One night, several years later, the child was awakened with, “Bushy,
Bushy! oh, Bushy! wake up, dear! that’s a good girl.”
Bushy sleepily turned over in her little bed, which was just then
shared with Rover, to see Tom, with an anxious face, bending over her.
“Why, what’s the matter, Tom?” said she, sleepily, sitting up in bed,
striving with all her might to keep her eyes wide open by rubbing her
brown knuckles into them. Tom had been very ill with the mountain
fever, the sickness most dreaded by all the miners. Bushy had been
deputized as his nurse, and most faithfully indeed had she performed
her duties.
“The Padre hasn’t come home from the mine yet, and neither has Shanks,”
exclaimed Tom. “I am afraid something is wrong. It is nearly ten
o’clock and I want you to go up the trail with me.”
“All right,” said Bushy, jumping down from the bunk; “I’ll be ready in
a jiffy.” She was wide awake now, for anything that touched upon her
father’s safety made her little heart thump like a trip-hammer.
“Don’t you worry, Tom,” she said, swinging her arm back to reach the
other sleeve of her tiny buffalo coat; “Padre’s all right. I expect he
and Shanks had to stay awhile and help the men out. You know they said
this morning at breakfast that they would have to timber that new drift
where they struck that rich vein, or they would be having a cave-in.”
[Illustration: “‘GO ’WAY, SHANKS; YOU TALKED LOUD, TOO.’”]
“That’s just it,” replied Tom. “I’m afraid there has been a cave-in.”
“Oh, no,” answered Bushy, assuringly; “but I’ll go over and see. I’ll
bet my head that your fever’s worse, ’cause you have worried,” she
added, rising from the floor, where she had been sitting wrapping her
feet in some pieces of gunny sack and tying them about with short
ropes. Then she noticed that Tom was trying to put on his coat.
“Why, Tom, you can’t go! You can’t walk yet. I am not afraid, and it is
colder than Greenland.”
Tom had been sick for two weeks, and had been out of bed just one day.
To all his urging that he had better go with her, Bushy scornfully
replied that she wasn’t a “Tenderfoot,” and that he must stay and be
ready to help in the shanty if anything had really happened.
She went out and saddled Ned. She threw on a blanket and strapped it
tight, then bridled him and away they ran.
Tom stood in the doorway looking after her till the light of the
lantern gleamed like a tiny fire-fly. It finally disappeared with its
brave little bearer, behind a clump of snarled and twisted cedars which
grew along the side of the trail up the steep mountain side.
“Too bad,” thought Tom, as he staggered once more to the fire-place
and sat down. “I’m no good. I could not have gone ten yards without
falling. Perhaps after all the men are staying extra late to finish
that propping.”
Bushy galloped on, swinging the lantern high, then low, calling out,
then waiting for some reply. In spite of the warm mittens her fingers
were beginning to tingle. She was used to having her father stay
over supper-time, yet she always bore in mind his danger; how he was
constantly taking his life in his own hands, going down deep shafts in
a bucket, working in long dark tunnels with only the light of a candle
to guide him. Bushy at this time was nine years old, and she had been
over the trail so often that she thought, if obliged to do it she could
go the way blindfolded. But soon came a great surprise for her. Turning
one of the sharp corners in the path everything was odd and strange.
She rubbed her eyes to see if she were really awake. Where was the
mine? She looked back to see if she had come the right way. Yes, she
would know the great pine from which the mine received its name,
anywhere. Only last week she had climbed to its very top. What on earth
was the matter? Where was the mine? Where was the tool-shed? She saw
nothing but one great mass of snow, with here and there the top of some
tall pine showing itself. While thus peering through the darkness and
trying to stop the beating of her heart she thought she heard a voice
call. Ned snorted and pawed the snow until she had to scold to make him
keep quiet.
“Listen, Ned, listen!” She slipped from his back and led him near the
tree. Yes, there it was again, more distinct, yet far away and faint.
She shouted: “Padre! Padre! what’s the matter, and where is the mine?”
A voice answered, sounding as if it came from a deep well. Again she
shouted, and hallooed at the top of her voice: “Padre! Padre! Are you
dead, Padre, and up in the heaven?”
This time the answer seemed to come out of the snow, yet muffled
and indistinct as before. She stumbled against some broken timbers,
sticking up out of the drift, and then she realized the awful truth.
