CHAPTER VIII
“Padre, I am going out to try and catch a prairie-dog to-day!” called out Bushy to her father one bright Fall morning just after he had started for the mine. “Billy is lonesome, and I want to find another to play with him.”
Billy was a prairie-dog that Bushy had drowned out of his home over six months before. He had become so tame that she could let him loose and he would never go far from the shanty. He had red-brown hair on his back, and his little feet and under parts were white. Although he was a tiny baby prairie-dog when she drowned him out, he had grown almost a foot long, and his cheek pouches were half an inch thick, and his body round and clumsy. Perhaps you don’t know how they live. They burrow in the ground and at the entrance to their holes throw up a mound that looks very much like an ant-hill. The hole in the centre, or door, I suppose the dogs call it, slopes down and finally divides into long passages and hallways. The main hall is sometimes very long, and off from it run these short burrows that end in a soft bed of dry grass and leaves.
One day Bushy coaxed Tom to help her carry water to Dogtown, as the village of dogs was called, and she poured bucketful after bucketful into one of the dog-houses, until finally a great sniffing and snorting was heard. Soon the mother dog rushed out, and Bushy was so surprised she failed to catch her, but she did get the baby that was most dead when he got to the surface. Billy was that baby.
He always barked and waggled his tail every time Bushy looked at him, and the miners thought she could understand what Billy said to her, because she talked just as if she did. They would play for hours together, and Rover would look sullenly on. It took Rover some time before he would give up teasing Billy, and more than once he boxed the creature’s head so hard with his paw that Billy tumbled over and over and howled. But he was a happy-go-lucky little fellow and did not mind much.
This lovely, sunny morning Bushy went way down the mountains into a kind of low place between two peaks where a few dogs had built their houses. They don’t often come up so high, but these always slept during the winter and only came out when the sun shone in summer.
“Look out for the snakes,” called her father as he swung his tools on his shoulder. “A snake is ever liable to be where a prairie-dog is. You had better take Rover along and Tom, too.”
“Oh, Rover and Tom are going out after pitch-pine stumps in Stone Gulch, and there is no way for me to ride with them. I won’t try to drown the dog out, but take my net and throw it over him when he comes out to say good-morning.”
“All right,” cried her father; “but be careful and don’t go too far.”
When the dogs hear anybody walking about their town they all come out to see who it is, and then they stand on their hind legs and talk about it. They spend much of their time gossiping. Their little heads popped out when Bushy arrived, and each one stood up and barked a “how de do” as best he could.
“How de do,” cried Bushy, throwing her net at one of the nearest ones. But he immediately dived into his hole and sent an owl to inquire what was wanted.
The prairie-dog is named dog only on account of his bark. He looks more like a big, rough-haired rat than a dog. Prairie-dogs seldom grow longer than thirteen inches. Burrowing owls and rattlesnakes always live with them. The owls are small, not over a foot high, and have stout legs and muscular claws, so that if they can find no prairie-dog to give them a home, they can dig one for themselves.
“HOW DE DO,” CRIED BUSHY, THROWING HER NET AT ONE OF THE NEAREST ONES.
The owls sometimes devour the little prairie-dogs, but members of the rival families seem, on the whole, to be on good terms.
The snakes seldom bother the prairie-dogs until fall. Then they take up their quarters in the homes of the dogs, and live there. One must not think that the dog and owl select the snake as a companion, for that is not the case. He is an intruder and too powerful an adversary to be expelled.
The little owl that came out to inquire what Bushy wanted, stood up very straight and nodded his head three times and said, “quok, quok, quok,” which Bushy always interpreted as “What you want?”
There is nothing prettier in the world than to watch these little owls nod. They do it just as anybody would. Their little heads nod and nod until they are answered or frightened away.
“I want your master or one of his children to come and live with my Billy,” cried Bushy, making a long sweep with her net, that covered the owl and caused a great fluttering and floundering that only entangled him more and more in the net that made him Bushy’s prisoner.
“I’ve got you,” cried Bushy with a laugh that died on her lips, for a rattling sound that she recognized only too well greeted her ear.
It was the warning of a rattlesnake, and Bushy turned her head to see an extra long one coiled up, with his tail rising perpendicularly out of the centre and shaking with such rapidity that the rattles looked like a fan; his head was elevated ready to strike.
Understanding so well the movements of the snake, Bushy knew that it was quite ready to spring, and would, should she change her position or make a move in either direction. Although the rattlesnake is not quick to take offence, this one had evidently considered the attack on the owl a personal affair. There was no terror in her face nor was there despair, but the sense of danger made her intensely excited.
Throwing her head backward and dropping her hand on the hilt of the bowie-knife in her belt, she fixed her bright eyes on the snake and watched. The seconds seemed to her hours.
“Why don’t it strike, why don’t it strike?”
Her heart seemed pumping fire instead of blood through her veins. A peculiar rustling sound was heard, then the slimy thing darted through the air. With a lightning-like movement, Bushy threw out her arm and caught the snake just below the head and held it with her slender, wiry fingers. The other hand, meanwhile not idle, drew from her belt the bowie-knife and severed the head of the reptile, yet not before it had buried its poisonous fangs in the end of her forefinger.
SHE CAUGHT THE SNAKE JUST BELOW THE HEAD AND HELD IT WITH HER SLENDER, WIRY FINGERS.
Though the body of the snake still coiled itself about her arm and the cold tail flapped against her cheek, she so quickly cut the flesh from the end of her finger that the poison had no chance to circulate with the blood through her body. Then, taking hold of the wriggling thing, she stripped it from her arm and threw it writhing, twisting, and twirling down to the rocky bottom of the canyon.
“That’s the end of you,” soliloquized Bushy, tying a piece of string that she found in her pocket around the first joint of her finger, then binding it with a strip of her cotton handkerchief. “Tom says a black devil is in every rattler,” she said, as she pressed her heel on the lifeless head and sank it deep in the earth. “I wonder if I have cut off his head as I did yours?”
She had some difficulty in tying the strip, took her sharp teeth to it, and then continued her soliloquy: “I wonder what life is, and I wonder what death is? I’ll ask the Padre, he knows.”
Setting her cap with a jerk always characteristic of Bushy when ready to depart, she started down the mountain with a swinging motion, neither a walk nor a run. As her feet merely touched the stones, sticks, and stumps in her progress downward, she would have appeared to you more as if she were flying than walking. She would spring with an energetic movement to a distant log or bowlder and hugging it momentarily with her moccasined toes attain the proper impetus for the next spring, a feat requiring the nicest precision. In this way, with the greatest ease and without the slightest appearance of fatigue, she reached the camp below—a style of descent which seemed as natural to her as to the mountain sheep.
“I didn’t get the dog, Padre,” she remarked to her father as he stood watching her coming in that flying, skimming style, “but here’s the owl that made the snake fight me,” and she landed plump in her father’s arms.
“It is more a mystery to me,” said Mr. Sukolt, “how you came down the mountain side without being killed than that you found a snake there.” He dressed her finger and gave her whiskey. Then he put her to bed, where she slept soundly all night. She lost the nail on that finger, but a new one grew, and there was only a scar left to show where she had injured the bone a little when she so bravely clipped off the end of her finger to prevent the poison spreading all over her body and killing her.