Bushy a romance founded on fact
turned to get a strap, saying: “Bushy, roll into the blanket; I am
going to strap you to my back.” Bushy knew what that meant, for she
had often been strapped to him when he had climbed the high mountains.
“Play dead,” said Bushy to Pete, giving him a soft tap on the nose. He
immediately stretched himself out, and she wrapped him in her shawl,
then rolled herself and Pete head and ears in the blanket.
Mr. Sukolt, who had been arranging the strap, had not noticed Bushy.
Shanks was waiting at the door and keeping a lookout. Then Bushy’s
father picked her up and strapped her in a kind of sling, leaving his
arms and hands free to use his rifle.
“Play dead,” cried Bushy, for Pete objected a little to the treatment
he was getting.
“What is it, Bushy?” asked her father.
She was silent. It was the first time in her life she had been unable
to answer her father. “Are you strapped too tight? What is it, Bushy?”
he inquired again, as he hurried out and joined Shanks.
“Nuffin’,” she said, and snuggled down in the sling. She was afraid to
say “play dead” any more to Pete, so when he squirmed again she grasped
his nose firmly with her fingers and held on like grim death. The more
he squirmed the tighter she clinched with her fingers. It was a very
serious affair with Bushy. The idea of leaving Pete to be killed by
the Indians made her desperate. All the danger that her father saw in
Pete’s going was that he might mew, and she intended that he should
not. So, though after a half hour he quit wriggling about, she still
kept the death-grip on his nose. He could not scratch, because of
being bound up in the shawl. They were over an hour getting into the
fort--some of the Indians got between them and it. The savages knew
nothing of the stronghold and were trying to reach the shanty of the
chief, as they called Mr. Sukolt’s place. But by good manœuvring on the
part of the miners and the sound of the riderless horse’s hoofs near
the mine the Indians were misled and turned to the left, leaving the
ravine clear for the men to go through.
“Are we all here?” asked Mr. Sukolt as soon as he got inside the fort.
“All but Pete,” answered Tom, who now allowed his humor to show itself,
for they were safe at last from the Indians.
“No, I dot ’im,” called the cheerful voice of Bushy from the
blanket-sling.
“What! You have? I don’t see how you darst try it,” cried Tom,
half-vexed with Mr. Sukolt for displaying so little judgment.
Mr. Sukolt said nothing, but showed his ignorance of Pete’s ride by
hastily undoing Bushy and shaking her a little as he lifted her out.
Bushy held Pete still by the nose, and when the shaking was over she
looked up sweetly in her papa’s face, saying: “He’s all wight, Padre;
he never kied one mew, ’cause I choked his nose when he wouldn’t play
dead.” She dropped him from the shawl and he fell with a dull thud to
the stone floor.
“He’s dead!” exclaimed the miners in one voice, and Tom knelt down and
poked him with his revolver.
“No, he plays dead,” said Bushy, dancing about in high glee. “He plays
dead! Now see how he can jump.” She threw herself flat on her stomach
by Pete and clapped her hands, crying, “Oo is well now, Pete.”
But Pete did not move. “Oo is well now, Pete,” she repeated, rising
on her hands and knees and looking at the limp cat that lay so still
before her.
The miners stepped back, and in their pity for Bushy almost forgot that
the Indians were still lurking about. Bushy’s lips began to tremble,
and at last, realizing that Pete would never play with her any more,
she got up, and slipping her hand in her father’s, looked up with tears
streaming from her eyes and said: “What’s the weason, Padre; what’s the
weason?”
“I think it has all come about because my little girl disobeyed her
papa,” replied her father, seriously. That was too much for Bushy. She
clasped his knees, and crying as if her heart would break, promised to
be “a dood dirl all her life” if he would bring Pete back again. But
poor Pete was dead.
“He was about ready to die anyway,” Tom said to the Padre afterward,
for Bushy had hugged him to a mere skeleton. But Bushy never quite
got over thinking his death came about through her naughtiness; and
whenever she was inclined not to mind her father the picture of poor
Pete would come up before her and she would hesitate no longer.
CHAPTER III
It was only natural that the miners should think a great deal of Bushy.
She was the only little girl in camp--the only child, in fact--and, of
course, they petted her and thought everything she did was just right.
I suppose she often did naughty things, like any other little girl, yet
she saved their lives one day, and after that the miners could not do
enough for her.
On this particular morning Mr. Sukolt had ordered the men to do an
extra day’s work, because a certain amount of ore was to be sent down
the mountain that night.
“Tom, I want you to stop long enough to get a hot dinner for the boys;
you and Bushy can bring it over, and save the time that would be spent
in going to the shanty,” he said, as he left early and joined the
miners at the Great Pine Mine.
Bushy busied herself, as she always did, in what she called “helping
Tom do up.” Then she took her slate and wrote her letters--she had to
get her lesson every day and say it to her father or Tom before she
went to bed. After that she had a romp with Rover, and finally went to
sleep with her head pillowed on his shaggy coat. Rover was of a breed
half Newfoundland and half St. Bernard. He was immense in size and of
a most affectionate nature, his whole object in life being his care
for Bushy. She must have slept for a long, long time, because when she
awoke Tom was ready to take the dinner to the boys.