There had been a snow-slide and the men, with her father, were buried
beneath it.
The mass of snow on the mountain just above them had loosened, although
the weather did not seem warm enough to warrant such a thing, and had
come in one great avalanche, crushing everything in its pathway. She
hurried on some distance and then shouted again, and this time the
voice was directly under her feet.
“Padre, is that you?” she called, placing her mouth near the snow, and
then throwing herself flat on the bank, she put her ear down to listen.
“Yes; is that you, Bushy?”
“Yes, yes, I’ll dig you out,” she cried, beginning to dig with all
her might; her little hands soon making a large hole in the soft snow
beneath her.
“I am not very far under,” called her father, so faint she could
scarcely hear, “but I am pinned down with a beam of the tool-house. I
don’t think I’m hurt much. Dig with anything you can find until I can
make you hear and understand all I say.”
Bushy got a piece of broken plank and worked for fifteen minutes as she
never worked before. Ned stood by and neighed every time Bushy spoke to
her father.
“Now,” said Mr. Sukolt, when she had dug a deep hole down to him, “try
and get me out, so I can help the boys. None of them were up but me
when the slide covered us. All depends on you, Bushy.”
[Illustration: “YES, YES, I’LL DIG YOU OUT,” SHE CRIED.]
But Bushy was too little to make much headway, and her strength was not
half enough to lift the great beam that was right across her father’s
body. “This will never do, Bushy. There is nothing left but for you to
ride to the blacksmith’s. No, there is a camp of miners down the gulch,
only a mile from here. Ride there as fast as Ned can take you; have the
miners bring shovels and picks to dig us out; the boys may be smothered
even by this time.”
Bushy did not tell her father that she thought the slide had cut off
the way there, but she rode Ned as far as she could, then tied him to a
tree and started on the half run and half jump to the camp.
Bushy had never been known to say “I can’t.” She carried the lantern,
floundered through the snow out to the trail which would lead her to
the camp. On, on she went, sometimes missing the path, then she had to
go back and, by the aid of the lantern, hunt the blazed trees by which
the miners had marked the way on either side of the trail.
For awhile she got along very well. It was all down grade, and she had
gone so fast that she was not a bit cold. Soon came a change, for the
path led over a kind of hill, and the wind swept down upon her with
wicked force. Her little legs grew so tired that it was hard to draw
them along. Once she sat down to rest a minute, and had it not been for
the awful state the men were in she would have given up and cried. Her
hands, with all her swinging back and forth, would not keep warm, and
her feet were now so cold they pained her every time she moved them. At
last in the distance she saw a faint outline of the camp, for the moon
was looking out through the heavy clouds and gave a dim light. Next
appeared the glimmer of the camp-fire. Oh, how far away it seemed to
Bushy, now crying in earnest! Her feet had grown numb and her eyes so
heavy that she thought she would never get there.
She was about to sit down again when she thought she heard her father’s
voice close beside her say, in tones of reproach: “All depends on you,
Bushy.” She started on again, but how she made the last few yards she
never knew.
Next day Mr. Robinson, whose camp she had gone to, told her father all
about it.
“You see I was waked up by hearing a kind of thump against the cabin.
I thought it was our old dog Spot. It was such a tarnation cold night
that I hadn’t the heart to keep him out. I got up to call him, and
there lay your Bushy in a heap in the snow at my feet.
[Illustration: SHE THOUGHT SHE HEARD HER FATHER SAY, “ALL DEPENDS ON
YOU, BUSHY.”]
“I knew something must be awfully wrong. I was skeared out of my wits,
and gave a halloo that raised the whole camp. We soon had some brandy
down her little throat, which brought her to herself a bit. She said
‘Padre! Great Pine Mine! Snow-slide!’ Great guns! It took the boys just
two minutes to be on the way. One of the men rubbed her hands, gave her
more brandy, then wrapped her up in a blanket, and with the help of
another fellow, carried her back. They found Ned where Bushy had left
him tied to a tree, after which it was easy to reach the camp, and your
Tom took care of her.”
He brushed his coat-sleeve across his eyes as he said: “She’s a kid in
ten million, she is!”
The relief party soon had the mine opened and the men rescued, but had
it not been for Bushy’s brave little heart they might all have perished
beneath the snow-slide.