CHAPTER XV
“Don’t do it, Tom. I know you can’t do it,” said Bushy in a sharp, excited voice. Indians had suddenly appeared near the cabin and the two were alone inside. The moment was a critical one.
She tried to pull him away from the door by catching his coat and holding on with all her might, but he gently unclasped her fingers and looking at her seriously said: “Now, Bushy, you must not show the white feather just when your courage is needed most.” Bushy nodded her head as much as to say she would be brave, yet she was so frightened she could not talk.
“You know where you hid from me that day we played hide and seek? Do you remember how you frightened us all because we couldn’t find you? Well you must get into that same place, and I will try to reach the mine by the way of the ravine and bring back help. If I stay here and fight alone we shall both be killed, and there is some hope of our coming out all right if you do as I tell you.”
Tom gave her a revolver and a box of ammunition, and put into her pocket a piece of bread, then opening the back door of the shanty he said: “There! Like a good, dear girl, crawl on your hands and knees until you get to the rock, then squeeze into the crevice and pull the tree-trunk over it as you did before. I will go to the front and attract the attention of the Indians by opening the door, and pick off any one of them who may try to come down the hill.”
Bushy said: “Oh, Tom, I know you will never reach the mine.” Then throwing herself flat on the ground she crawled through the tall weeds and grass that grew between the shanty and the huge rock where she was going to hide herself.
One day when she had been playing on the mountain-side the ground had given way and she had sunk down into a hole that was made by a big rock that had split in two. Over the opening had grown a tree, and its roots had spread quite over the hole, and no one would have ever discovered that the rock was divided had not the tree been struck by lightning and died.
Bushy had spent one whole day in cleaning out what she afterward called her cave, and on the day that Tom spoke of she had frightened all the miners by hiding there just for fun. Into this hole she now crawled and pulled the dead trunk over so that no one could see her without moving the tree.
Tom meant to try to crawl down into the ravine, then take to his heels and run for the mine, where all the men were at work.
There had been no Indian trouble for a long time, and nobody had expected this one. It was a great surprise to Tom and Bushy to hear a shot early in the morning, and on going to the door to get an arrow so close that it went through Tom’s hat.
Tom crawled down the little incline toward the ravine until he reached a place where he had to come in full sight of the Indians because there was no grass to hide him. Bushy watched him from her cave. Her heart beat and her hand shook.
“He will not get through, I know!” and her lips grew white with fear, but her eyes were ever fixed on Tom, and her revolver was raised ready to shoot.
“He is half way through,” she said to herself. “Now he is almost over. Oh, dear, oh, dear, why can’t he hurry? Why don’t some one come? What will I do if he gets hurt?” There came a swish, swish in the air, and an arrow buried itself in Tom’s side, making him fall over in a heap on the ground.
“Tom! Tom!” she screamed, and was trying to push away the tree when a big Indian bounded into sight. On reaching Tom he poked him with his foot, then turned him over, and grunted something that brought three redmen to his side.
“He is killed,” sobbed Bushy in her retreat, “and I can never see him any more. He is dead, like Pete, and will never come back nights with the Padre again. Poor Tom! Poor Tom!” she wailed, and it is a wonder that the Indians did not hear her.
One of the tallest, who had his head dressed in bright feathers and his blanket trimmed with fringe, took up a sharp knife and began to scalp Tom. Bushy did not cry any more. All her sorrow was forgotten in her rage. She forgot there was danger in making her place of hiding known. The Indians were in range of her revolver, and she knew that she could kill them; this is the way she reasoned:
“There are only four. I will try and kill them all before they find out where I am. If any more come I will keep as still as a mouse and they will think me some man who has got frightened and run away, for I know they will not find this place.” She peeped through the roots of the old tree and took aim. Just as the Indian lifted the hair, Bushy shot him, and he fell on his face across Tom’s body.
Bushy did not hesitate an instant, and before the others had even looked up she killed the second; then the third fell, with a yell that sent the fourth on a jump up the hill out of Bushy’s sight.
“Now, that’s too bad,” thought Bushy. “He will bring a lot more and I can’t kill them all.” Her face was very hard and drawn, and she looked like a little old woman. She was very white but she did not tremble any more; she only crouched back into the crevice and watched. Now she reloaded and was prepared for more Indians. Bushy could reload quicker than any of the men at the camp.
