Bushy

Bushy took her cat with her. It was a Maltese, with the softest fur, and large eyes that Bushy said looked like stars in the night. Bushy loved Pete, for that was his name, more than she did anything else in the world, except her father.

Mr. Sukolt had no idea that Pete would stay with the wagon, but he thought if it made Bushy any happier she could try and take him along.

So they put a collar of bright red leather around Pete’s neck and fastened to that a leader, just as if he were a dog. Bushy was told to keep a tight hold on it, or her Pete would be making tracks for home. She was very much frightened, of course, and to make him more secure she had her father tie the leader to her bracelet, and thus the two were ever seen together. The bracelet was a small circle of gold that had been slipped over her fat hand a few days before her mamma died, and when Bushy started out West it was still on her arm. Old Mrs. Golden had tried several times to get it off, but the hand was too fat to let it slip over without hurting her.

You can imagine how funny Bushy and Pete looked, always together, and sometimes, if Pete wanted to go anywhere very much, he would start on a keen run and pull Bushy after him. Once he smelled a mouse that had been brought along in the feed wagon. Bushy was watching Tom as he gave Ned, who was known as her pony, and the other horses their breakfast, and all at once Pete made a bound for the sack. He jumped and ran and pulled and mewed to get away, and Bushy’s little feet had to trot very fast to keep her from falling. Pete was a very big cat, and when Bushy tried to carry him, her arms would just meet around his fat body.

They were six weeks on the way to the Rocky Mountains and Pete got so accustomed to following his little mistress about, that all she had to do to make him obey was to say, “Pete, tum on,” and he would trot along by her side without being pulled by the string, as she had to do at first. He would play “dead” and lie in her lap for five minutes at a time without moving even his tail, but when she cried, “Oo is well, now, Pete,” he would jump down and race around and around her till the leader would wind them into a tangled ball; they would play hours this way. Pete seldom scratched her, but he was very cross if the men touched him. Every time her father washed her face she thought it necessary to wash Pete’s too. He did not seem to like it, yet he knew he could not get away, so he let her wet his face till she thought it quite clean. Once she tried to wash his paws, but he showed his claws and growled so that Bushy thought it not necessary to keep his feet clean. Pete disliked to get his paws wet, and Bushy would pick him up and carry him whenever she was out where it was wet and muddy.

Like all travellers in immigrant trains that started west in those days, the motto adopted by these geologists was “Pike’s Peak or bust;” when in fact their destination was far north of Pike’s Peak, a place known as the Great Pine Mine district, and where eventually Mr. Sukolt severed himself from the surveying party and remained for years as overseer and part owner of Great Pine Mine.

Outside of prickly pears, cactus, “old man weed” and Pete, Bushy recalls very little of that first trip across the plains, but that day the wagons drove up to the one good shanty at Great Pine she will never forget.

“Here we are, by Jove!” shouted Tom as he leaped from the wagon and reached for Bushy and Pete.

It is needless to say that the curiosity shown by the miners over the surveying party was nothing when compared with that they displayed over the child and her cat.

An old fellow, named Walt, said he couldn’t stand it. “It reminds me too strongly of home, by thunder!” he remarked as he walked away. Two hours later he was found dead drunk under a tree near his cabin. The bottle had been his consolation.

Shanks, a big strapping Englishman, possessor of one of the best hearts in the world, a jolly, easy-go-lucky chap, a good scholar and surgeon, had gone early to the mining fields because his health had failed him, and since 1849 he had been haunting all new gold strikes, had had no particular good luck, but had managed to pay his way, and at this time boasted a constitution that seemed made of wrought iron.

It was not long before Shanks became the fourth one in this family—not counting Pete, the cat, Rover, the dog, and Ned, the pony, every one of which Bushy considered quite as important as herself.

Of all the wonderful Rocky Mountain scenery Great Pine Mine was the centre of the most picturesque spot to be found. No pencil or brush could ever reveal the weird and awful grandeur of those wild gorges, the walls of which in places rose perpendicularly from the foaming streams to a height of 3,000 feet. The canyon leading from the mine in a southerly direction widened into a valley through which a rather good road had been made, but as it ascended the cliffs it narrowed into what the civilized world would have called a dangerous, rocky path.

Some estimate of the difficulty in reaching these mines can be gained from the fact that it took the surveying party six hours to make the last mile and a half.

To the north there was a chasm ten miles in length, hemmed in by walls two hundred to four hundred feet in height; while on the west rose cliffs eight hundred to two thousand feet in altitude.

At the place where the mine was situated the sun never shone more than three hours a day, but those three hours turned the pinnacles, buttresses, and opalized walls into all kinds of awe-inspiring forms, brightened with all the colors of the rainbow.

Mr. Sukolt always declared that Aladdin’s wonderful garden (to which Tom generally confined his bed-time stories) paled into insignificance when the sun shone on Great Pine Mine.

