CHAPTER XXXV.
They got to Great Pine Mine all right, and, after a warm welcome by some of the old miners, they soon found themselves settled in the same snug quarters of years ago. One day, not long after their arrival, Bushy decided to carry out a pet ambition, and that was to climb to the top of Bald Mountain. She got to the very summit and Rover managed to follow her, but it took them longer than Bushy had thought it would. Hence they were far from camp when black night came down upon them.
“Strange!” suddenly cried Bushy, “the light is quite to the left of us, Rover, old fellow. Our noses are pointed in the wrong direction. I didn’t think I could get so badly twisted going such a short distance.” Bushy and Rover made direct for the light on the left. All went well until, as they drew close to what they thought was the camp, Rover showed signs of great uneasiness. Bushy’s attention was attracted to the dog’s queer actions and she remarked to herself: “Something’s wrong, sure!
“Rover, be careful! Let us go closer. I don’t know this place at all. This light doesn’t belong to Great Pine Mine. I wonder where we are! It makes me think of the goblins that Big Bill said walked about on Halloween. Softly, softly, Rover! There is no animal that I ever heard of that has an eye like that. Maybe it is a ghost. I never saw one and don’t know how they look.”
Blinded by staring so fixedly at the light Bushy did not realize how close she was to it until she came bump against a wall of rock. The ray of light that had led her on shone through a crack between the stones. “Down, Rover, down! I say,” commanded Bushy, expecting every minute that some one would pounce upon them and perhaps kill them. Rover obeyed, stretching himself reluctantly on the ground, while Bushy crouched close within the black shadow of the wall.
“Hist! What was that?” said a gruff voice close to the opening.
“Confound it, Barkley, something is prowling around here, I feel sure!”
“Bah! always skittish—on the lookout for something to be afraid of,” remarked a sneering voice farther away. “Let up with your fake ghosts and help us finish the plan of attack. The leader is old man Sukolt. I know him well.” They were talking in a Mexican lingo, but Bushy understood them.
“Sukolt! he means the Padre,” she murmured, and her fist clenched tighter the revolver hanging in her belt.
“What have Mexicans like these to do with my Padre? Still, Rover, don’t move, there is work for us here, I’m afraid!”
“There is no way he can be taken except to hit him in the back, for no one of us dare meet him face to face,” grumbled an old man. Bushy was now clinging to the rocks outside like a bat, with both of her eyes peeping upon the scene in the cave.
The last speaker was the centre of the group of men, who were evidently brigands of the Rockies.
“How many are we?” asked the leader of the gang. “Ten,” was the reply.
“There are over thirty miners, but we must kill them or drive them away. We have too much valuable stuff here, and, besides that, too comfortable quarters to be driven out by a set of gold-diggers,” added the chief of the bandits. “They are getting too thick here, altogether.”
“We will set fire to the camp first. Ten cabins must be fired at once, and as the miners come out to fight the flames they must be picked off one at a time. We can do it, because we will be in ambush and they in the bright light. Mind you don’t leave the scene until you can each count your three dead men.”
“What about the girl?—must we kill her, too?” asked a fine looking bandit, whose moustache would have been the pride of a story-book cavalier.
“No,” said the chief, “take her captive. She will be useful to cook for us and keep the cave in order. She must be a good shot, so keep an eye on her, even after you catch her.”
Bushy put her ear to the crack, and listened closely.
“Two o’clock, do you hear?” the chief was saying. “Each of you must pick out a cabin and attend to its inmates himself without further instruction; I will look out for the girl.”
“Oh, you will, will you?” thought Bushy, as she slipped down softly, and again taking hold of Rover’s collar, said: “To the Padre, Rover, for he is in danger.”
Rover sniffed about for a few seconds and then started off so fast that Bushy had difficulty in keeping up with him without stumbling and falling every few yards.
When once so far away that there was no danger of the robbers hearing them, Bushy began to realize for the first time how serious the danger was.
“We are not one bit brave, are we Rover?” she said, ready to cry with joy on seeing the lights of the camp once more.
It was not very late, yet Mr. Sukolt had grown uneasy and felt sure something had happened to keep his daughter away from home at that hour, so he had sent some men north, and he himself had just started out toward the mountain that she had climbed.
“Where is the Padre?” she cried, excitedly, as she rushed into the tent, where Shanks had gone to get lanterns for farther search.
“Gone to hunt you!”
“Call him back immediately, and send out the alarm for all the men, too, for there is to be an attack on the camp at two o’clock to-night,” and Bushy threw herself excitedly on the robe at Shanks’s feet.
The signal was sounded, and in less than twenty minutes every miner was in front of Mr. Sukolt’s cabin.
Mr. Sukolt had Bushy tell her experience to them, and they doubted not one word. No man was to close his eyes that night. Bushy, Shanks, and Tom were to take the centre cabin, which had a cellar with portholes.
“All wounded must be taken immediately when hurt to the centre cabin. So, Tom, take there now, everything necessary for hospital purposes,” said Mr. Sukolt. He then considered the problem how to save their property from fire. Every miner was to be his own watcher, and the instant a brigand appeared he was to be shot. If a cabin should be fired no one from outside was to go near it.
Bushy could not sleep, though she tried to obey Shanks and get a nap before the attack was to be made. Twelve, one, and half-past one o’clock came, and her eyes were still wide open and bright.
“Sh!” said Tom, who kept going from one porthole to another, trying in vain to see something through the darkness. “It is the gloomiest night I ever saw. No wonder those wicked devils selected this time to do their work! Hark, I hear a foot-fall!”
Bushy, Shanks, and Tom held their breath and listened.
“What time is it?” asked Shanks, softly.
“I don’t know,” whispered Tom, “but it must be after two. It”——
“Tom,” called Bushy at his elbow, “a man is on my side of the cabin. He is trying to strike a match. He”——
She hurried back just in time to see the flash of light, and recognized the chief of the bandits. Bang! went her rifle, and with a yell that brought every man in camp to his feet in alarm, he fell over in the shavings he had been trying to fire.
“Bang! bang! bang! bang!” sounded from all sides. Screams of alarm and pain were heard so distinctly that Bushy threw herself on a buffalo robe and covered her head and ears.
“Oh, Tom, I can’t stand it!” she cried. “Perhaps the Padre”——
Then came a loud pounding on the door and the cry: “Tom, open! It is I!” The Padre had a wounded man in his arms and his own face was covered with blood, but he called to Bushy: “I am not hurt, but Big Bill is, and this is the robber chief, he was the only one of the ten near enough to bring inside. Everything is peaceful now. Nine men, dead or wounded, are guarded by our miners, who were saying, when I left them, that our death would have been inevitable had the attack, so well planned, been carried out without a warning.”
“And would you mind telling me how we were given away,” asked the wounded chief.
Mr. Sukolt told how Bushy had heard and seen the bandits through a crack in the wall of their cave. The chief of the ruffians looked on her with wide eyes of astonishment.
“Defeated and my men killed, myself taken prisoner, and my cave and goods fallen into the hands of the very mining superintendent we started out to do up, and all this done by a girl!” he muttered.
“By your new cook,” said Bushy, who felt braver now that she held her father’s hand.
Tom and Shanks were helping to place the chief in an easy position, but when he heard her words he raised himself up and, with a half laugh, said: “Well, you have done us up brown, my little maiden! I must say every dish you served to-night was well done,” and then he fainted.