The Hunter Cats of Connorloa Read online

way Mr. Connor did,--by degrees. Iwant you to know about the place he lived in, and how he used to amusehimself, before he decided to build his house; and then I must tell youabout the house, and then about the children that came to live with himin it, and then about the Chinamen that came to do his work, and abouthis orange-trees, and the gophers that gnawed the bark off them, and therabbits that burrowed under his vines. Oh! it will be a good many pagesyet before I can possibly get to the time when the Hunter Cats come in.But I will tell it as fast as I can, for I dislike long stories myself.

  The village of San Gabriel is in a beautiful broad valley, running eastand west. The north wall of the valley is made by a range of mountains,called the Sierra Madre; that is Spanish and means "Mother Mountains."They are grand mountains
; their tops are almost solid stone, all sharpand jagged, with more peaks and ridges, crowded in together, than youcould possibly count. At the bottom, they reach out into the valley bylong slopes, which in the olden time were covered thick with trees andshrubs; but now, the greater part of these have been cut down andcleared off, and the ground planted full of orange-trees and grapevines.If you want to see how it looks to have solid miles upon miles of orangeorchards and vineyards together, you must go to this San Gabriel Valley.There is no other such place in the world.

  As Mr. Connor rode about, day after day, and looked at these orchardsand vineyards, he began to think he should like to have some too. So hewent up and down along the base of the mountains, looking for a goodplace. At last he found one. It was strange nobody had picked it outbefore. One reason was that it was so wild, and lay so high up, that itwould be a world of trouble, and cost a deal of money, to make a road upto it and to clear the ground. But Mr. Connor did not care for that. Itwas a sort of ridge of the mountains, and it was all grown over thickwith what is called in California "chapparal." That is not the name ofany one particular shrub or tree; it means a mixture of every sort andkind. You all know what mixed candy is! Well, "chapparal" is mixedbushes and shrubs; mixed thick too! From a little way off, it looks assmooth as moss; it is so tangled, and the bushes have such strong andtough stems, you can't possibly get through it, unless you cut a pathbefore you with a hatchet; it is a solid thicket all the way.

  As Mr. Connor rode to and fro, in front of this green ridge, he thoughthow well a house would look up there, with the splendid mountain wallrising straight up behind it. And from the windows of such a house, onecould look off, not only over the whole valley, but past the hills ofits southern wall, clear and straight thirty miles to the sea. In aclear day, the line of the water flashed and shone there like a silverthread.

  Mr. Connor used to sit on his horse by the half hour at a time gazing atthis hillside, and picturing the home he would like to make there,--abig square house with plenty of room in it, wide verandas on all sides,and the slope in front of it one solid green orange orchard. The longerhe looked the surer he felt that this was the thing he wanted to do.

  The very day he decided, he bought the land; and in two days more he hada big force of men hacking away at the chapparal, burning it, digging upthe tough, tangled roots; oh, what slow work it was! Just as soon as abig enough place was cleared, he built a little house of roughboards,--only two rooms in it; and there he went to live, with Jim.

  Now that he had once begun the making of his house, he could hardly waitfor it to be done; and he was never happy except when he was overseeingthe men, hurrying them and working himself. Many a tough old bush hechopped down with his own hands, and tugged the root up; and he grewstronger every day. This was a kind of medicine he had not tried before.

  A great part of the bushes were "manzanita." The roots and lower stemsof this shrub are bright red, and twisted almost into knots. They makecapital firewood; so Mr. Connor had them all piled up in a pile to keepto burn in his big fireplaces; and you would have laughed to see such awoodpile. It was almost as high as the house; and no two sticksalike,--all prongs and horns, and crooks and twists; they looked likemonster's back teeth.

  At last the house was done. It was a big, old-fashioned, square house,with a wide hall running through the middle; on the east side were thelibrary and dining-room; on the west, the parlor and a bigbilliard-room; upstairs were four large bedrooms; at the back of thehouse, a kitchen. No servants were to sleep in the house. Mr. Connorwould have only Chinamen for servants; and they would sleep, with therest of his Chinamen laborers, in what he called the Chinese quarter,--along, low wooden building still farther up on the hill. Only Jim was tosleep in the house with Mr. Connor.

