“He is a mean man and I won’t ever like him any”----
“Sh! Don’t say anything you will be sorry for, Bushy,” said her father,
as he looked down upon his little daughter, who stood grabbing at her
short hair with both brown hands. Bushy had lost her temper and was
racing about the tent in a passion, stamping her feet and digging her
heels into the soft dirt floor.
“But Tom teases me awfully, and just now he said I looked like a
boy, rode like a boy, talked like a boy, and whistled like a boy.
That wasn’t all, either; he said I didn’t love you, that I was just
pretending, and, oh, I could”--Words were not strong enough, so she
took up a hammer and gave vent to her feelings by breaking into a fine
powder some specimens that the miners had brought in for her father to
look at.
Mr. Sukolt stooped down and took both her hands in his. “Was Tom in
earnest, do you think?”
“Maybe he was only teasing, but it makes me so mad,” replied Bushy,
and her eyes filled with angry tears.
“Little girl, if you were in danger and I was not here, whom would you
run to first for protection?”
Bushy’s face flushed, but she unhesitatingly answered: “Why, Tom, of
course! He has helped me out lots of times.”
“Then there is a lesson for you to learn on gratitude. It begins”----
“Oh, Padre, don’t say any more. What a naughty girl I have been to get
so mad at Tom for nothing! Dear old Tom! Why, Padre, I love him ’most
as much as I do you. I’ll go find him and make it all up.”
She hurried away singing at the top of her voice as she disappeared
behind the tent.
They had arrived at Gold Dust Hill, half way home. Bushy had not made
the acquaintance of half the miners at the stopping-place, but a great
amount of attention had been paid her already. The men told her to call
on them early in the morning before they started to work, and each
would show her over his particular cabin. She found Tom feeding the
horses, and they started to make the promised morning calls.
“You are the first little girl I have seen since I left mine in the
States,” said a miner with a cross face and very heavy black eyebrows.
His kind, gentle voice would have been a surprise to anybody but
Bushy. Everybody was kind to her, and if there was the least bit of
tenderness left in a miner’s heart, it always expressed itself in some
way when Bushy came around.
“Let me see what I can find for you,” he said, taking her by the hand
and going into the log cabin where he kept the wooden box containing
all his treasures. “Ah! this will do. It will make up into a bright
dress for you.” He took from the box a roll of red flannel and put it
into Bushy’s arms. “That we have kept to have handy if any of us had
the fever, but it had better be used, I think, to keep the only little
girl in camp from getting sick.”
Every miner looked about him for something to give Bushy. It seemed to
be the only way he could show how glad he was to see a little child
once more. “Can you read?” asked one old shaggy-bearded man who looked,
Bushy thought, like a grizzly bear. “I will give you this if you can
read,” and he brought carefully to view one-half of a weekly story
paper. It had part of a continued story in it. “You can imagine how it
ends,” said the miner. “It is ’most all there.”
The story did not interest Bushy half so much as the picture. It was
of a woman, who seemed to her to be shaking hands with a man. There
was poetry called “Oh, take my love!” under the picture, and it
provoked her very much that the lines said not a word about the good-by
appropriate to such a farewell scene. “I could write better than that,”
she said to herself. Bushy knew nothing about love-making.
By the time Bushy had made the rounds of the cabins her arms were
loaded down with treasures that for years had been carefully guarded by
the men. One who was particularly pleased that Bushy could read, gave
her a part of a slate to write her lessons on. “Be very careful,” he
said, “and break off just as little as possible when you want to write,
because every time you take off the splinters to write with, the slate
grows smaller, and some day you will have nothing but a splinter left.”
They had no slate pencils, and the only way to write on the slate was
to break a little piece off the edge.
Bushy returned to her father’s tent and spent the rest of the morning
examining her rich store of presents. The flannel was bright red, and
oh, so soft and fine! “I will wind it all about me and wear it so,”
she said. “I will never let Tom cut it.” She took one end and pinned
it to her blouse, then began to wind and wind and wind until when she
came to the other end it had gone two or three times about her neck,
and arms, and legs, and waist, making her look like a clown dressed for
the circus. She put on her hat, and, with the paper spread out on her
lap, took up her slate and began to write a piece of poetry, trying to
put more sense into it than there was in the lines under that strange
picture.
“Hallo! What in the world is this?” called Mr. Sukolt, as he came in
from his visit to the mine.
“Ha! ha! you don’t know me, perhaps,” replied the queer red object in
the tent door. Bushy stood up and bowed low before him. Bushy was not a
pretty little girl--just a common, every-day little girl that all the
miners loved better than they did even the gold-dust that they dug so
hard for. Tom got a glimpse of her and called to some miners near, and
Shanks, always up to a jolly time, threw down his load of tools, and,
picking up the banjo, called out: “Attention, gentlemen! We will now
present to you Mlle. Bushy Sukolt, famous not so much for her beauty as
for being the only child in camp.” Bushy made a little mouth at him,
and the miners seeing there was a treat in store, threw themselves
comfortably on the ground and looked on with smiling faces.
“Mlle. Bushy will now give you the Great Pine Mine jig, in which
performance she is the star of the world.”
“Bravo!” cried the rough miners, who clapped their hard hands until
the birds stopped singing to wonder over the noise.
