The Chinaman, Ah Foo, Feeding the Cats—Page 70.The Chinaman, Ah Foo, Feeding the Cats—Page 70.
Before she had finished speaking, Rea was downstairs and out on the east veranda. At the kitchen door stood a Chinaman, throwing bits of meat to the scrambling seventeen cats,—black, white, tortoise-shell, gray, maltese, yellow, every color, size, shape of cat that was ever seen. And they were plungingand leaping and racing about so, that it looked like twice as many cats as there really were, and as if every cat had a dozen tails. "Sfz! Sfz! Sputter! Scratch, spp, spt! Growl, growl, miaow, miaow," they went, till, between the noise and the flying around, it was a bedlam.
Jusy had laughed till the tears ran out of his eyes; and Ah Foo (that was the Chinaman's name) was laughing almost as hard, just to see Jusy laugh. The cats were an old story to Ah Foo; he had got over laughing at them long ago.
Ah Foo was the cook's brother. While Jim had been away, Ah Foo had waited at table, and done all the housework except the cooking. The cook's name was Wang Hi. He was old; but Ah Foo was young, not more than twenty. He did not like to work in the house, and he was glad Jim had got home, so he could go to working out of doors again. He was very glad, too, to see the children; and he had spoken so pleasantly to Jusy, that in one minute Jusy had lost all his fear of Chinamen.
When Rea saw Ah Foo, she hung back, and was afraid to go nearer.
"Oh, come on! come on!" shouted Jusy. "Don't be afraid! He is just like Jim, only a different color. They have men of all kinds of colors here in America. They are just like other people, all but the color. Come on, Rea. Don't be silly. You can't half see from there!"
But Rea was afraid. She would not come farther than the last pillar of the veranda. "I can see very well here," she said; and there she stood clinging to the pillar. She was half afraid of the cats, too, besides being very much afraid of the Chinaman.
The cats' breakfast was nearly over. In fact, they had had their usual allowance before Rea came down; but Ah Foo had gone on throwing out meat for Rea to see the scrambling. Presently he threw the last piece, and set the empty plate up on a shelf by the kitchen door. The cats knew very well by this sign that breakfast was over; after the plate was set on that shelf, they never had a mouthfulmore of meat; and it was droll to see the change that came over all of them as soon as they saw this done. In less than a second, they changed from fierce, fighting, clawing, scratching, snatching, miaowing, spitting, growling cats, into quiet, peaceful cats, some sitting down licking their paws, or washing their faces, and some lying out full-length on the ground and rolling; some walking off in a leisurely and dignified manner, as if they had had all they wanted, and wouldn't thank anybody for another bit of meat, if they could have it as well as not. This was almost as funny as the first part of it.
After Ah Foo had set the plate in its place on the shelf, he turned to go into the kitchen to help about the breakfast; but just as he had put his hand on the door-handle, there came a terrible shriek from Rea, a fierce sputter from one of the cats, and a faint bark of a dog, all at once; and Ah Foo, looking around, sprang just in time to rescue Fairy from the jaws of Skipper, one of the biggest and fiercest of the cats.
Poor little Fairy, missing her mistress, had trotted downstairs; and smelling on the floor wherever Rea had set her feet, had followed her tracks, and had reached the veranda just in time to be spied by Skipper, who arched his back, set his tail up straight and stiff as a poker, and, making one bound from the ground to the middle of the veranda floor, clutched Fairy with teeth and claws, and would have made an end of her in less than one minute if Ah Foo had not been there. But Ah Foo could move almost as quickly as a cat; and it was not a quarter of a second after Fairy gave her piteous cry, when she was safe and sound in her mistress's arms, and Ah Foo had Skipper by the scruff of his neck, and was holding him high up, boxing his ears, right and left, with blows so hard they rang.
"Cat heap wicked," he said. "You killee missy's dog, I killee you!" and he flung Skipper with all his might and main through the air.
Rea screamed, "Oh, don't!" She did not want to see the cat killed, even if he had flown at Fairy. "It will kill him," she cried.