“Get on your hood, Bushy, and hurry up, you little toad; I thought you
were going to sleep all day,” cried Tom, giving her a gentle shake.
“You must help me carry these things. How can I ever get them over
alone?”
“Why, you touldn’t,” replied Bushy, scrambling to her feet, and looking
very cross at Rover. “You bad doggy, you made me fordet all about it!”
Poor Rover, who had been so careful not to move even his toes for fear
of disturbing his little mistress, took the rebuke good-naturedly and
wagged his tail hard to show that he meant nothing wrong.
“We have but one horse to-day, and you must ride in front of me and
carry the bread and meat while I carry these two tin pails,” said Tom,
as he hurried about getting things ready.
“What you dot two for?” questioned Bushy.
“One has coffee and the other soup. It’s a surprise for the boys. They
don’t get soup every day, do they? I killed a rabbit just behind the
shanty. I guess he didn’t know we lived here or he would have kept out
of the way.”
“Where is his tail, Tom? I want his tail,” said Bushy, dropping her
hood and running to the table where Tom had skinned the rabbit.
“Here it is, you little stupid,” laughed Tom, picking up her hood and
showing her how he had fastened the tail on so it stuck up like a
feather on the very top.
Bushy clapped her hands and waited for Tom to tie the hood on her
head. Her hair stuck out every way, for no one had taken time to comb
it, and romping with Rover had not improved her looks. She took great
delight in “fixing up” with rabbit tails and bird feathers. Sometimes
she seemed more like a little Indian than a white child. One must not
forget that she had no playthings to amuse her, as have children who
live in the city.
In a very little while they got to the mine. Bushy was so anxious to
exhibit her rabbit’s tail to her papa that she begged hard to go down
into the mine with Tom.
“Please let me do,” she pleaded.
Tom at first was not inclined to let her descend, because there is
always more or less danger of falling rocks in the mine, and if some
one did not stop work and go about with her, Mr. Sukolt always felt
uneasy until she was taken out. She was ever in motion, and flew
hither and thither, filling the mine with her jolly little laugh or
whistling like the birds she heard in the pine-trees, and loading her
pockets with every bright piece of ore she could pick up with her brown
fingers. Sometimes she would perch herself on the ledges or shelves
near where a miner was working with his pick and watch him. A smile of
peculiar softness would steal over the hard faces of the rough miners
as they passed and stretched out their hard and dirty hands to pat her
head and say: “Hello, Bushy! how many tons are you going to get out
to-day?”
Miners, when following a vein, at first pick out no more of the rock
than is necessary to secure the richest ore. This often leaves the
sections with walls that are dug into in such a way as to appear filled
with great shelves. After the rich ore has been sent up in the bucket
and everything cleared away other miners follow and cut down the uneven
parts into smooth surfaces, which are “planked up,” and sometimes made
yet more secure by having great wooden pillars built in for support.
It was on one of these shelves that Bushy was perched this day when she
saved the miners’ lives. Walt had been at work near Bushy clearing up,
but was called away by Tom to eat his dinner.
“Stay where you are, Bushy,” cried Tom, “until I dole out the
victuals, then I’ll take you up again.”
There were several rooms or sections in the mine, and as they meant to
blast after dinner all the tools and breakable things had been carried
into the far end of one of the divisions, and a small keg of powder
was opened and ready for use just below the ledge on which Bushy was
sitting.
To be able to reach the vein Walt had built a temporary scaffold
that lifted him about three feet from the bottom, and this was still
standing when one of the miners, remembering that the powder was
uncovered, got up quickly to put something over it.
He bumped his head against one of the wooden beams put up to support
the sides of the mine, and his lamp was knocked from his hat and went
bounding in a zigzag direction toward the powder, thirty feet away.
The miners were panic-stricken. The wick had burnt low, and as it
turned over and over, instead of going out, the whole thing got ablaze
and rolled on and on like one ball of fire, impishly bent on doing all
the mischief possible.
“My child, my child! The powder!” screamed Mr. Sukolt, as he made a
dash around a bucket of ore in his attempt to reach Bushy. Every man
who had seen the candle fall knew he could never get to her side
before an almost certain explosion; with the woodwork and the great
coil of fuse, death would be inevitable to all those in that division.
The candle reached the scaffolding and went zigzagging on, the broad
boards making its fatal arrival in the keg of powder right under Bushy
seem inevitable. They saw, too, that Bushy had seen the tin holder when
it fell from the hat. At the first cry made by her father she started
like a frightened doe, and when he exclaimed “the powder!” her eye fell
on the open keg.
Bushy had been taught all about the dangers attached to the use of
powder, and she had seen the men too often wounded in the blasting not
to understand that the light must not reach the keg.
One faint cry of “Padre!” reached the miners’ ears, as she threw
herself from the ledge on to the scaffolding, crushing out the light of
the lamp with her tiny body as she fell. The boards, loosely arranged,
gave way and tumbled with Bushy to the bottom of the mine, and she was
quite buried out of sight with them when her father and the miners
reached her.
“Thank God, she’s alive!” exclaimed Mr. Sukolt, as he pulled her out
and took her in his arms. “Papa’s brave girl. Where does it hurt, dear?”