Bushy

Bushy’s packing was the source of much hilarity. “You must not forget,” said Tom, as he carefully rolled up her guitar, “that you are to spend Christmas in New York City. It is a big place, a lot of people in it, and oh, thousands of boys and girls! How often are you going to write to us?”

“Oh, don’t put in my snow-shoes, Shanks!” cried Bushy, taking them from his hands. “I don’t know much, but surely I know I won’t want those things in New York. What was it you said, Tom? Oh, yes, about writing! Padre, how often will you folks write to me? I promise you a letter for every one I get. How is that?”

“We will send you one every day,” exclaimed Tom.

“That won’t do,” interrupted Mr. Sukolt. “Bushy is going there to study, and if she spends every Saturday evening in writing a bouncing long letter home we will let her off with that. She can begin next Saturday, and no matter where she finds herself she must stop and send word how she is, and what she is doing.”

After much trouble the great box was filled. Of course, there were many things that Bushy positively refused to go without. There was her rifle, for example. “I won’t stir a step if you don’t put it in,” she said. And just so she acted about her revolver, her skates, her bow and arrows; and a small lariat was put in by Tom to use as a fire escape if she had to sleep in one of the top stories of those dreadful tall houses he had heard about.

That evening a grand ball was given in the Sukolt cabin. There were so many people who seemed sorry because she was going away that Bushy was constantly choking down the big lump that would rise in her throat. Every old miner said: “Oh, Bushy, it’s so far and we will miss you so!”

“Padre, if they would say nothing at all about it,” said Bushy, “I could stand it, but when they talk so much, I—I get shaky and shivery, and if it keeps up this way much longer I’ll go on a strike, so I will, and empty all my things out again and not go one step!”

“Take care, take care, little woman! I’m inclined to think it will be much harder for us old fellows left behind than for you who are going into a new and beautiful world. Then, dear,” said Mr. Sukolt as he put his arm about her waist, “you need not feel so bad about it; you are going to have Jip and Rover. They will be sent after you, and Mr. Hamilton says you will have a first-rate stable for them.”

“Yes, Padre, I know.” Then, much to the surprise of everybody she broke down and cried aloud. After the shower of tears she bravely pulled herself together and with the true Bushy grit, shook herself well and volunteered to dance a good-by jig.

“Bravo!” shouted the men, and one by one they sat down close up against the wall that there might be a lot of room for the dancer. To the accompaniment of the banjo, guitar, and fiddle, Bushy not only gave them the negro jig, but the Mexican fandango, as well.

So sang Bushy, and then came the chorus, which is quite as meaningless, its only merit being its happy tune, which the miners rang out so lustily that the mountains echoed and re-echoed with the glad sound:

Next came the call for the “Bushy Whirl,” a favorite dance with the miners. The men stood in a ring around the room, and while the girl was dancing and singing the song she would suddenly touch one of the men. If he did not swing her immediately he had to pay a penalty. Big Bill got enthusiastic. He cried:

“Go it, Bushy! Shove back, you fellows, and give her room! Whale away there! Don’t drag your music like that; can’t you fiddle and look on too? Ha, ha! you lost your swing; serves you right and you’ll pay the fine! What! it’s my turn now? Never thought you’d pick out an old fellow like me, Bushy. Ah! you are a heap better’n”——

Bill’s sentence was left unfinished. He went whirling around and around and would have fallen full length on the cabin floor had not a good-natured miner stretched forth his knotty arm and saved him.

Shanks manipulated the banjo, and from his first position cross-legged on the floor, he had, with renewed exhilaration, worked his way to the top of a convenient pile of freight-boxes. From this high seat his eyes could follow every step of the fairy-footed Bushy.

So sang Bushy as she floated and spun about, swaying her body at times until the dusky cloud of tangled hair almost swept the floor. She wore only her flour-sack slip. On the front and back of the waist, in big blue letters, were the words “Extra fine XXX,” and the same ornamentation appeared four times in the full skirt that was gathered with twine on to the waist-band. Black cotton stockings and white-beaded moccasins completed her travelling costume.

In the ten minutes’ whirling, Bushy had touched six men, who were so engrossed with watching the vision gliding about in such mysterious and picturesque fashion, that they hesitated too long in answering the call to swing her, and were therefore marked down by Long Nosed Jim in his dirty note-book—of course, to the great delight of everybody—as the victims who were to stand treat for the evening.

At last her plump finger touched Mr. Hamilton. His merry blue eyes had not for a minute left off drinking in the—to him—remarkable scene.

Bushy was full of fun and especially desirous of giving him a tumble, but he firmly gripped her hands and held fast, and they spun around and around like a French top.

Mr. Sukolt suddenly called out: “Take your partners for a quadrille,” and the whirl was ended.

