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?”
There was not a dry eye to be seen as the miners crowded around.
Shanks did not wait to get her out of the mine, but pulled off her
little dress and examined by the candle light the arm that he thought
was broken.
“I dess I bumped it here,” said Bushy, putting her hand on her
shoulder. On further examination it was seen that her collar-bone was
broken.
She will always carry a reminder of that timely fall in the mine, for
there was quite an ugly bump formed on the bone in its mending.
[Illustration: THE FATAL MINER’S LAMP.]