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 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.

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.