Bushy

Until Bushy Sukolt was four years old she had lived with her father and mother in the town of Afton, Iowa. Mr. Sukolt was of the firm of Sukolt & Block, the largest iron foundry...

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...

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 though...

Just think of Bushy as she grew older as a very little girl with fluffy hair that stood on end all the time. Her father kept it cut pretty short because there was no one to comb...

“Why, what’s the matter, Tom?” said she, sleepily, sitting up in bed, striving with all her might to keep her eyes wide open by rubbing her brown knuckles into them. Tom had bee...

Some time after Bushy had helped save the men from the snow-slide she had an adventure with Rover which was very funny, though Bushy’s heart was almost broken because it ended i...

“Padre, now my hair is short, I’m going to play boy,” said Bushy a month after Rover had pulled her from the pond. “Do all the boys feel light-headed like I do?”

“Padre, I am going out to try and catch a prairie-dog to-day!” called out Bushy to her father one bright Fall morning just after he had started for the mine. “Billy is lonesome,...

Next day after Bushy had been bitten by the snake, Mr. Sukolt had to go with a load of ore to the nearest smelting works, which were miles away, quite at the foot of the mountai...

Picture to yourself a girl of eleven summers as she came one day out of one of the shanties at Great Pine Mine; a little girl still, dressed in coffee sacks, two making the skir...

Bushy continued as little housekeeper for her father at Great Pine Mine until December of the next year. Mr. Sukolt was then called south to Cross Roads, a settlement composed o...

“Sh! Don’t say anything you will be sorry for, Bushy,” said her father, as he looked down upon his little daughter, who stood grabbing at her short hair with both brown hands. B...

“Halloo! What are you two old fellows talking about, that you stop short the minute I come in,” said Bushy as she stood in the doorway with her arms loaded down with the fresh p...

“I know what I will do, I will make biscuits for supper--biscuits like Tom makes,” said Bushy one morning as she gazed at a sack of flour that had cost Mr. Sukolt just one dolla...

“Don’t do it, Tom. I know you can’t do it,” said Bushy in a sharp, excited voice. Indians had suddenly appeared near the cabin and the two were alone inside. The moment was a cr...

“I’ll give you the finest set of gold jewelry I can find if you beat me killing Rocky Mountain sheep,” said Tom to Bushy one day the following summer, when she was boasting that...

“The supply-wagons are ten days late,” said Mr. Sukolt, anxiously; “and I am beginning to grow uneasy, for we are getting out of everything to eat, as well as powder and fuse fo...

“Don’t believe you will do at all,” said Bushy, “but I’ll try you.” Jip, for that was the new horse’s name, turned his head and looked appealingly at the child who thought he wa...

“Just look at it, Tom,” she cried the morning they left Great Pine Mine. “See, I have fixed the room up beautifully, quite like a true house!” The conveyance had been packed ful...

“Hello, Rover, Rover! Where are you, Rover?” called Bushy, suddenly stopping her crying and rushing about wildly for her dog. Nobody had seen Rover. Several soldiers were helpin...

“I have spoilt my skirt. It is all mud and powder, and I wish Padre would not put his head out so often, he may get hurt.” Thus she went on thinking to herself and crawling slow...

Rover went almost wild over her recovery, even if she did look more dead than alive, as they tenderly put her in Mr. Sukolt’s arms and hastened back to the fort for medical aid....

Bushy was very much surprised when, in the middle of the night, she woke up. Generally when once she was asleep it required a good deal of shaking to wake her before the usual t...

“Come, my work here is done, the maps are all finished, and I want to go to Central City as soon as we can get away. How long does my little girl think it will take us to pack t...

“I must stay here one day to give the horses and mules a rest and have a chance to look over this district,” said Mr. Sukolt to Tom and Shanks early in the morning as their wago...

“Jip, if you don’t keep still I will come out and whip you,” called Bushy next morning about four o’clock. She raised the wagon-cover and peeped out to see why the horse should...

The party in the tunnel had suffered dreadfully. The woodwork about the mouth of the excavation had caught fire, and to save their lives the miners had fought the flames with al...

“Central City! Here we are,” cried Tom as the wagons reached a high point in the road, from which the travellers could look down on a small town; its little shanties scattered a...

“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,...

“Would you be very unhappy, do you think, Bushy, if I were to leave you here to attend the school for six months?” asked Mr. Sukolt early the next morning, after Bushy had tried...

“I declare, Bushy, I have not heard a word the old fellow has said,” answered Tom, with a start. “I was ’way back in Iowa in my mind, you know, having a good time at the foundry...

Two weeks after Bushy’s ride on the bucking broncho the train of miners reached Whitestone, a place in the mountains where it was reported that great gold strikes had been made....

“Good-morning,” said Miner Bob to Bushy, as she opened the cabin door the next day. “I’ve been waiting here since six o’clock for you to wake up. You see, I want to take you alo...

“What is it?” asked Bushy of her father, who was reading attentively a letter that had come to him by the last mail-wagon. “What is it, Padre? You look so serious.”

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, n...

When Bushy awoke the next morning, her father, Tom, and Shanks were busying themselves over the wounded brigand. “Do you know,” said the chief, as he lay stretched out full leng...

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...