The Hunter Cats of Connorloa Part 4

"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 ma.s.s, 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 appet.i.tes. 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 s...o...b..ll. 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 s...o...b..ll, as she had done. She named him s...o...b..ll, 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 canon 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, s...o...b..ll, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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; n.o.body 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 a.s.sistance 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.