Bushy threw kisses to the right and left from the tips of her sunburnt
fingers; then as the banjo struck up her favorite tune, “The Irish
Washerwoman,” she suddenly made a leap into the middle of the tent,
and, oh, such dancing! She went so fast and turned so quick she looked
like a great red ball whirling in the air. There were the single
shuffle, the double shuffle, then a whirl that carried her into the
French style, and from that she suddenly whisked off into the English
style of jigging, and just as the miners thought she must be ready to
drop with fatigue, she stepped off into the Spanish dance, with its
free and swaying motions, so restful after the energetic negro steps
that she invariably used for the liveliest strains of music. Her hair
seemed to stand on end and dance in the breeze that her rapid movements
created. The red flannel began to unwind, and the ends floated out in
great flaming streamers, making the dance a veritable serpentine one
of modern days. Shanks’s fingers fairly flew over the banjo. Faster
and faster went Bushy’s feet, keeping time not only to the banjo, but
to the clapping of hands and boot-tapping, for the miners could no
more keep still than the child herself. Some whistled the tune, others
hummed it in loud bass voices. One old fellow got so enthusiastic
that his “Hi! hi! yep!” every now and then lent vim to the whole
performance. Finally, when it seemed that every head, hand, and foot
could not go faster without dropping off, Bushy made a sudden bound
out of the tent into the very arms of Tom, who, with a profound bow,
pronounced the entertainment at an end.
“It’s not stretchin’ a p’int to say that the gal is amazing bright,”
said a toothless old man who wanted to say something complimentary
of Bushy to Mr. Sukolt. “It’s worth while bein’ a family man,” said
another, “if you kin own a peach blossom like that.” “She is a diamond
in the rough, old fellow,” spoke up another, as he patted Bushy on the
head and gazed admiringly into her flushed hot face. “Better take care
of her.” “She is a fairy in disguise, and some morning you will wake
up and find her gone back to fairyland,” remarked the superintendent
of the mines. “No wonder the boys have given her all their treasures.”
He pointed to the slate, the paper, the yards of red flannel, certain
nuggets of ore, ball and bat, and a bow and arrow.
“Well, Padre,” said she, after the men had disappeared over the hill
and the two were alone again in the tent, “this is the loveliest place
we ever camped in. The men are awful nice, and I love every one
of them. They said I was a pretty girl and a nice girl and a jolly
girl--they never said a word about my being like a boy.” She wound the
flannel about her again, and with the paper in one hand and the slate
in the other began a hornpipe, “just to calm me down a little,” she said.
[Illustration: THE DANCE WAS A VERITABLE SERPENTINE ONE OF MODERN DAYS.]
“Bushy!” exclaimed her father, and she stopped short. There was
something in his voice that sounded cold and hard after all the lovely
things she had been hearing. “Bushy, you may go and call Tom. Tell him
to pack, take down the tent, and hitch the horses.”
“Why, Padre, we were to stay here four days. What is the matter? I am
so happy; everybody is so good to me and says such nice things.” She
sighed and lovingly smoothed down the red flannel, hugged her slate
close to her and slipped the paper inside her blouse.
“Ah, yes, that is it!” remarked her father in a most solemn manner, and
he ran his hands through his hair as if in great trouble. “They did say
you were an exceptionally fine girl.”
“Yes,” murmured Bushy, and her face lighted with pleasure.
“And they all seem to think you the brightest little girl in the world.”
“Yes, yes,” again replied Bushy, as she let drop her treasures to fall
on her knees and throw her arms about her father. “The big, tall man
said he would give everything he had in the world if he could have
a little girl just like me.” She kissed her father’s face all over,
pinched his nose and pulled his ears and ended her expressions of joy
with a tight hug.
“Well, Bushy, that quite settles it! Hurry and give my orders to Tom;
we must get away from here to-night.” Her father assumed a sternness
that quite awed Bushy.
“But why, Padre?” she half whispered.
“You see, little tomboy, when you become so popular that people believe
you without faults, then, Bushy, I tell you it is time to pull up
stakes and move on to the next camp.”
Bushy’s eyes grew wide with astonishment and wonder, and, to make his
explanation perfectly plain, her father continued: “You see, child, we
must leave while your reputation is good, because”--here her father
held her out at arm’s length, and she was puzzled more than ever over
the merry twinkle in his eyes--“because, you know, they might find you
out.”
Bushy fell all in a heap in the middle of the tent and covered her
flaming face with her hands. Then summoning up all her courage, she
jumped to her feet and facing him, said: “Ah, Padre, I have had two
good lessons to-day! My! I was fairly walking on air! Their praise so
puffed me up! They made me forget I had an awful temper; they made me
forget I was mad this morning. I really thought I was almost an angel;
but I’ll not forget this lesson. You have such a funny way of showing
me that I am nothing but an every-day little girl after all.”
Long years afterward, when Bushy was a woman, she wrote to her father
a glowing account of her success in life, telling him how many friends
she had gained, how good everybody was, and altogether the letter was
full of self-pride and glory, showing she was “walking on air” again.
But she was called to earth with startling suddenness when, five days
later, a telegram came flashing over the wires, crossing the broad
continent with lightning quickness, bearing this message:
“Bushy, dear--I advise you to pull up stakes and move on to the next
camp. Padre.”