cottontail almost every day, and some days he shot two. The rabbits,
however, are shyer than the gophers; when they find out that they get
shot as soon as they are seen, and that these men who shoot them have
built houses and mean to stay, they will gradually desert their burrows
and move away to new homes.
But the gopher is not so afraid. He lives down in the ground, and can
work in the dark as well as in the light; and he likes roots just as
well as he likes the stems above ground; so as long as he stays in his
cellar houses, he is hard to reach.
The gopher is a pretty little creature, with a striped back,--almost as
pretty as a chipmonk. It seems a great pity to have to kill them all
off; but there is no help for it; fruit-trees and gophers cannot live in
the same place.
Soon after Mr. Connor moved into his new house, he had a present of a
big cat from the Mexican woman who sold him milk.
She said to Jim one day, "Have you got a cat in your house yet?"
"No," said Jim. "Mr. George does not like cats."
"No matter," said she, "you have got to have one. The gophers and
squirrels in this country are a great deal worse than rats and mice.
They'll come right into your kitchen and cellar, if your back is turned
a minute, and eat you out of house and home. I'll give you a splendid
cat. She's a good hunter. I've got more cats than I know what to do
with."
So she presented Jim with a fine, big black and white cat; and Jim named
the cat "Mexican," because a Mexican woman gave her to him.
The first thing Mexican did, after getting herself established in her
new home in the woodpile, was to have a litter of kittens, six of them.
The next thing she did, as soon as they got big enough to eat meat, was
to go out hunting for food for them; and one day, as Mr. Connor was
riding up the hill, he saw her running into the woodpile, with a big fat
gopher in her mouth.
"Ha!" thought Mr. Connor to himself. "There's an idea! If one cat will
kill one gopher in a day, twenty cats would kill twenty gophers in a
day! I'll get twenty cats, and keep them just to hunt gophers. They'll
clear the place out quicker than poison, or traps, or drowning."
"Jim," he called, as soon as he entered the house,--"Jim, I've got an
idea. I saw Mexican just now carrying a dead gopher to her kittens. Does
she kill many?"
"Oh, yes, sir," replied Jim. "Before she got her kittens I used to see
her with them every day. But she does not go out so often now."
"Good mother!" said Mr. Connor. "Stays at home with her family, does
she?"
"Yes, sir," laughed Jim; "except when she needs to go out to get food
for them."
"You may set about making a collection of cats, Jim, at once," said Mr.
Connor. "I'd like twenty."
Jim stared. "I thought you didn't like cats, Mr. George," he exclaimed.
"I was afraid to bring Mexican home, for fear you wouldn't like having
her about."
"No more do I," replied Mr. Connor. "But I do not dislike them so much
as I dislike gophers. And don't you see, if we have twenty, and they
all hunt gophers as well as she does, we'll soon have the place
cleared?"
"We'd have to feed them, sir," said Jim. "So many's that, they'd never
make all their living off gophers."
"Well, we'll feed them once a day, just a little, so as not to let them
starve. But we must keep them hungry, or else they won't hunt."
"Very well, sir," said Jim. "I will set about it at once."
"Beg or buy them," laughed Mr. Connor. "I'll pay for them, if I can't
get them any other way. There is room in the woodpile for fifty to
live."
Jim did not much like the idea of having such an army of cats about; but
he went faithfully to work; and in a few weeks he had seventeen. One
morning, when they were all gathered together to be fed, he called Mr.
Connor to look at them.
"Do you think there are enough, sir?" he said.
"Goodness! Jim," cried Mr. Connor, "what did you get so many for? We
shall be overrun."
Jim laughed. "I'm three short yet, sir, of the number you ordered," he
said. "There are only seventeen in that batch."
"Only seventeen! You are joking, Jim," cried Mr. Connor; and he tried
to count; but the cats were in such a scrambling mass, he could not
count them.
"I give it up, Jim," he said at last. "But are there really only
seventeen?"
"That's all, sir, and it takes quite a lot of meat to give them all a
bite of a morning. I think here are enough to begin with, unless you
have set your heart, sir, on having twenty. Mexican has got six kittens,
you know, and they will be big enough to hunt before long. That will
make twenty-three."
"Plenty! plenty!" said Mr. Connor. "Don't get another one. And, Jim," he
added, "wouldn't it be better to feed them at night? Then they will be
hungry the next morning."