A voice like a small hurricane took up the cry: “Choose your partners for a quadrille! Clear away, there! Get a move on yer! Now—then! Hands half round and back again! Up—the middle and turn back home! Swing—your corners! (Spring yer heel.) Ladies back and gents to the front. Heigh—oh! Tra, la, la, la, la, la! Swing—your partners! (Keep it up!) Ladies in the middle and ring ’round a rosy! Shake—your soles! All—hands around! (Tum, tum, toodle doodle dum!)”

The voice that thus gradually grew from an occasional high wind into a continuous roar belonged to Tom, the master of ceremonies. His call “Balloon Sal!” brought the gay crowd upon its feet with a vim that made every log in the cabin quake.

Mr. Hamilton and Bushy led the dance and six of the jolliest miners in the camp completed the set.

In order that he might be seen as well as heard Tom had mounted a big keg, the head of which, about twice every minute, found itself too small to accommodate the gyrations of his feet. He would at times put his fiddle behind him, over his shoulder, on his knees, and once in a great while it found its right position, yet Tom was never known to miss a note in any tune he played.

“Dos-a-dos and don’t get lost; lose your lady at your cost!”

Away they went, four couples at once, and as the time increased, the bodies bent, the heads tossed, and the arms swayed in manner most alarming. When opportunity permitted, the boys got in the single and double shuffle; the backs of their legs were mysteriously brought in front, their knees turned in and their heels turned out, and not a little off-hand inspiration was gathered from the clicking of the home-made “bones” played most vigorously by some of the sympathetic lookers-on.

“Allaymantle-left!” shouted Tom, and his fiddle gave out an extra squeak of delight as the hands of the dancers got wofully mixed up in the change.

The laughter, the “Hi-hi-yeps!” and the wild swinging of the partners were at their height when everything was brought to an unexpected halt by the violin suddenly shifting from the intoxicating tune of the “Arkansaw Traveller” to the doleful, discordant braying of a burro: “A-a-ah!—Uh!—A-a-ah!”

The burst of good-natured shrieks that followed was cut short by Tom’s voice again, as he yelled: “Prom-Nah-Dall! Yank yer partner to the lemonade stall!” winding up with three of the most dreadful donkey-brays ever uttered.

The morning after the dance dawned clear and bright, the sun rising with that peculiar splendor never seen outside of Colorado, but no one in Great Pine Mine made one word of comment on its glory. Indeed it is doubtful whether any one even noticed it, for it was the day when Bushy was to bid good-by to the camp.

“God b-b-bless you!” stammered old miner Walt, who had come, like a dozen others, from far back in the mountains to bid Bushy adieu. The words got all tangled up in his throat as if they had a hard time to find their way out. Both of his big hands clasped Bushy’s small fist, and with a silent squeeze he turned and walked away, giving a savage kick to a clod in the road, as if blaming it in some way for the queer feeling in his throat.

“Well, good-by Bushy,” said another one. “We’ll”——

The trembling lip frightened the rest of the sentence away, and, grasping the outstretched hand, Bushy dropped a tear or two on the knotty knuckles of one of her most faithful admirers.

One by one the gold-diggers pressed forward to give their farewells and their blessings. Then came Shanks, Tom, and the Padre. Mr. Hamilton had been waiting some time on the buckboard, all ready to start.

Shanks, the big-hearted Englishman, who had grown to love Bushy as he might have loved a daughter, took her into his arms and murmured: “God help me, child! for the first time in my life, Bushy, I’m no good as a doctor. The whole kit of bottles in my medicine-chest can’t cure one of the aching hearts you leave behind.”

Bushy smiled through her tears and turned to Tom.

“Dear old Tom,” she murmured, and as her arms clung about his neck, she patted his poor scalped head and gave way for the first time that morning to uncontrolled weeping.

Sob after sob shook her whole frame, and a second later she was pressed close to her father’s heart.

Mr. Sukolt was the last to bid the little Rocky Mountain girl good-by.

He held her clasped in his arms so long, and was so silent that the miners gradually drifted away to one side in little whispering groups, leaving only Tom near by—faithful old Tom, who, as he gazed on Mr. Sukolt’s white face, recalled the scene, twelve years before, when the Padre had held his little girl just so, trying to decide whether it was wise to do as her baby head had planned, and let her go “wiv her papa’s tachel.”

Now he was sending her back to the “States” for the same reason that he had taken her away—because she was the one thing in the world left to him and he loved her better than life.

The buckboard that waited would convey the two travellers to the stage line, and once in the stage they would soon reach Denver; from Denver they would take the cars straight across the plains.

Mr. Sukolt kissed his daughter’s lips and then, without a word, handed her over to Mr. Hamilton who lifted her up beside him.

“Good-by!” she called as the driver whipped up his horse—her face was turned wistfully toward the Padre.

“Good-by!” came from the throat of every man in camp. Not a miner moved till the odd vehicle with its precious burden passed out of sight.

It was thus that the pet of the Rocky Mountain gold-diggers left them. She was seated on a wooden box that was marked in big charcoal letters:

BUSHY SUKOLT,

New York City.

THE END.