Ah Foo laughed. "Heap hard killee cat," he said. "Cat get nine time life good;" and as he spoke, Skipper, after whirling through the air in several somersaults, came down on his feet all right, and slunk off into the woodpile.
"I tellee you," said Ah Foo, chuckling.
"Thatee isee heapee goodee manee," cried Jusy. "I havee learnee talkee oneee language already!"
A roar of laughter came from the dining-room window. There stood Uncle George, holding his sides.
"Bravo, Jusy!" he exclaimed. "You have begun on pigeon English, have you, for the first of your nine languages?"
"Isn't that Chinese?" said Jusy, much crestfallen.
"Oh, no!" said Uncle George, "not by any manner of means. It is only the Chinese way of talking English. It is called pigeon English. But come in to breakfast now, and I will tell you all about my cats,—my hunting cats, I call them. They are just as good as a pack of hunting dogs; and better, for they do not need anybody to go with them."
How pleasant the breakfast-table looked!—a large square table set with gay china, pretty flowers in the middle, nice broiled chicken and fried potatoes, and baked apples and cream; and Jusy's andRea's bright faces, one on Mr. Connor's left hand, the other on his right.
As Jim moved about the table and waited on them, he thought to himself, "Now, if this doesn't make Mr. George well, it will be because he can't be cured."
Jim had found the big house so lonely, with nobody in it except Mr. Connor and the two Chinese servants, he would have been glad to see almost anything in the shape of a human being,—man, woman, or child,—come there to live. How much more, then, these two beautiful and merry children!
Jusy and Rea thought they had never in all their lives tasted anything so good as the broiled chicken and the baked apples.
"Heapee goodee cookee, Uncle George!" said Jusy. He was so tickled with the Chinaman's way of talking, he wanted to keep doing it.
"Tooee muchee putee onee letter e, Master Jusy," said Uncle George. "After you have listened to their talk a little longer, you will see that they do not add the 'ee' to every word. It is hard to imitate them exactly."
Jusy was crestfallen. He thought he had learned a new language in half an hour, and he was proud of it. But no new language was ever learned without more trouble and hard work than that; not even pigeon English!
It had come about by chance, Mr. Connor's keeping this pack of hunting cats. He had been greatly troubled by gophers and rabbits: the gophers killed his trees by gnawing their roots; the rabbits burrowed under his vines, ate the tender young leaves, and gnawed the stems.
Jim had tried every device,—traps of all kinds and all the poisons he could hear of. He had also tried drowning the poor little gophers out by pouring water down their holes. But, spite of all he could do, the whole hill was alive with them. It had been wild ground so long, and covered so thick with bushes, that it had been like a nice house built on purpose for all small wild animals to live in.
I suppose there must have been miles of gophers' underground tunnels, leading from hole to hole. They popped their heads up, and you saw them scampering away wherever you went; and in the early morning it was very funny to see the rabbits jumping and leaping to get off out of sight when they heard people stirring. They were of a beautiful gray color, with a short bushy tail, white at the end. On account of this white tip to their tails, they are called "cotton-tails."
When Mr. Connor first moved up on the hill, Jim used to shoot a 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 comeright 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 allhunt 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, Jimgrew 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 pretendedto 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 deadrabbit, 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 whichwould 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 toofond 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 whatwas 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.
Jim and the Cats hunting Linnets.—Page 111.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 thegunshots; 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, buthe 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 youare!" 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.
The story of old Ysidro was indeed a sad one; and I think, with Rea, that any one must be hard-hearted, who did not pity him. He was a very old Indian; nobody knew how old; but he looked as if he must be a hundred at least. Ever since he could remember, he had lived in a little house in San Gabriel. The missionaries who first settled San Gabriel had given a small piece of land to his father, and on it his father had built this little house of rough bricks made of mud.Here Ysidro was born, and here he had always lived. His father and mother had been dead a long time. His brothers and sisters had all died or gone away to live in some other place.
When he was a young man, he had married a girl named Carmena. She was still living, almost as old as he; all their children had either died, or married and gone away, and the two old people lived alone together in the little mud house.
They were very poor; but they managed to earn just enough to keep from starving. There was a little land around the house,—not more than an acre; but it was as much as the old mancould cultivate. He raised a few vegetables, chiefly beans, and kept some hens.
