CHAPTER XXIX
“This is the school-house,” said Mr. Sukolt, as he and Bushy neared a low, long building situated in the thickest part of Central City. “It has been opened only a little while, but one of the smartest men in the country is the teacher, and I would like you to attend and learn something, like other little girls. We will see how you and school get along.”
Mollie, Mike, and Jake, of the “steal sticks” team, came up, and escorted Bushy into the school-house. There we will leave her and call at Mr. Sukolt’s tent in the evening to hear Bushy talk to her father and Tom and Shanks of her day’s experience. It is more interesting to listen to Bushy telling it in her own way, than to follow her all day long through the school-hours.
“Well, what have you learned?” asked Mr. Sukolt, as Bushy came bounding into the tent at twenty minutes after four o’clock. She threw her sombrero in one corner of the tent, her slate on the table, and before her father could expect a reply she was turning somersault after somersault from the door toward him, landing on her feet right under his nose. Clasping her arms about him, she cried: “I can’t help it, Padre, I am too full of joy; I had to find vent in a little exercise different from what they gave in school—just for relief, you know.” With a quick movement she unclasped her arms and reached for the guitar and, playing it herself, danced at the same time a Spanish fandango, until at last she dropped on the buffalo robe at her father’s feet and laughed. The little birds stopped their singing on the trees outside to listen. “There, I am run down enough now to talk!” she said. “But crickets and grasshoppers! wasn’t I buzzing? Why, Padre, I have felt the springs getting tighter and tighter every minute since you left me. Oh, Rover, old fellow,” she continued, grabbing the dog by his shaggy coat and dragging him down on the robe beside her, “you must go to school and learn something; we are great greenies—you and Jip and Bushy.”
“Well, I am glad you stop to take breath and give me a chance to ask what it all means,” remarked Mr. Sukolt, while Bushy was hugging Rover. “I must confess you are more giddy than ever; school has had a queer effect on you.”
Tom came in with provisions for supper, and while he got the meal, and Shanks mended the surcingle of his saddle, Mr. Sukolt put aside his figuring, and they all listened to Bushy, who talked fast and excitedly.
“I am not going any more,” was her astounding remark to begin with.
Tom stopped peeling potatoes, Shanks almost fell off his chair in astonishment, and Mr. Sukolt looked seriously at his wild little girl.
“It’s all right, Padre; I have learned all I can manage for a year.”
She pinched Rover’s ears till he howled, and then she began and talked so fast, Tom said it made him drunk.
“‘If you are a gentleman, you will remove your hat when you enter a house,’ said a little man just as we got inside the door,” began Bushy. “I thought my sombrero was the thing meant, and whipped it off my head. Then a lot of boys and girls giggled and acted so funny. ‘Oh, it’s a boy,’ said a skinny chap with a prairie-dog mouth and eyes like a ground-squirrel.”
“I did not like him and I told him so. Then the teacher—the little man—came from behind a table and said: ‘You must be Bushy Sukolt. This is Bushy Sukolt, children.’”
“Everybody grinned at me, and they made me think of a lot of little owls—you know the kind that live with the prairie-dogs and rattlesnakes. They all nodded their heads just like the owls do when I call ‘How-de-do.’”
“‘What a funny dress,’ said a mean little girl. ‘If you attend to your own dress you will have quite enough to do,’ said the teacher, ‘and, besides, I wish you to remember that personal remarks about anybody’s dress or manners are forbidden in this school.’”
“I felt sorry for the little girl, and told her I didn’t mind one bit. And when she began to cry I said I was the best shot around, and if she would come over to the tent I would teach her to shoot with the bow and arrow.”
“‘Bushy Sukolt, we do not allow loud talking in school,’ growled the little teacher, ‘and it would be better for you if you would not boast of your superior knowledge. If you are smart in anything your friends will find it out without your blowing your own horn.’”
“Oh, Padre, I felt littler than a minute, and here is what the teacher said. I have written it down on the slate as one of the things I am to remember forever.”