"I tried that, sir," said Jim, "but they didn't seem so lively. I don't
give them any more than just enough to whet their appetites. At first
they sat round the door begging for more, half the morning, and I had to
stone them away; now they understand it. In a few minutes, they'll all
be off; and you won't see much of any of them till to-morrow morning.
They are all on hand then, as regular as the sun rises."
"Where do they sleep?" said Mr. Connor.
"In the woodpile, every blessed cat of them," replied Jim. "And there
are squirrels living in there too. It is just a kind of cage, that
woodpile, with its crooks and turns. I saw a squirrel going up, up, in
it the other day; I thought he'd make his way out to the top; I thought
the cats would have cleaned them all out before this time, but they
haven't; I saw one there only yesterday."
Jim had counted too soon on Mexican's kittens. Five of them came to a
sad end. Their mother carried to them, one day, a gopher which she found
lying dead in the road. Poor cat-mother! I suppose she thought to
herself when she saw it lying there, "Oh, how lucky! I sha'n't have to
sit and wait and watch for a gopher this morning. Here is one all ready,
dead!" But that gopher had died of poison which had been put down his
hole; and as soon as the little kittens ate it, they were all taken
dreadfully ill, and all but one died. Either he hadn't had so much of
the gopher as the rest had, or else he was stronger; he lingered along
in misery for a month, as thin, wretched-looking a little beast as ever
was seen; then he began to pick up his flesh, and finally got to be as
strong a cat as there was in the whole pack.
He was most curiously marked: in addition to the black and white of his
mother's skin, he had gray and yellow mottled in all over him. Jim
thought it looked as if his skin had been painted, so he named him
Fresco.
Jim had names for all the best cats; there were ten that were named.
The other seven, Jim called "the rabble;" but of the ten he had named,
Jim grew to be very proud. He thought they were remarkable cats.
First there was Mexican, the original first-comer in the colony. Then
there was Big Tom, and another Tom called China Tom, because he would
stay all the time he could with the Chinamen. He was dark-gray, with
black stripes on him.
Next in size and beauty was a huge black cat, called Snowball. He was
given to Mr. Connor by a miner's wife, who lived in a cabin high up on
the mountain. She said she would let him have the cat on the condition
that he would continue to call him Snowball, as she had done. She named
him Snowball, she said, to make herself laugh every time she called him,
he being black as coal; and there was so little to laugh at where she
lived, she liked a joke whenever she could contrive one.
Then there was Skipper, the one who nearly ate up Fairy that first
morning; he also was as black as coal, and fierce as a wolf; all the
cats were more or less afraid of him. Jim named him Skipper, because he
used to race about in trees like a squirrel. Way up to the very top of
the biggest sycamore trees in the cañon back of the house, Skipper would
go, and leap from one bough to another. He was especially fond of birds,
and in this way he caught many. He thought birds were much better
eating than gophers.
Mexican, Big Tom, China Tom, Snowball, Skipper, and Fresco,--these are
six of the names; the other four were not remarkable; they did not mean
anything in especial; only to distinguish their owners from the rest,
who had no names at all.
Oh, yes; I am forgetting the drollest of all: that was Humbug. Jim gave
her that name because she was so artful and sly about getting more than
her share of the meat. She would watch for the biggest pieces, and
pounce on them right under some other cat's nose, and almost always
succeed in getting them. So Jim named her Humbug, which was a very good
name; for she always pretended to be quieter and stiller than the rest,
as if she were not in any great hurry about her breakfast; and then she
whisked in, and got the biggest pieces, and twice as much as any other
cat there.
The other names were Jenny, Capitan, and Growler. That made the ten.
In a very few days after Jusy and Rea arrived, they knew all these cats'
names as well as Jim did; and they were never tired of watching them at
their morning meal, or while they were prowling, looking, and waiting
for gophers and rabbits.
For a long time, Rea carried Fairy tight in her arms whenever there was
a cat in sight; but after a while, the cats all came to know Fairy so
well that they took no notice of her, and it was safe to put her on the
ground and let her run along. But Rea kept close to her, and never
forgot her for a single minute.
There were many strange things which these cats did, besides hunting the
gophers. They used also to hunt snakes. In one of the rocky ravines near
the house there were large snakes of a beautiful golden-brown color. On
warm days these used to crawl out, and lie sunning themselves on the
rocks. Woe to any such snake, if one of the cats caught sight of him!