Carmena had done fine washing for the San Gabriel people as long as her strength held out; but she had not been able for some years to do that. All she could do now was to embroider and make lace. She had to stay in bed most of the time, for she had the rheumatism in her legs and feet so she could but just hobble about; but there she sat day after day, propped up in her bed, sewing. It was lucky that the rheumatism had not gone into her hands, for the money she earned by making lace was the chief part of their living.
Sometimes Ysidro earned a little by days' works in the fields or gardens; but he was so old, people did not want him if they could get anybody else, and nobody would pay him more than half wages.
When he could not get anything else to do, he made mats to sell. He made them out of the stems of a plant called yucca; but he had to go a long way to get these plants. It was slow, tedious work making the mats, and the store-keepers gave him only seventy-five cents apiece for them; so it was very little he could earn in that way.
Was not this a wretched life? Yet they seemed always cheerful, and they were as much attached to this poor little mud hovel as any of you can be to your own beautiful homes.
Would you think any one could have the heart to turn those two poor old people out of their home? It would not seem as if a human being could be found who would do such a thing. But there was. He was a lawyer; I could tell you his true name, but I will not. He had a great deal to do with all sorts of records and law papers, about land and titles and all such things.
There has always been trouble about the ownership of land in California, because first it belonged to Spain, and then it belonged to Mexico; and then we fought with Mexico, and Mexico gave it to us. So you can easily see that where lands are passed along in that way, through so many hands, it might often be hard to tell to whom they justly belonged.
Of course this poor old Ysidro did not know anything about papers. He could not read or write. The missionaries gave the land to his father more than a hundred years ago, and his father gave it to him, and that was all Ysidro knew about it.
Well, this lawyer was rummaging among papers and titles and maps of estates in San Gabriel, and he found out that there was this little bit of land near the church, which had been overlooked by everybody, and to which nobody had any written title. He went over and looked at it, and found Ysidro's house on it; and Ysidro told him he had always lived there; but the lawyer did not care for that.
Land is worth a great deal of money now in San Gabriel. This little place of Ysidro's was worth a good many hundred dollars; and this lawyer was determined to have it. So he went to work in ways I cannot explain to you, for I do not understand them myself; and you could not understand them even if I could write them out exactly: but it was all done according to law; and the lawyer got it decided by the courts and the judges in San Francisco that this bit of land was his.
When this was all done, he had not quite boldness enough to come forward himself, and turn the poor old Indians out. Even he had some sense of shame; so he slyly sold the land to a man who did not know anything about the Indians being there.
You see how cunning this was of him! When it came to the Indians being turned out, and the land taken by the new owner, this lawyer's name would not need to come out in the matter at all. But it did come out; so that a few people knew what a mean, cruel thing he had done. Just for the sake of the price of an acre of land, to turn two aged helpless people out of house and home to starve! Do you think those dollars will ever do that man any good as long as he lives? No, not if they had been a million.
Well, Mr. Connor was one of the persons who had found out about this; and he had at first thought he would help Ysidro fight, in the courts, to keep his place; but he found there would be no use in that. The lawyer had been cunning enough to make sure he was safe, before he went on to steal the old Indian's farm. The law was on his side. Ysidro did not really own the land, according to law, though he had lived on it all his life, and it had been given to his father by the missionaries, almost a hundred years ago.
Does it not seem strange that the law could do such a thing as that? When the boys who read this story grow up to be men, I hope they will do away with these bad laws, and make better ones.
The way Rea had found out about old Ysidro was this: when Jim went to the post-office for the mail, in the mornings, he used generally to take Anita and Rea in the wagon with him, and leave them at Anita's mother's while he drove on to the post-office, which was a mile farther.
Rea liked this very much. Anita's mother had a big blue and green parrot, that could talk in both Spanish and English; and Rea was never tired of listening to her. She always carried her sugar; and she used to cock her head on one side, and call out, "Señorita! señorita! Polly likes sugar! sugar! sugar!" as soon as she saw Rea coming in at the door. It was the only parrot Rea had ever seen, and it seemed to her the most wonderful creature in the world.