Bushy got up and handed the slate to her father. It was covered with writing beginning with lesson No. 1 and running along with things she had jotted down, until both sides were completely covered.
“You see, Padre, when the tall boy in the corner squinted at me, and told Jake that I was his ‘girl’ I heard it and forgot there was a little man teacher. I went over and shook the tall boy till his teeth jingled, and when he tried to slap me I boxed him on both sides of his face, and was going to tell him what I thought of him; when the little man teacher marched me off to a stool in a corner of the room, and put a pretty paper cap on my head, and said I could sit there for awhile. I got my slate and learned just the same. Now, see this number”—she put her finger on No. 3—“I put down when the teacher told Mike to stop picking his teeth. ‘You must make your toilet before leaving your home,’ he said, ‘and cut your finger-nails, too!’ Jimminy! I asked if I could come home to cut mine, but the teacher said for me to wait till to-morrow.”
Bushy’s finger followed each number on the slate, and she told each story that had caused her to jot down a memorandum.
“Just behind me sat a wee bit of a girl in a pink dress, like the one Rover spoiled for me. She had such a tiny mouth it looked like a catfish mouth. I couldn’t look at her without wondering what she would do if a fish-hook caught her. The teacher told me to study, and she made a face at me. Big-mouthed Tom I like better than any of the children, but blue-nosed Lucy was good, too. She took me on her side at recess, and when we played ‘pull-away’ we won, of course. Recess was a few minutes for us to go about in and stretch our legs and try our voices.
“It was twenty minutes long, so big-mouthed Tom took me into the bowling-alley back of the school-room and we watched the men bowl. They didn’t play any great game. The teacher doesn’t allow the scholars to play in the bowling-alley. I can’t see why.
“A little girl named Libbie got in a swing and a bad boy tried to push her out. I tripped him, and he told the teacher on me, so I had to sit on the funny stool again after recess. It was a nice place. I could see everything that was going on all the time. They called it the dunce-cap that I wore. I didn’t mind it. It was red and pretty.
“Libbie stuck her gum on the side of her desk, and when she was reading for the teacher the big boy hooked it. He winked at me and whispered, ‘I am going to keep it.’ That was very mean, I thought, and forgot I was to sit on the stool. I walked over and took it away from him.
“The teacher said he would punish me if I moved again.
“Billy Sholtz had the nose-bleed, and his face got awful white. He kept blowing his nose all the time. Now, Shanks, you know that makes it bleed worse. I told the teacher so, but he paid no attention to me.
“It bled and bled and bled until poor Billy got frightened and white, and began to cry. The teacher sent after the doctor, but he was in Eureka Gulch. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I left the stool and ran to him and held his nose tight between my thumb and finger.
“He began to caper about the room, and I kept saying, ‘I can stop it if you will just hold still.’ He ran away to the other side and fought me, but I clung to his nose, and by the time he fell down, tired out, I knew the blood had had time to clot, and sure enough it bled no more. Then, of course, the teacher put cold water on the back of his neck, and made him sniff it up his nose till he was well. When I went back to the stool the teacher looked sorry, and all the children laughed because I held Billy’s nose.
“A girl who chewed gum in school divided with me, and we chewed all day. The teacher made us both march up and chew for the school. I didn’t see any great fun in that, but the other children did.
“I almost died when we had to sit ten minutes with our hands folded. Oh! oh! it is dreadful to stay all day in school.”
“But what did you learn?” asked Tom, as he put the kettle of water on and dropped the potatoes in one by one.
“Learn? Why, look on my slate. I have got enough to keep me going for a year. I tell you, Tom, I’d have fits if I had to remember any more until I get this all perfect.”
She pushed Rover away with one foot, reached for her slate and read aloud, so they all might know what she had considered her lesson for the day.
“Take off your hat when you go into a house—if you are a boy.
“Don’t talk about anybody’s clothes before them.
“Don’t play smart and tell what you can do; let people find it out.