Big Tom had a special knack at killing them. He would make a bound, and
come down with his fore claws firm planted in the middle of the snake's
back; then he would take it in his teeth, and shake it, flapping its
head against the stones every time, till it was more dead than alive.
You would not have thought that so big a snake could have been so
helpless in the claws of a cat.
Another thing the cats did, which gave the men much amusement, was, that
when they had killed rabbits they carried the bodies into the mules'
stables. Mules are terribly frightened at the smell of a dead rabbit.
Whenever this happened, a great braying and crying and stamping would be
heard in the stables; and on running to see what was the matter, there
would be found Big Tom or Skipper, sitting down calm and happy by the
side of a dead rabbit, which he had carried in, and for some reason or
other best known to himself had deposited in plain sight of the mules.
Why they chose to carry dead rabbits there, unless it was that they
enjoyed seeing the mules so frightened, there seemed no explaining. They
never took dead gophers up there, or snakes; only the rabbits. Once a
mule was so frightened that he plunged till he broke his halter, got
free, and ran off down the hill; and the men had a big chase before they
overtook him.
But the queerest thing of all that happened, was that the cats adopted a
skunk; or else it was the skunk that adopted the cats; I don't know
which would be the proper way of stating it; but at any rate the skunk
joined the family, lived with them in the woodpile, came with them every
morning to be fed, and went off with them hunting gophers every day. It
must have been there some time before Jim noticed it, for when he first
saw it, it was already on the most familiar and friendly terms with all
the cats. It was a pretty little black and white creature, and looked a
good deal like one of Mexican's kittens.
Finally it became altogether too friendly: Jim found it in the kitchen
cellar one day; and a day or two after that, it actually walked into
the house. Mr. Connor was sitting in his library writing. He heard a
soft, furry foot patting on the floor, and thought it was Fairy.
Presently he looked up; and, to his horror, there was the cunning little
black and white skunk in the doorway, looking around and sniffing
curiously at everything, like a cat. Mr. Connor held his breath and did
not dare stir, for fear the creature should take it into its head that
he was an enemy. Seeing everything so still, the skunk walked in, walked
around both library and dining-room, taking minute observations of
everything by means of its nose. Then it softly patted out again, across
the hall, and out of the front door, down the veranda steps.
It had seemed an age to Mr. Connor; he could hardly help laughing too,
as he sat there in his chair, to think how helpless he, a grown-up man,
felt before a creature no bigger than that,--a little thing whose neck
he could wring with one hand; and yet he no more dared to touch it, or
try to drive it out, than if it had been a roaring lion. As soon as it
was fairly out of the way, Mr. Connor went in search of Jim.
"Jim," said he, "that skunk you were telling me about, that the cats had
adopted, seems to be thinking of adopting me; he spent some time in the
library with me this morning, looking me over; and I am afraid he liked
me and the place much too well. I should like to have him killed. Can
you manage it?"
"Yes, sir," laughed Jim. "I was thinking I'd have to kill him. I caught
him in the cellar a day or two since, and I thought he was getting to
feel too much at home. I'll fix him."
So the next morning Jim took a particularly nice and tempting piece of
meat, covered it with poison, and just as the cats' breakfast was
finished, and the cats slowly dispersing, he threw this tidbit directly
at the little skunk. He swallowed it greedily, and before noon he was
dead.
Jim could not help being sorry when he saw him stretched out stiff near
his home in the woodpile. "He was a pert little rascal;" said Jim. "I
did kind o' hate to kill him; but he should have stayed with his own
folks, if he wanted to be let alone. It's too dangerous having skunks
round."
In less than a year's time, there was not a rabbit to be seen on Mr.
Connor's grounds, and only now and then a gopher, the hunter cats had
done their work so thoroughly.
But there was one other enemy that Mr. Connor would have to be rid of,
before he could have any great success with his fruit orchards. You will
be horrified to hear the name of this enemy. It was the linnet. Yes, the
merry, chirping, confiding little linnets, with their pretty red heads
and bright eyes, they also were enemies, and must be killed. They were
too fond of apricots and peaches and pears and raspberries, and all
other nice fruits.
If birds only had sense enough, when they want a breakfast or dinner of
fruit, to make it off one, or even two,--eat the peach or the pear or
whatever it might be all up, as we do,--they might be tolerated in
orchards; nobody would grudge a bird one peach or cherry. But that isn't
their way. They like to hop about in the tree, and take a nip out of
first one, then another, and then another, till half the fruit on the
tree has been bitten into and spoiled. In this way, they ruin bushels of
fruit every season.