Ysidro's house was next to Anita's mother's; and Rea often saw the old man at work in his garden, or sitting on his door-step knitting lace, with needles as fine as pins.
One day Anita took her into the house to see Carmena, who was sitting in bed at work on her embroidery. When Carmena heard that Rea was Mr. Connor's niece, she insisted upon giving her a beautiful piece of lace which she had made. Anita did not wish to take it, but old Carmena said,—
"You must take it. Mr. Connor has given us much money, and there was never anything I could do for him. Now if his little señorita will take this, it will be a pleasure."
So Rea carried the lace home, and showed it to her Uncle George, and he said she might keep it; and it was only a few weeks after this that when Anita and Rea went down to San Gabriel, one day, they found the old couple in great distress, the news having come that they were going to be turned out of their house.
And it was the night after this visit that Rea dreamed about the poor old creatures all night, and the very next morning that she asked her Uncle George if he would not build them a house in hiscañon.
After lunch, Mr. Connor said to Rea,—
"I am going to drive this afternoon, Rea. Would you like to come with me?"
His eyes twinkled as he said it, and Rea cried out,—
"Oh! oh! It is to see Ysidro and Carmena, I am sure!"
"Yes," said her uncle; "I am going down to tell them you are going to build them a house."
"Uncle George, will you really, truly, do it?" said Rea. "I think you are the kindest man in all the world!" and she ran for her hat, and was down on the veranda waiting, long before the horses were ready.
They found old Ysidro sitting on the ground, leaning against the wall of his house. He had his face covered up with both hands, his elbows leaning on his knees.
"Oh, look at him! He is crying, Uncle George," said Rea.
"No, dear," replied Mr. Connor. "He is not crying. Indian men very rarely cry. He is feeling all the worse that he will not let himself cry, but shuts the tears all back."
"Yes, that is lots worse," said Rea.
"How do you know, pet?" laughingly said her uncle. "Did you ever try it?"
"I've tried to try it," said Rea, "and it felt so much worse, I couldn't."
It was not easy at first to make old Ysidro understand what Mr. Connor meant. He could not believe that anybody would give him a house and home for nothing. He thought Mr. Connor wanted to get him to come and work; and, being an honest old fellow, he was afraid Mr. Connor did not know how little strength he had; so he said,—
"Señor Connor, I am very old; I am sick too. I am not worth hiring to work."
"Bless you!" said Mr. Connor. "I don't want you to work any more than you do now. I am only offering you a place to live in. If you are strong enough to do a day's work, now andthen, I shall pay you for it, just as I would pay anybody else."
Ysidro gazed earnestly in Mr. Connor's face, while he said this; he gazed as if he were trying to read his very thoughts. Then he looked up to the sky, and he said,—
"Señor, Ysidro has no words. He cannot speak. Will you come into the house and tell Carmena? She will not believe if I tell it."
So Mr. Connor and Rea went into the house, and there sat Carmena in bed, trying to sew; but the tears were running out of her eyes. When she saw Mr. Connor and Rea coming in at the door, she threw up her hands and burst out into loud crying.
"O señor! señor!" she said. "They drive us out of our house. Can you help us? Can you speak for us to the wicked man?"
Ysidro went up to the bed and took hold of her hand, and, pointing with his other hand to Mr. Connor, said,—
"He comes from God,—the señor. He will help us!"
"Can we stay?" cried Carmena.
Here Rea began to cry.
"Don't cry, Rea," said Mr. Connor. "That will make her feel worse."
Rea gulped down her sobs, enough to say,—
"But she doesn't want to come into the cañon! All she wants is to stay here! She won't be glad of the new house."
"Yes, she will, by and by," whispered Mr. Connor. "Stop crying, that's my good Rea."
But Rea could not. She stood close to the bed, looking into old Carmena's distressed face; and the tears would come, spite of all her efforts.
When Carmena finally understood that not even Mr. Connor, with all his good will and all his money, could save them from leaving their home, she cried again as hard as at first; and Ysidro felt ashamed of her, for he was afraid Mr. Connor would think her ungrateful. But Mr. Connor understood it very well.