“Don’t fight a boy bigger than yourself, if there is a dunce-stool and a dunce-cap in the room. You will have to sit on it all day.
“I must not pick my teeth or cut my finger-nails when away from the tent.
“Children with little mouths are not so good as boys with big ones.
“Blue-nosed people are not so hard to get along with as red-nosed ones.
“Children must not play in the bowling-alley; it is not nice.
“It is all right to disobey the teacher if a boy gets the nose-bleed.
“I had better not go to school unless I can run home and turn somersaults at recess. It makes me fidgety to sit still all day.”
“That will do,” called her father, as he joined Tom and Shanks in a loud laugh; “come, let’s eat supper. I have an idea you were not a promising pupil—no doubt you were naughty; I shall have to see the teacher.”
“I just ran over,” interrupted a voice at the tent door, “to see——”
“Oh, Gee! It is the little teacher,” said Bushy, softly to Rover, and she lifted the edge of the tent and dragged the buffalo robe and Rover both out on the other side, and there, in the soft light that fills the mountains just after the sun goes down, she stretched herself to listen.
She was in great dread that her father would make her go to school again. “We will run off, Rover, sure as we live, if the Padre sends us to read a poky book, and get the fidgets by sitting on one chair all day.” Bushy listened.
“Ah, what is the little teacher saying? He won’t get us there again.” She rolled up close to the flapping tent and lay still, but her heart beat very loud, so loud she could not catch a word. This is what the teacher was saying:
“It was quickly done, Mr. Sukolt. It was little Mary, the pet of the school. She had been out where some boys were burning brush, and her calico skirt caught fire. Of course, she was frightened ’most to death, and set up such a screaming and crying that the other children were panic-stricken and fled for the school-room.
“Your little girl was on the dunce-stool. It was just at the beginning of the recess, and I had told her to sit still until she got permission to get up. From the window she saw the child with the burning dress. Before I knew what had happened, Bushy had thrown her slate on the floor, and grabbed a coat belonging to one of the big boys that hung on a nail near the window. She did not stop to go through the door, but jumped out of the window, eight feet to the ground. Like a cat, she fell feet-first. Little Mary was by this time running up the path to the bowling-alley door. Bushy headed her off and threw her down on the ground, rolled her in the coat, holding her face near the ground, so the flames, which were rising, might not get into her mouth and nose. She left Mary’s head out and threw herself across the body, tucking in her own skirt about Mary’s neck. Then, working from the neck down, she wrapped the coat tight and snug about the body.
“By the time we got to the spot little Mary was on her feet and laughing—the child was too small to realize her danger, and, hence, received no shock, for which I am thankful. Bushy and the older children knew what a risk the little one had run, and when I examined her and found only two small burns on her fat legs, my relief was intense. The children were soon playing ‘pull-away,’ and Bushy, I noticed, was one of the leaders in the game. I suppose she is all right, but I thought I would rest easier,” added the teacher, “if you assured me the child received no burns and is perfectly well. I fully realize that little Mary’s life was saved by your daughter’s prompt action. Had she run five minutes in the stiff breeze, nothing could have saved her from being burnt to death.”
The three men looked about for Bushy. “She may be burnt badly,” said Shanks, and he started around the tent. “She is a trump,” said Tom, and he forgot his potatoes and went hunting around the other side of the tent. Mr. Sukolt lifted the flapping edge and was at Bushy’s side by the time the two men were there. She was asleep, with her head resting on Rover.
She still clung to the slate that held the memoranda of what she had learned the first day at school. The teacher leaned over her and read the last line which Bushy had forgotten. It was this: “Little girls must not play near fire when they wear calico dresses. They may get burnt up. Everybody ought to wear a gunnysack one, like the kind Tom makes for me.”
“Although Bushy has spent the day on the dunce-stool,” said the teacher to Mr. Sukolt, “if most of my children were half as observing as this slate proves your Bushy was to-day, I would indeed be proud of them as pupils.”