"I wonder if we could not teach the cats to hunt linnets, Jim," said Mr.
Connor one morning. It was at the breakfast-table.
"O Uncle George! the dear sweet little linnets!" exclaimed Rea, ready to
cry.
"Yes, my dear sweet little girl," said Uncle George. "The dear sweet
little linnets will not leave us a single whole peach or apricot or
cherry to eat."
"No!" said Jusy, "they're a perfect nuisance. They've pecked at every
apricot on the trees already."
"I don't care," said Rea. "Why can't they have some? I'd just as soon
eat after a linnet as not. Their little bills must be all clean and
sweet. Don't have them killed, Uncle George."
"No danger but that there will be enough left, dear," said Uncle George.
"However many we shoot, there will be enough left. I believe we might
kill a thousand to-day and not know the difference."
The cats had already done a good deal at hunting linnets on their own
account, in a clandestine and irregular manner. They were fond of linnet
flesh, and were only too glad to have the assistance of an able-bodied
man with a gun.
When they first comprehended Jim's plan,--that he would go along with
his gun, and they should scare the linnets out of the trees, wait for
the shot, watch to see where the birds fell, and then run and pick them
up,--it was droll to see how clever they became in carrying it out.
Retriever dogs could not have done better. The trouble was, that Jim
could shoot birds faster than the cats could eat them; and no cat would
stir from his bird till it was eaten up, sometimes feathers and all; and
after he had had three or four, he didn't care about any more that day.
To tell the truth, after the first few days, they seemed a little tired
of the linnet diet, and did not work with so much enthusiasm. But at
first it was droll, indeed, to see their excitement. As soon as Jim
appeared with his gun, every cat in sight would come scampering; and it
would not be many minutes before the rest of the band--however they
might have been scattered,--would somehow or other get wind of what was
going on, and there would be the whole seventeen in a pack at Jim's
heels, all keeping a sharp lookout on the trees; then, as soon as a cat
saw a linnet, he would make for the tree, sometimes crouch under the
tree, sometimes run up it; in either case the linnet was pretty sure to
fly out: pop, would go Jim's rifle; down would come the linnet;
helter-skelter would go the cats to the spot where it fell; and in a
minute more, there would be nothing to be seen of that linnet, except a
few feathers and a drop or two of blood on the ground.
[Illustration: JIM AND THE CATS HUNTING LINNETS.--Page 111.]
Jusy liked to go with Jim on these hunting expeditions. But Rea would
never go. She used to sit sorrowfully at home, and listen for the
gunshots; and at every shot she heard, she would exclaim to Anita, "Oh,
dear! Oh, dear! There's another dear little linnet dead. I think Jusy is
a cruel, cruel boy! I wouldn't see them shot for anything, and I don't
like the cats any more."
"But," said Anita, "my little señorita did not mind having the gophers
killed. It does not hurt the linnets half so much to be shot dead in one
second, as it does the gophers to be caught in the cats' claws, and torn
to pieces sometimes while they are yet alive. The shot-gun kills in a
second."
"I don't care," said Rea. "It seems different; the linnets are so
pretty."
"That is not a reason for pitying them any more," said Anita gravely.
"You did not find those old Indians you saw yesterday pretty. On the
contrary, they were frightful to look at; yet you pitied them so much
that you shed tears."
"Oh, yes!" cried Rea, "I should think I did; and, Anita, I dreamed about
them all night long. I am going to ask Uncle George to build a little
house for them up in the cañon. There is plenty of room there he does
not want; and then nobody could drive them out of that place as long as
they live; and I could carry them their dinner every day. Don't you
think he will?"
"Bless your kind little heart!" said Anita. "That would be asking a
great deal of your Uncle George, but he is so kind, perhaps he will. If
somebody does not take compassion on the poor things, they will starve,
that is certain."
"I shall ask him the minute he comes in," said Rea. "I am going down on
the piazza now to watch for him." And taking Fairy in her arms, Rea
hurried downstairs, went out on the veranda, and, climbing up into the
hammock, was sound asleep in ten minutes.
She was waked up by feeling herself violently swung from side to side,
and opening her eyes, saw Jusy standing by her side, his face flushed
with the heat, his eyes sparkling.
