III.
It had come about by chance, Mr. Connor's keeping this pack of huntingcats. He had been greatly troubled by gophers and rabbits: the gopherskilled his trees by gnawing their roots; the rabbits burrowed under hisvines, ate the tender young leaves, and gnawed the stems.
Jim had tried every device,--traps of all kinds and all the poisons hecould hear of. He had also tried drowning the poor little gophers outby pouring water down their holes. But, spite of all he could do, thewhole hill was alive with them. It had been wild ground so long, andcovered so thick with bushes, that it had been like a nice house builton 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 themscampering away wherever you went; and in the early morning it was veryfunny to see the rabbits jumping and leaping to get off out of sightwhen 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 tipto their tails, they are called "cotton-tails."
When Mr. Connor first moved up on the hill, Jim used to shoot acottontail almost every day, and some days he shot two. The rabbits,however, are shyer than the gophers; when they find out that they getshot as soon as they are seen, and that these men who shoot them havebuilt houses and mean to stay, they will gradually desert their burrowsand move away to new homes.
But the gopher is not so afraid. He lives down in the ground, and canwork in the dark as well as in the light; and he likes roots just aswell as he likes the stems above ground; so as long as he stays in hiscellar houses, he is hard to reach.
The gopher is a pretty little creature, with a striped back,--almost aspretty as a chipmonk. It seems a great pity to have to kill them alloff; but there is no help for it; fruit-trees and gophers cannot live inthe same place.
Soon after Mr. Connor moved into his new house, he had a present of abig 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 andsquirrels 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 turneda minute, and eat you out of house and home. I'll give you a splendidcat. She's a good hunter. I've got more cats than I know what to dowith."
So she presented Jim with a fine, big black and white cat; and Jim namedthe cat "Mexican," because a Mexican woman gave her to him.
The first thing Mexican did, after getting herself established in hernew 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, wasto go out hunting for food for them; and one day, as Mr. Connor wasriding up the hill, he saw her running into the woodpile, with a big fatgopher in her mouth.
"Ha!" thought Mr. Connor to himself. "There's an idea! If one cat willkill one gopher in a day, twenty cats would kill twenty gophers in aday! I'll get twenty cats, and keep them just to hunt gophers. They'llclear the place out quicker than poison, or traps, or drowning."
"Jim," he called, as soon as he entered the house,--"Jim, I've got anidea. I saw Mexican just now carrying a dead gopher to her kittens. Doesshe kill many?"
"Oh, yes, sir," replied Jim. "Before she got her kittens I used to seeher with them every day. But she does not go out so often now."
"Good mother!" said Mr. Connor. "Stays at home with her family, doesshe?"
"Yes, sir," laughed Jim; "except when she needs to go out to get foodfor 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 havingher about."
"No more do I," replied Mr. Connor. "But I do not dislike them so muchas I dislike gophers. And don't you see, if we have twenty, and theyall hunt gophers as well as she does, we'll soon have the placecleared?"
"We'd have to feed them, sir," said Jim. "So many's that, they'd nevermake all their living off gophers."
"Well, we'll feed them once a day, just a little, so as not to let themstarve. 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'tget them any other way. There is room in the woodpile for fifty tolive."
Jim did not much like the idea of having such an army of cats about; buthe went faithfully to work; and in a few weeks he had seventeen. Onemorning, 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? Weshall be overrun."
Jim laughed. "I'm three short yet, sir, of the number you ordered," hesaid. "There are only seventeen in that batch."
"Only seventeen! You are joking, Jim," cried Mr. Connor; and he triedto count; but the cats were in such a scrambling mass, he could notcount them.
"I give it up, Jim," he said at last. "But are there really onlyseventeen?"
"That's all, sir, and it takes quite a lot of meat to give them all abite of a morning. I think here are enough to begin with, unless youhave 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 willmake twenty-three."
"Plenty! plenty!" said Mr. Connor. "Don't get another one. And, Jim," headded, "wouldn't it be better to feed them at night? Then they will behungry the next morning."
"I tried that, sir," said Jim, "but they didn't seem so lively. I don'tgive them any more than just enough to whet their appetites. At firstthey sat round the door begging for more, half the morning, and I had tostone them away; now they understand it. In a few minutes, they'll allbe 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 thereare squirrels living in there too. It is just a kind of cage, thatwoodpile, with its crooks and turns. I saw a squirrel going up, up, init the other day; I thought he'd make his way out to the top; I thoughtthe cats would have cleaned them all out before this time, but theyhaven't; I saw one there only yesterday."
Jim had counted too soon on Mexican's kittens. Five of them came to asad end. Their mother carried to them, one day, a gopher which she foundlying dead in the road. Poor cat-mother! I suppose she thought toherself when she saw it lying there, "Oh, how lucky! I sha'n't have tosit 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 hishole; and as soon as the little kittens ate it, they were all takendreadfully ill, and all but one died. Either he hadn't had so much ofthe gopher as the rest had, or else he was stronger; he lingered alongin misery for a month, as thin, wretched-looking a little beast as everwas seen; then he began to pick up his flesh, and finally got to be asstrong a cat as there was in the whole pack.
He was most curiously marked: in addition to the black and white of hismother's skin, he had gray and yellow mottled in all over him. Jimthought it looked as if his skin had been painted, so he named himFresco.
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. Thenthere was Big Tom, and another Tom called China Tom, because he wouldstay all the time he could with the Chinamen. He was dark-gray, withblack stripes on him.
Next in size and beauty was a huge black cat, called Snowball. He wasgiven to Mr.
Connor by a miner's wife, who lived in a cabin high up onthe mountain. She said she would let him have the cat on the conditionthat he would continue to call him Snowball, as she had done. She namedhim 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 shelived, she liked a joke whenever she could contrive one.
Then there was Skipper, the one who nearly ate up Fairy that firstmorning; he also was as black as coal, and fierce as a wolf; all thecats were more or less afraid of