"I have lived only two years in my house," he said to Rea, "and I would not change it for one twice as good that anybody could offer me. Think how any one must feel about a house he has lived in all his life."
"But it is a horrible little house, Uncle George," said Rea,—"the dirtiest hovel I ever saw. It is worse than they are in Italy."
"I do not believe that makes much difference, dear," said Uncle George. "It is their home, all the same, as if it were large and nice. It is that one loves."
Just as Mr. Connor and Rea came out of the house, who should come riding by, but the very man that had caused all this unhappiness,—the lawyer who had taken Ysidro's land! He was with theman to whom he had sold it. They were riding up and down in the valley, looking over all their possessions, and planning what big vineyards and orchards they would plant and how much money they would make.
When this man saw Mr. Connor, he turned as red as a turkey-cock's throat. He knew very well what Mr. Connor thought of him; but he bowed very low.
Mr. Connor returned his bow, but with such a stern and scornful look on his face, that Rea exclaimed,—
"What is the matter, Uncle George? What makes you look so?"
"That man is a bad man, dear," he replied; "and has the kind of badness I most despise." But he did not tell her that he was the man who was responsible for the Indians being driven out of their home. He thought it better for Rea not to know it.
"Are there different sorts of badness,—some badnesses worse than others?" asked Rea.
"I don't know whether one kind is really any worse than another," said Mr. Connor. "But there are some kinds which seem to me twice as bad as others; and meanness and cruelty to helpless creatures seem to me the very worst of all."
"To me too!" said Rea. "Like turning out poor Ysidro."
"Yes," said Mr. Connor. "That is just one of the sort I mean."
Just before they reached the beginning of the lands of Connorloa, they crossed the grounds of a Mr. Finch, who had a pretty house and large orange orchards. Mr. Finch had one son, Harry, about Jusy's age, and the two boys were great cronies.
As Mr. Connor turned the horses' heads into these grounds, he saw Jusy and Harry under the trees in the distance.
"Why, there is Jusy," he said.
"Yes," said Rea. "Harry came for him before lunch. He said he had something to show him."
As soon as Jusy caught sight of the carriage, he came running towards it, crying,—
"Oh, Uncle George, stop! Rea! come! I've found Snowball! Come, see him!"
Snowball had been missing for nearly a month, and nobody could imagine what had become of him. They finally came to the conclusion that he must have got killed in some way.
Mr. Connor stopped the horses; and Rea jumped out and ran after Jusy, and Mr. Connor followed. They found the boys watching excitedly, one at each end of a little bridge over the ditch, through which the water was brought down for irrigating Mr. Finch's orchards. Harry's dogs were there too, one at each end of the bridge, barking, yelping, watching as excitedly as the boys. But no Snowball.
"Where is he?" cried Rea.
"In under there," exclaimed Jusy. "He's got a rabbit in there; he'll be out presently."
Sure enough, there he was, plainly to be heard, scuffling and spitting under the bridge.
The poor little rabbit ran first to one end of the bridge, then to the other, trying to get out; but at each end he found a dog, barking to drive him back.
Presently Snowball appeared with the dead rabbit in his teeth. Dropping it on the ground, he looked up at the dogs, as much as to say, "There! Can't I hunt rabbits as well as you do?" Then they all three, the two dogs and he, fell to eating the rabbit in the friendliest manner.
"Don't you think!" cried Jusy. "He's been hunting this way, with these dogs, all this time. You see they are so big they can't get in under the bridge, and he can; so they drive the rabbits in under there, and he goes in and gets them. Isn't he smart? Harry first saw him doing it two weeks ago, he says. He didn't know it was our cat, and he wondered whose it could be. But Snowball and the dogs are great friends. They go together all the time; and wherever he is, if he hears them bark, he knows they've started up something, and he comes flying! I thinkit is just splendid!"
"Poor little thing!" said Rea, looking at the fast-disappearing rabbit.
"Why, you eat them yourself!" shouted Jusy. "You said it was as good as chicken, the other day. It isn't any worse for cats and dogs to eat them, than it is for us; is it, Uncle George?"
