounding upon her with his shaggy
coat wet and dripping.
“Go to Willie! Hunt Willie!” she commanded, at the same time freeing
herself from the limb with a sudden effort.
She turned and looked down the path where she had seen Willie last. “He
is gone!” she gasped, and her heart stood still in terror. Rover leaped
to the edge of the precipice and began to howl dreadfully.
“The tree has been struck with lightning,” was her second exclamation.
“Padre, Padre, I wish you were here,” wailed Bushy, running with all
her might to the place and looking down to the water below.
“Willie!” she screamed.
There was no reply except the thunder, which continued to roar. Leaning
way over and looking down the precipice she got a glimpse of Willie’s
blouse as he lay on the very edge of a jutting rock that extended out
into the water below.
“Willie, can you hear me?” No answer. “Hush, Rover, you make me want to
cry,” said Bushy, as Rover set up another series of mournful whines.
Bushy realized that the water would gradually wash Willie into the
swift stream, and he would be carried away never to be seen again.
“Oh, why have I neither rope nor revolver!” she cried. “Three shots
from my revolver would bring any of the men to us. Padre always knows
by three shots that I want him. No rope, nothing!”
She stopped talking and worked her way back to the place where she had
thrown away the scissors. “If I can make a rope by cutting my jacket
and skirt into strips I can get to Willie and hold him on the rocks
till some one comes to find us.”
To make the rope long enough she used every bit of her clothing, except
her little flannel pants and waist. Her stockings were both knotted
in. It took her a long time to tie the strips together, because the
wind was strong and the rain pelted her, but finally she fastened the
improvised rope around the trunk of the blighted tree and began to let
herself down. The buckskin held strong.
Carefully, carefully she descended, until at last her feet touched
Willie’s body. She caught hold of his golden curls, and thus securing
him, she succeeded in moving about over the rocks until she got a safe
place to stand on.
“I’ll hold you, Willie, dear,” she said, and after tying the rope about
her waist, so she could not be washed away, she drew him closer to her,
and thus with her arms wound about him and half chilled, her father
found her an hour later.
Rover’s barking as he kept watch above had attracted the miners to the
spot. Mr. Sukolt had not worried about the children, thinking they were
with the wagons.
“Give me the rope,” cried Mr. Sukolt, in a husky voice, as he took in
the situation. A miner handed over a lariat which he had taken along to
lower the bucket into the mine, and before the men realized what had
happened, Mr. Sukolt had swung down beside the children. Then balancing
himself by clinging to Bushy’s rope he called for the men to haul up
the other, attach the bucket and lower it immediately.
Willie, limp and unconscious, was put in first. The storm was now over,
and an almost dreadful stillness reigned. The bucket slowly ascended.
The men said not a word when they lifted out the little boy and again
lowered the bucket for Bushy. Bushy had only murmured, “I could not
help it, Padre; he would go under the tree and the lightning struck
him.” Her white face set with pain and cold, grew whiter as her father
tenderly lifted her from her cramped position.
Silently she was hoisted to the top. One of the miners wound his coat
close about her while another rubbed her chilled feet in his warm
hands. Mr. Sukolt then came, hand over hand up the rope, and the
little procession moved down toward the camp at Silver City.
“Any hope?” anxiously asked Bushy’s father as he placed Willie in
Shanks’s arms. “Bushy says he was struck by lightning.”
“He’ll be all right to-morrow,” came cheerily from the miner’s lips;
“no doubt he fell backward, and that explains how he happened to go
over the cliff. He is hurt more by the fall than by the lightning.”
Bushy cried herself to sleep that night. When it was learned how Willie
had meant to divide his hair with her, his mamma cut four of the
longest curls from his head and gave them to Bushy, saying: “It is all
I have to give for saving Willie from the wicked stream.”
Bushy had the curls made into a beautiful necklace when she got big,
and often looks at it now, put away so carefully in a little square
box, lined with soft blue cotton, and wonders where Willie is, and if
he knows how much she loved her first little boy playmate.
CHAPTER XXVI
“Jip, if you don’t keep still I will come out and whip you,” called
Bushy next morning about four o’clock. She raised the wagon-cover and
peeped out to see why the horse should make such a clatter that she
could not sleep. An odd light in the sky made her lift the canvas
higher and put her head outside so close to Jip’s nose that he snorted
with surprise.
“What is it, Jip?” she asked, kissing his cold ears and patting him
lovingly. “Why, you are all of a tremble! It looks awfully light and
queer; not a bit like sunrise! It is the reddest we ever saw, Jip.”
Rover uneasily crawled under the wagon, and, throwing up his nose
toward the bright sky, gave a little howl and then seemed to forget his
distress over whatever it was, in his joy at seeing Bushy.
“Keep still, Rover,” she cried in a loud whisper; “you will wake
everybody up. How queer it smells! Why, that’s the wrong side for the
sun! It is smoke, I do believe! She sniffed the air and raised herself
high on the side of the wagon and leaned far out to get a better view.
“Padre, the mountains are on fire!” was the cry that went like an
electric shock to the heart of every sleeper in the wagon, and roused
all instantly.
Tom looked very funny without his skull-cap, and, had Bushy ever seen a
clown in a circus, she would have called him one then, because in his