Bushy

It was only natural that the miners should think a great deal of Bushy. She was the only little girl in camp—the only child, in fact—and, of course, they petted her and thought everything she did was just right. I suppose she often did naughty things, like any other little girl, yet she saved their lives one day, and after that the miners could not do enough for her.

On this particular morning Mr. Sukolt had ordered the men to do an extra day’s work, because a certain amount of ore was to be sent down the mountain that night.

“Tom, I want you to stop long enough to get a hot dinner for the boys; you and Bushy can bring it over, and save the time that would be spent in going to the shanty,” he said, as he left early and joined the miners at the Great Pine Mine.

Bushy busied herself, as she always did, in what she called “helping Tom do up.” Then she took her slate and wrote her letters—she had to get her lesson every day and say it to her father or Tom before she went to bed. After that she had a romp with Rover, and finally went to sleep with her head pillowed on his shaggy coat. Rover was of a breed half Newfoundland and half St. Bernard. He was immense in size and of a most affectionate nature, his whole object in life being his care for Bushy. She must have slept for a long, long time, because when she awoke Tom was ready to take the dinner to the boys.

“Get on your hood, Bushy, and hurry up, you little toad; I thought you were going to sleep all day,” cried Tom, giving her a gentle shake. “You must help me carry these things. How can I ever get them over alone?”

“Why, you touldn’t,” replied Bushy, scrambling to her feet, and looking very cross at Rover. “You bad doggy, you made me fordet all about it!”

Poor Rover, who had been so careful not to move even his toes for fear of disturbing his little mistress, took the rebuke good-naturedly and wagged his tail hard to show that he meant nothing wrong.

“We have but one horse to-day, and you must ride in front of me and carry the bread and meat while I carry these two tin pails,” said Tom, as he hurried about getting things ready.

“What you dot two for?” questioned Bushy.

“One has coffee and the other soup. It’s a surprise for the boys. They don’t get soup every day, do they? I killed a rabbit just behind the shanty. I guess he didn’t know we lived here or he would have kept out of the way.”

“Where is his tail, Tom? I want his tail,” said Bushy, dropping her hood and running to the table where Tom had skinned the rabbit.

“Here it is, you little stupid,” laughed Tom, picking up her hood and showing her how he had fastened the tail on so it stuck up like a feather on the very top.

Bushy clapped her hands and waited for Tom to tie the hood on her head. Her hair stuck out every way, for no one had taken time to comb it, and romping with Rover had not improved her looks. She took great delight in “fixing up” with rabbit tails and bird feathers. Sometimes she seemed more like a little Indian than a white child. One must not forget that she had no playthings to amuse her, as have children who live in the city.

In a very little while they got to the mine. Bushy was so anxious to exhibit her rabbit’s tail to her papa that she begged hard to go down into the mine with Tom.

“Please let me do,” she pleaded.

Tom at first was not inclined to let her descend, because there is always more or less danger of falling rocks in the mine, and if some one did not stop work and go about with her, Mr. Sukolt always felt uneasy until she was taken out. She was ever in motion, and flew hither and thither, filling the mine with her jolly little laugh or whistling like the birds she heard in the pine-trees, and loading her pockets with every bright piece of ore she could pick up with her brown fingers. Sometimes she would perch herself on the ledges or shelves near where a miner was working with his pick and watch him. A smile of peculiar softness would steal over the hard faces of the rough miners as they passed and stretched out their hard and dirty hands to pat her head and say: “Hello, Bushy! how many tons are you going to get out to-day?”

Miners, when following a vein, at first pick out no more of the rock than is necessary to secure the richest ore. This often leaves the sections with walls that are dug into in such a way as to appear filled with great shelves. After the rich ore has been sent up in the bucket and everything cleared away other miners follow and cut down the uneven parts into smooth surfaces, which are “planked up,” and sometimes made yet more secure by having great wooden pillars built in for support.

It was on one of these shelves that Bushy was perched this day when she saved the miners’ lives. Walt had been at work near Bushy clearing up, but was called away by Tom to eat his dinner.

“Stay where you are, Bushy,” cried Tom, “until I dole out the victuals, then I’ll take you up again.”

There were several rooms or sections in the mine, and as they meant to blast after dinner all the tools and breakable things had been carried into the far end of one of the divisions, and a small keg of powder was opened and ready for use just below the ledge on which Bushy was sitting.

To be able to reach the vein Walt had built a temporary scaffold that lifted him about three feet from the bottom, and this was still standing when one of the miners, remembering that the powder was uncovered, got up quickly to put something over it.

He bumped his head against one of the wooden beams put up to support the sides of the mine, and his lamp was knocked from his hat and went bounding in a zigzag direction toward the powder, thirty feet away.

The miners were panic-stricken. The wick had burnt low, and as it turned over and over, instead of going out, the whole thing got ablaze and rolled on and on like one ball of fire, impishly bent on doing all the mischief possible.