The story must be told by and by how Bushy’s love for Pete made her disobey her father. It was the only time in her life that she was ever quite so naughty. Bushy always had a cat even after she lost Pete. The miners would ask everywhere they went if there was a cat in camp, and if gold could buy it, the cat was sure to go to Bushy. You see, she loved cats so she squeezed them hard when she hugged them, and then she would pick them up sometimes by the tail, sometimes by the head, and often by the back, and carry them as far as they would let her. Her tiny hands were often covered with scratches, because she found none so gentle as Pete had been, and she would forget that they were not all Petes. It kept the miners busy furnishing Bushy with cats, as the life of one, after Bushy became its mistress, was of short duration. One of the miners fenced off a piece of ground and called it the cat graveyard, and there Bushy buried all her pets in a row, with pine headboards, on which were burned with a hot poker the names of her lamented darlings.

Now for the story about Pete. They had been at Great Pine Mine just a year when the Indian trouble began. The miners had built a small fort by digging a hole in the ground and covering it with stone and sod, leaving portholes a foot apart all around just under the roof’s edge. Anybody inside could see all over the country and pick off any Indian who was brave enough to come within rifle range, while the Indians had no show whatever. They might shoot all day at the fort without there being the slightest danger of hurting any one inside. The fort was deep and half-filled with ammunition, food, bedding, and a keg or two of water. This precaution had been taken, although it was thought the Indians would not come so far north as the Great Pine Mine until warmer weather.

It was eight o’clock at night, and several miners were playing cards—California Jack, they called the game. Mr. Sukolt was busy at a table near sorting specimens and Bushy and Pete were curled up asleep on a buffalo robe in front of the big fire-place. The only light in the shanty came from the bright blaze of the pine-knots.

“Hist!” cried Mr. Sukolt, looking up from the rocks and listening. The card-players checked their laughter and turned their faces toward the door. Pete stretched himself and Bushy sat up and rubbed her eyes.

“It’s a horseman riding like mad,” exclaimed one of the men, rising and going to the door. Mr. Sukolt reached for his belt and buckled it with two revolvers about him; and the miners, who had taken off theirs, did the same. As if by instinct they all scented danger and mechanically prepared for it. Mr. Sukolt selected a warm blanket from the bunk near at hand and threw it down by Bushy, then joined the others, who had by this time stepped outside, and awaited the rider.

“It is some one who knows the way,” cried Tom; “there must be something after him. It is pitch dark, and I defy anything to keep close to a horse running like that.”

The words were no sooner said than Shanks dashed up to the door. The horse was trembling in every limb and Shanks’s face was as white as a sheet.

“To the fort, boys! The Indians attacked us in Stone Gulch, and I am the only one who escaped. I saw five of the boys scalped; then fled, for I was one against twenty, and I hoped to save you. Sh! They are closer than I thought.”

A distant thud, thud, thud, signified the approach of mounted Indians; then everything was still.

“They are dismounting,” cried Mr. Sukolt. “They mean to shoot from ambush. To the fort, boys, to the fort!”

Shanks slipped off the bridle and turned his horse loose.

“There, old fellow, if the redskins get after you, you are free to save yourself if you can.” He gave him a smart stroke that sent him running down the path toward the mine.

“Tan I take Pete?” lisped Bushy, who had not stirred from the robe, but had heard every word.

“No, dear,” said her father, “one mew might forfeit our lives.” He turned to get a strap, saying: “Bushy, roll into the blanket; I am going to strap you to my back.” Bushy knew what that meant, for she had often been strapped to him when he had climbed the high mountains.

“Play dead,” said Bushy to Pete, giving him a soft tap on the nose. He immediately stretched himself out, and she wrapped him in her shawl, then rolled herself and Pete head and ears in the blanket.

Mr. Sukolt, who had been arranging the strap, had not noticed Bushy. Shanks was waiting at the door and keeping a lookout. Then Bushy’s father picked her up and strapped her in a kind of sling, leaving his arms and hands free to use his rifle.

“Play dead,” cried Bushy, for Pete objected a little to the treatment he was getting.

“What is it, Bushy?” asked her father.

She was silent. It was the first time in her life she had been unable to answer her father. “Are you strapped too tight? What is it, Bushy?” he inquired again, as he hurried out and joined Shanks.

“Nuffin’,” she said, and snuggled down in the sling. She was afraid to say “play dead” any more to Pete, so when he squirmed again she grasped his nose firmly with her fingers and held on like grim death. The more he squirmed the tighter she clinched with her fingers. It was a very serious affair with Bushy. The idea of leaving Pete to be killed by the Indians made her desperate. All the danger that her father saw in Pete’s going was that he might mew, and she intended that he should not. So, though after a half hour he quit wriggling about, she still kept the death-grip on his nose. He could not scratch, because of being bound up in the shawl. They were over an hour getting into the fort—some of the Indians got between them and it. The savages knew nothing of the stronghold and were trying to reach the shanty of the chief, as they called Mr. Sukolt’s place. But by good manœuvring on the part of the miners and the sound of the riderless horse’s hoofs near the mine the Indians were misled and turned to the left, leaving the ravine clear for the men to go through.