Nobody came. Noontime passed and no one visited the shanty. “Somebody will surely come to see why we do not take over lunch to the men,” thought Bushy, “and he may get killed, too.” Her heart ached with fright, and though it was a very warm day she shivered and shook with the cold. The rock was like ice, and the old tree kept out even the light.
Ah, what was that! Some one talking. She peeped out and saw something moving where she thought only a heap of dead men lay. A head was lifted and Bushy took aim, but before she fired she screamed: “Tom, is that you? Tom, answer if it is you, because if you don’t I am going to fire.”
“Don’t shoot,” he said; then fell back on the ground and moaned.
“Can I come out, Tom?”
Only a moan was the reply.
“I’ll go to him and pull that old Indian off him,” said Bushy, pushing aside the tree, but jumping immediately back out of sight. Another of the heap had moved.
BUSHY SHOT HIM, AND HE FELL ON HIS FACE ACROSS TOM’S BODY.
“Yes, it’s an Indian. His head is covered with feathers,” said Bushy. “I’ll drop him, or he will finish Tom. Ugh! it makes me feel so queer and things get so black and”——
She aimed at the Indian, who was crawling slowly toward Tom, as he lay stretched out in the hot sun that had beaten on him for over three hours.
Her shot proved fatal, for with a yell the Indian gave a leap and fell to one side of Tom, who seemed to come to himself a little. He rose up again and tried to push the Indian’s body away. “Oh, boys, give me some water! I am dying for water!” he cried, and fell back in a faint.
Stealthily Bushy slipped out and into the shanty. With a small tin bucket filled with water and carrying a towel she soon appeared again and crawled through the grass, just as Tom had done, until she reached him. Then she washed his face, pulled the Indian away from him, gave him all he could drink, and, pouring water on the towel she bound it about his poor scalped head and left him to hide again in the cave. He did not know her, for once he said: “Give me water, boys; just water!” Bushy waited another hour. Then she heard a breaking in the branches on the other side of the shanty.
Feeling that something must have happened, Mr. Sukolt and four of the men had started from the mine at one o’clock to see why Tom and Bushy had not appeared with the lunch.
The Indian who had been wounded and had fallen near the house, on seeing them come, leaped wildly around the shanty and leaned up against the very rock that Bushy was hid in. She scarcely dared to breathe for fear he would hear her. He had taken a position on the wrong side for Bushy to see him through the hole from which she had fired all the shots. In a second, however, she heard the whizzing of an arrow. She did not know at whom it was aimed. It was replied to with four rifle shots. Suddenly the Indian fell a dead weight on the log above her head.
“Padre! Padre! I am all right!” she cried, thinking he must be near. “I am in the rock.”
It did not take long for four pairs of hands to throw the Indian down the ravine and unearth Bushy and her revolver.
“Where is Tom?” they asked. “Where is Tom?”
“Over there,” was all she said, for her lips trembled so that she could not talk. Bushy always did well till everything was over; then she got “dizzy and shaky in her knees,” as she expressed it.
“Poor fellow, you are ’most done up this time,” they exclaimed. But Shanks, who was always the doctor, said he would live, and all because Bushy had had the courage to shoot at the right time, and bathe his head and give him the water. He was sick a long time. After his head got well he wore a close-fitting cap, because no hair, of course, grew to cover it up. Shanks said the Indian had been very skilful in the scalping, because he had not cut a hair’s breadth deeper than was necessary to get the crown that the Indians like to hang on the belt.
“I did mind you, Tom,” said Bushy one day, when he was pulling his cap down to cover his bald head. “But if you had minded me, Tom, we could have killed them from the shanty, ’cause there were only four, after all.”
“Bushy,” said her father, “Tom lost his scalp in trying to save you, and”——
“There, don’t,” pleaded Tom, taking Bushy in his arms as she burst into tears. “I wonder if any other man can say he wears his scalp in his trunk as I do.” He nodded toward his clothes-box, where he had carefully put away the scalp as it had been rescued from the hands of the dead Indian.
Bushy dried her eyes and joined the laugh on Tom, who worshipped the ground little Bushy walked on. And his love was not lessened by noticing that her tears always overflowed if any one mentioned how he lost his scalp for her.