Bushy

Bushy had poured the powder on the ground as her father had ordered her to do, and was wishing that the stuff were not so dirty.

“I have spoilt my skirt. It is all mud and powder, and I wish Padre would not put his head out so often, he may get hurt.” Thus she went on thinking to herself and crawling slowly through the grass to the wagon’s side.

It was a brave deed for Bushy to take the powder to the men, yet it did not seem possible that she could get hurt going no farther than she did, and when Mr. Sukolt ordered her to go back to the little fort made of hams he dismissed all idea of danger from his mind. The wagon was watched by soldiers, and Indians were picked off the minute they showed themselves. Nevertheless, with all their watchfulness, a young savage succeeded in getting through the grass and lay under the wagon waiting for someone whom he could use as target for his arrows. To his surprise the very first object that came in sight was Bushy crawling to him.

The young Indian’s eyes snapped. He grasped his tomahawk and crouched still nearer the ground, his eyes shining like balls of fire.

Bushy saw the eyes and halted, still on her hands and knees. “It’s a panther,” she thought, and she made a move for her revolver.

The Indian was as much amused as astonished at finding a little girl in the fight, and never once dreamed she knew how to shoot. There would have been little danger for her had he not feared she would scream and bring the whole force of soldiers down upon him.

When he realized that she saw him, quick as lightning he raised his tomahawk and struck her a blow on the head that stretched poor Bushy flat at his side.

“Scalp little squaw!” muttered the Indian, gleefully. Then he drew his half blanket about her, sling fashion, and began to drag her slowly back to the thick trees beyond.

Unfortunately for Bushy and fortunately for the Indian it was then the sky clouded over, and it grew so dark. It was at that moment that the captain called for the soldiers to close in and prepare to rush from the woods. The Indian made the best of the darkness, but it was his dragging Bushy through the grass that had attracted Shanks and had made him call to the men to “lay low.” The bouncing over the ground after awhile brought Bushy to her senses enough to realize that she was in the hands of an enemy.

“I cannot see,” said Bushy to herself. “Poor Padre! what will he do when he misses me? I wonder if I will lose my scalp like Tom, or will I be roasted alive, like the poor trapper Padre tells about who used to hunt with him.”

Bushy finally got her revolver, and though the blood was so thick in her eyes from the gash the tomahawk made on her head that she could not see, she waited until she felt herself drawn close to the Indian, then pointing the weapon toward where she knew he must be crouching, she fired.

Bushy heard nothing but a low groan in response to her shot. “I am afraid to move,” she thought. “If he thinks I shot at him he will surely kill me. Perhaps he is playing dead like I am. Oh, Padre, Padre! if I dared scream!” Then the cramped position she was in renewed the pain from the cut in her head and she must have fainted, because she remembered no more until she felt the warm nose of some animal pushing against her. Her heart stood still with fright. “Panther, or maybe a bear! No, bears would not come so far down from the mountains, but a panther might,” she reasoned, as she held her breath and shivered every time the nose touched her.

“Padre, I am here in the tall grass,” she tried to say, but the words stuck in her parched throat. “I must have been here a long time,” she thought, “or panthers would not be prowling about.”

One eye was so clotted with blood that she could not open it. Again the nose and hot breath frightened her. “I’ll shoot if I can find my revolver,” but she could not get herself disentangled from the blanket for fully a minute, and in that time, which seemed ages, she suffered more than she had in her whole life before.

“Padre!” again she screamed, and this time it was loud enough to be understood by the animal that was nosing her about, and what do you think was the reply?

A soft neigh of delight from the Indian pony Jip!

Bushy screamed with joy, and with renewed strength floundered in the blanket until her head got out, and then followed her hands and arms, which she flung crazily about trying to clasp them around the neck of her faithful friend.

“Jip, Jip! You dear old darling! you will take me to Padre? Down on your knees, old fellow! help me, because the redskin has done something to my head that makes me feel so queer; and I am all over blood, Jip, so I can’t exactly tell whether I am Bushy or a dead bear.”

Jip knelt and patiently waited for her to mount. Bushy staggered to her feet, and all the world turned black and the stars came out, she said, and shot all about in such strange fashion.

“Keep still, Jip, old man. I don’t think I can stay on your back if things cut up in this way. Jip, dear, where is the Padre? Did the Indian catch him, too?” She then tried to climb on Jip’s back, turned, and thus faced the Indian who had been carrying her off. The sight was a great shock. He sat up stiff and straight and his eyes were staring at her wide open in death. The horror of the picture came upon her with such force that in her weak state of mind she became flighty—quite out of her head.

She lost her balance, tumbled off Jip, and rolled down a slight incline away from the Indian, calling “Jip, come Jip! Let us play circus!” then lost consciousness.

Jip may have been extraordinarily intelligent, or may have thought this only a repetition of the circus games that Bushy had so often played by the day with him, but he did his part remarkably well.

The Indians had all fled and carried with them their dead, with the exception of this one who had tried to carry off Bushy. The only other redskin who had known of his crawling under the wagon was the one that fell dead from the last shot fired by the soldier. The other Indians had taken the latter, and under cover of the darkness that had fallen so suddenly upon them, they all had hastened north while the soldiers and miners had hurried to the east. Thus Bushy and the dead Indian who had held on to the blanket-swing in which she was bound were the only beings left on the field of battle.

When Jip could not rouse Bushy by his second nosing about, he must have concluded that she wanted him to carry her as he had done in the play days. I sometimes feel that Jip knew everything and fully realized the condition that Bushy was in, but Mr. Sukolt, who was a particularly wise and learned man, said afterward, that the horse had no thought beyond that of pleasing his little mistress in performing the trick that he had been taught.

He evidently had much trouble getting her up the slight incline, down which she had rolled, for there were left great gashes in the green grass showing where his hoofs had dug and cut into the ground on both sides of the spot where she had lain, and the sward was marked with blood that had flowed from the fresh bleeding of her head after she had fallen from the horse.

The soldiers, on learning that the miner’s little daughter was missing, immediately formed one band for searching the ground where they were attacked last, and another for a continued journey until the escaped red men should be killed, or Bushy rescued. There was no doubt in their minds that the little girl had been carried off.

Mr. Sukolt could scarcely sit on his horse, yet he was the first in the band to strike out for the woods. Tom and Shanks carried lanterns to be used in the search, though their hearts told them that there was little hope of finding her alive.

“It will kill the old man,” said Tom. “Just look at his face; it is twenty years older already.”

“Something coming this way,” cried the leader, turning his horse and riding back to where Tom and Shanks brought up the rear. The three men got down and listened, placing their ears to the ground.

The captain ordered a halt. Mr. Sukolt so far had not uttered a word; his heart seemed broken; he only looked wistfully at the soldiers, and seemed to pray that the delay might not be a long one.

“It is one horse walking so irregularly that I imagine it is wounded,” said one of the soldiers.

“Well, there’s no danger for us in one horse,” said the captain; “forward!”

They dashed around the bend, and soon, far in the darkness, they could make out the form of a horse coming slowly toward them. He had stopped the odd trot which the soldiers thought he must have been in when they heard the sound of his hoofs. Rover was capering like mad about him and the object he carried in his mouth.

“Thank God!” burst from the lips of Mr. Sukolt, and with one wild leap he left his horse and ran to Jip, for it was Jip, carrying Bushy by his teeth. He had slipped her belt over his lower jaw and was holding his head as high as he could, so she would not drag very much on the ground.

“Is she alive?” asked the whole group of men at once.

“I don’t know,” answered her father as he clasped her in his arms. “God help me if she is not.”