"I think Jusy has the best of the argument this time, pet," said Uncle George, looking fondly at Jusy.
"Girls are always that way," said Harry politely. "My sisters are just so. They can't bear to see anything killed."
After this day, Rea spent most of her time in the cañon, watching the men at work on Ysidro's house.
The cañon was a wild place; it was a sort of split in the rocky sides of the mountain; at the top it was not much more than two precipices joined together, with just room enough for a brook to come down. You can see in the picture where it was, though it looks there like little more than a groove in the rocks. But it was really so big in some places that huge sycamore trees grew in it, and there were little spaces of good earth, where Mr. Connor had planted orchards.
It was near these, at the mouth of the cañon, that he put Ysidro's house. It was built out of mud bricks, called adobe, as near as possible like Ysidro's old house,—two small rooms, anda thatched roof made of reeds, which grew in a swamp.
But Mr. Connor did not call it Ysidro's house. He called it Rea's house; and the men called it "the señorita's house." It was to be her own, Mr. Connor said,—her own to give as a present to Ysidro and Carmena.
When the day came for them to move in, Jim went down with the big wagon, and a bed in the bottom, to bring old Carmena up. There was plenty of room in the wagon, besides, for the few little bits of furniture they had.
Mr. Connor and Jusy and Rea were at the house waiting, when they came. The cook had made a good supper of meat and potato, and Rea had put it onthe table, all ready for them.
When they lifted Carmena out of the wagon, she held, tight clutched in her hand, a small basket filled with earth; she seemed hardly willing to let go of it for a moment.
"What is that?" said Jusy.
"A few handfuls of the earth that was ours," replied Ysidro. "We have brought it with us, to keep it always. The man who has our home will not miss it."
The tears came into Mr. Connor's eyes, and he turned away.
Rea did not understand. She looked puzzled; so did Jusy.
Jim explained. "The Indian women often do that," he said. "When they have to move away from a home they love they carry a little of the earth with them; sometimes they put it in a little bag, and wear it hanging on their necks; sometimes they put it under their heads at night."
"Yes," said Carmena, who had listened to what Jim said. "One can sleep better on the earth that one loves."
"I say, Rea!" cried Jusy. "It is a shame they had to come away!"
"I told you so, Jusy," said Rea gently. "But you didn't seem to care then."
"Well, I do now!" he cried. "I didn't think how bad they'd feel. Now if it were in Italy, I'd go and tell the King all about it. Who is there to tell here?" he continued, turning to his Uncle George. "Who is there here, to tell about such things? There must be somebody."
Mr. Connor smiled sadly. "The trouble is, there are too many," he said.
"Who is above all the rest?" persisted Jusy. "Isn't there somebody at the top, as our King is in Italy?"
"Yes, there is one above all the rest," replied Mr. Connor. "We call him the President."
"Well, why don't you write and tell him about Ysidro?" said Jusy. "I wish I could see him, I'd tell him. It's a shame!"
"Even the President could not help this, Jusy," said Mr. Connor. "The law was against poor Ysidro; there was no help; and there are thousands and thousands of Indians in just the same condition he is."
"Doesn't the President make the laws?" said Jusy.
"No," said Mr. Connor. "Congress makes the laws."
"Oh," said Jusy, "like our Parliament."
"Yes," said Mr. Connor.
Jusy said no more; but he thought of little else all the afternoon; and at bedtime he said to Rea,—
"Rea, I am real sorry I didn't care about those old Indians at first, when you did. But I'm going to be good to them now, and help them all I can; and I have made up my mind that when I am a man I shall not go to Italy, as I said I would, to be an officer for the King. I shall stay here, and be an officer for the American President, instead; and I shall tell him about Ysidro, and about all the rest of the Indians."
There is nothing more to be told about the Hunter Cats. By degrees they disappeared: some of them went to live at other houses in the San Gabriel Valley; some of them ran off and lived a wild life in the cañons; and some of them, I am afraid, must have died for want of food.
Rea was glad when they were all gone; but Jusy missed the fun of seeing them hunt gophers and linnets.
Perhaps, some day, I shall write another story, and tell you more about Jusy and Rea, and how they tried to help the Indians.