CHAPTER VII
“Padre, now my hair is short, I’m going to play boy,” said Bushy a month after Rover had pulled her from the pond. “Do all the boys feel light-headed like I do?”
“That is a puzzler,” answered her father, as he turned her buckskin jacket right side out and helped her put it on. “I think you will have to wait until you know some boys and ask them.”
It was morning and Bushy had been awakened to accompany Mr. Sukolt and three men, way up the mountains, over the divide and into a section where the pine-trees grew tall and without many branches. These trees Mr. Sukolt used for timbering the mine. They were cut into lengths to support places where there was danger of the walls caving in.
“No, no. I don’t want my dress. I want to wear pants like you. Tom must make me a pair,” cried Bushy. “I’m a little boy. Don’t you want a little boy, Padre?”
“Why, I rather think I do if he has this little wildcat’s face,” replied the father, again trying to help Bushy dress.
“No, no,” she again protested. “Tom, can’t you make me a pair of pants?”
“Of course, I can,” he replied, laughing at the idea of Bushy being a boy. “Just watch me. Mr. Sukolt, you go and attend to the horses. Bless my heart! The child ought to have a summer outfit, and it shall be pants if she wants them, sure as my name’s Tom Cole.”
“Oh, Tom, make me into a little cow-boy. Can I have a whip and—oh, I’ll wear my nightgown for a white waist, and put the buckskin jacket over it, and—what can we make pants out of, Tom?”
“Why, this skirt will do. I’ll just turn it into two little skirts instead of one. Ha, ha! look at that! They are almost done already,” cried Tom, as he sewed away with twine and harness needle.
Tom soon turned the coffee-sack dress into a beautiful pair of pants. He handed them over to Bushy with the greatest pride.
“Oh, they are scrumptious!” she cried, disappearing, and in a minute came bounding back with a boy’s suit on complete.
“Something is wrong with the waist; guess we can scrape up a sash,” said Tom, eying her critically. He went to the clothes-box and pulled out a roll of red flannel cut in strips for bandages. “Look here,” he said, unrolling it. “How is this for a sash?”
Bushy screamed with joy. “Oh, Tom, I’ll be so careful of it if you let me wear it just this one day.” Without waiting for an answer she wound the strip three times around her tiny waist, then tied it in a big flowing bow. Next her quick fingers twisted it like a ribbon about the crown of her wide felt hat. “Now, Tom, I am sure enough a little boy!” Then, taking up the rawhide whip, which she called a “quirt,” she began to dance a hornpipe, cracking her whip in time.
“Hello!” called her father. “What have we here? Some gypsy strayed from the camp? I’ll help you out.” He picked up an old guitar that stood in one corner, and then to a real jig tune, Bushy danced all the steps the miners had taught her.
So they started for the woods. Walt drove the team. Tom and Shanks, mounted on ponies, started ahead, and Bushy and her father brought up the rear, Mr. Sukolt on an Indian pony, and Bushy, as usual, on Ned.
They descended through caverns where icicles still dripped, and where there was danger of some avalanche sliding down to bury itself in the black gorge below. Soon they came to a place where the melted snow and ice was plunging madly through the rocks and black dirt.
“Ah, we can use that torrent,” said Mr. Sukolt, calling a halt just before entering the road that would lead off to the right. “We will cut logs and get them down the hillside by putting them in that stream.”
“NOW, TOM, I AM SURE ENOUGH A LITTLE BOY!”
The men in less than half an hour were chopping, hallooing, calling, singing, laughing, and working with all their might.
“I fear the creek is rising,” exclaimed Mr. Sukolt all at once. “There must have been a cloud-burst along its course somewhere. To your saddles, boys; we must run no risk; there is every indication of a freshet.”
Bushy heard the anxious voice and there was no need to tell her what to do. She was on Ned in a second, and with the long lariat coiled she rode up to her father’s side and said: “I am ready, Padre, shall we make for the valley or go up the mountain.”
“To the valley, every one to the valley! There is no hope of escaping it. Ah! how it roars; we must get ready to swim.”
Tom unhitched the mules from the wagon and fixed their harness; then, mounting his pony, called to the men to follow. Shanks and Walt were coming down as fast as they could.
“If the water strikes you, Bushy, hold on fast to Ned. I would tie you to me, but if I go under I don’t want you to be tied to me, and if I get out safe I can help you.”
“Is that thunder, Padre?” asked Bushy, looking up into her father’s pale face. He only urged his horse and Ned to go faster. “Make for the flat,” he called to the men, “then turn the horses’ heads toward Bald Mountain.”
He had no more than finished speaking when the “thunder” broke into one great report and water came down the gulch seven feet high. The men were not afraid of the water, it was the timber that they had spent all day in cutting that they thought would perhaps dash down and kill them and the horses.
Bushy and her father were on the outer edge of the freshet, and when it struck, both horses lost their feet and went under.
“Lie close and cling tight,” cried Mr. Sukolt, just as he, too, went out of sight. A great log that Tom had taken such pride in cutting down followed end over end, and as Mr. Sukolt and the pony came up and were straightening out for a swim, the log struck on the pony’s head, stunning him so that he sank like lead.
Busby and Ned were making for the dry land, only the current was so strong it swept Ned sideways. Bushy was dripping wet, for she had gone under, too.
“Padre,” she screamed, when she saw him sinking, “swim to Ned. Oh, Ned, we must help Padre.”
“LIE CLOSE AND CLING TIGHT,” CRIED MR. SUKOLT, JUST AS HE, TOO, WENT OUT OF SIGHT.
Ned seemed to understand, because he neighed when he looked back and saw Mr. Sukolt trying to swim toward them. Then he turned his head to Bushy, making a funny sound, as if he were waiting for her to do something.
“Oh, I see,” cried Bushy, “the lariat! Oh, Ned, I have no head like you.” Whether Ned did mean that or not, Bushy always insists he did. She threw the rope so her father got hold, and when Bushy was once on dry land she pulled him out, too. Then he threw it to the other men, who were floundering about like fish. The pony was drowned and Walt got his leg broken. Rover was not in the water at all. He seemed to have the instinct to run in the right direction. The wagon was swept down stream a short distance and landed unharmed on a slight elevation in the valley.
Bushy gave Ned an extra big supper that night because he was the lucky one to help pull them all out. Walt was the only one who had a hard time in getting home.
“I think much depended upon Bushy’s pants,” said her father that night, after they reached the camp again. “I don’t believe any little girl could have accomplished what our little boy did to-day.”
Bushy’s greatest sorrow seemed to be that the red flannel that she so faithfully promised Tom she would be careful of was all shrivelled up.