"O Rea!" he said. "We have had a splendid hunt! What do you think! Jim
has shot twenty linnets in this one morning! and that Skipper, he's
eaten five of them! He's as good as a regular hunting dog."
"Where's Uncle George?" asked Rea sleepily, rubbing her eyes. "I want
Uncle George! I don't want you to tell me anything about the cats'
eating the linnets. I hate them! They're cruel!"
"'Tisn't cruel either!" retorted Jusy. "They've got to be killed. All
people that have orchards have to kill birds."
"I won't, when I have an orchard," said Rea.
"Then you won't have any orchard. That will be all," said Jusy. "At
least, you won't have any fruit orchard. You'll have just a tree
orchard."
"Well, a tree orchard is good enough for anybody," replied Rea half
crossly. She was not yet quite wide awake. "There is plenty of fruit in
stores, to buy. We could buy our fruit."
"Are you talking in your sleep, Rea?" cried Jusy, looking hard at her.
"I do believe you are! What ails you? The men that have the fruit to
sell, had to kill all the linnets and things, just the same way, or else
they wouldn't have had any fruit. Can't you see?"
No, Rea could not see; and what was more, she did not want to see; and
as the proverb says, "There are none so blind as those who won't see."
"Don't talk any more about it, Jusy," she said. "Do you think Uncle
George would build a little house up the cañon for poor old Ysidro?"
"Who!" exclaimed Jusy.
"Oh, you cruel boy!" cried Rea. "You don't think of anything but killing
linnets, and such cruel things; I think you are real wicked. Don't you
know those poor old Indians we saw yesterday?--the ones that are going
to be turned out of their house, down in San Gabriel by the church. I
have been thinking about them ever since; and I dreamed last night that
Uncle George built them a house. I'm going to ask him to."
"I bet you anything he won't, then," said Jusy. "The horrid old beggars!
He wouldn't have such looking things round!"
Rea was wide awake now. She fixed her lovely blue eyes on Jusy's face
with a look which made him ashamed. "Jusy," she said, "I can't help it
if you are older than I am; I must say, I think you are cruel. You like
to kill linnets; and now you won't be sorry for these poor old Indians,
just because they are dirty and horrid-looking. You'd look just as bad
yourself, if your skin was black, and you were a hundred years old, and
hadn't got a penny in the world. You are real hard-hearted, Jusy, I do
think you are!" and the tears came into Rea's eyes.
"What is all this?" said Uncle George, coming up the steps. "Not
quarrelling, my little people!"
"Oh, no! no!" cried both the children eagerly.
"I never quarrel with Rea," added Jusy proudly. "I hope I am old enough
to know better than that."
"I'm only two years the youngest," said Rea, in a mortified tone. "I
think I am old enough to be quarrelled with; and I do think you're
cruel, Jusy."
This made Uncle George smile. "Look out!" he said. "You will be in a
quarrel yet, if you are not careful. What is it, Rea?"
While Rea was collecting her thoughts to reply, Jusy took the words out
of her mouth.
"She thinks I am cruel, because I said I didn't believe you would build
a house for Indians up in your cañon."
"It was not that!" cried Rea. "You are real mean, Jusy!"
And so I think, myself, he was. He had done just the thing which is so
often done in this world,--one of the unfairest and most provoking of
things; he had told the truth in such a way as to give a wrong
impression, which is not so very far different, in my opinion, from
telling a lie.
"A home for Indians up in the cañon!" exclaimed Uncle George, drawing
Rea to him, and seating her on his knee. "Did my little tender-hearted
Rea want me to do that? It would take a very big house, girlie, for all
the poor Indians around here;" and Uncle George looked lovingly at Rea,
and kissed her hair, as she nestled her head into his neck. "Just like
her mother," he thought. "She would have turned every house into an
asylum if she could."
"Oh, not for all the Indians, Uncle George," said Rea, encouraged by his
kind smile,--"I am not such a fool as Jusy thinks,--only for those two
old ones that are going to be turned out of their home they've always
lived in. You know the ones I mean."
"Ah, yes,--old Ysidro and his wife. Well, Rea, I had already thought of
that myself. So you were not so much ahead of me."
"There!" exclaimed Rea triumphantly, turning to Jusy. "What do you say
now?"
Jusy did not know exactly what to say, he was so astonished; and as he
saw Jim and the cats coming up the road at that minute, he gladly took
the opportunity to spring down from the veranda and run to meet them.
[Illustration: decorative panel]*
IV.