  The Chinese quarter was a very comfortable house; and was presided overby a fat old Chinaman, who had such a long queue that Jim called him"Long Tail." His name was See Whong Choo, which, Jim said, was entirelytoo long to pronounce. There were twenty Chinamen on the place; and afunny sight it was to see them all file out of a morning to their work,every one with what looked like a great dinner-plate upside down on hishead for a hat, and his long, black hair braided in a queue, not muchbigger than a rat tail, hanging down his back.

  People in California are so used to seeing Chinamen, that they do notrealize how droll they look to persons not accustomed to the sight.

  Their yellow skins, their funny little black eyes, set so slanting intheir heads that you can't tell half the time whether they are lookingstraight at you or not, their shiny shaved heads and pig-tails, are allvery queer. And when you first hear them talking together in their owntongue, you think it must be cats trying to learn English; it is amixture of caterwaul and parrot, more disagreeable in sound than anylanguage I ever heard.

  About a year after Mr. Connor had moved into his new house, he got aletter, one night, which made him very unhappy. It told him that hissister and her husband were dead; they had died, both of them in oneweek, of a dreadful fever. Their two children had had the fever at thesame time, but they were getting well; and now, as there was nobody inItaly to take care of them, the letter asked what should be done withthem. Would Mr. Connor come out himself, or would he send some one? TheCount and his wife had been only a few days ill, and the fever had madethem delirious from the first, so that no directions had been given toany one about the children; and there the two poor little thingswere, all alone with their nurse in their apartment in the King'spalace. They had had to live in the palace always, so that the Countcould be ready to attend on the King whenever he was wanted.

  THE KING'S PALACE.--Page 31.]

  Giuseppe and Maria (those were their names) never liked living there.The palace was much too grand, with its marble staircases, and marblefloored rooms, so huge and cold; and armed soldiers for sentinels,standing at the corners and doors, to keep people from going into roomswithout permission, and to keep watch also, lest somebody should get inand kill the King. The King was always afraid of being killed; therewere so many unhappy and discontented persons in Italy, who did notwant him to be King. Just think how frightful it must be to know everyday,--morning, noon, and night,--that there was danger of somebody'scoming stealthily into your room to kill you! Who would be a king? Itused to make the children afraid whenever they passed these tallsoldiers in armor, in the halls. They would hold tight to each other'shands, and run as fast as they could, past them; and when they got outin the open air, they were glad; most of all when their nurse took theminto the country, where they could run on the grass and pick flowers.There they used often to see poor little hovels of houses, with gardens,and a donkey and chickens in the yard, and children playing; and theyused to say they wished their father and mother were poor, and lived ina house like that, and kept a donkey. And then the nurse would tell themthey were silly children; that it was a fine thing to live in a palace,and have their father one of the King's officers, and their mother oneof the most beautiful of the Queen's ladies; but you couldn't have madethe children believe it. They hated the palace, and everything about it,more and more every day of their lives.

  Giuseppe was ten, and Maria was seven. They were never called by theirreal names: Giuseppe was called Jusy, and Maria was called Rea; Jusy andRea, nobody would ever have guessed from that, what their real nameswere. Maria is pronounced _Mahrea_ in Italy; so that was the way shecame to be called Rea for shortness. Jusy gave himself his nickname whenhe was a baby, and it had always stuck to him ever since.

  It was enough to make anybody's heart ache to see these two poor littlethings, when they first got strong enough to totter about after thisfever; so weak they felt, they could hardly stand; and they cried morethan half the time, thinking about their papa and mamma, dead and buriedwithout their even being able to kiss them once for good-by. The Kinghimself felt so sorry for the little orphans, he came to speak to them;and the kind Queen came almost every day, and sent them beautiful toys,and good things to eat; but nothing comforted the children.

  "What do you suppose will become of us, Jusy?" Rea often said; and Jusywould reply,--

  "I don't know, Rea. As soon as I'm a man, I can take care of you andmyself too, easy enough; and that won't be a great while. I shall askthe King to let me be one of his officers like papa."

  "Oh, no! no! Jusy," Rea would reply. "Don't! Don't let's live in thishorrid palace. Ask him to give you a little house in the country, with adonkey; and I will cook the dinner. Caterina will teach me how."

  Caterina was their nurse.

  "But there wouldn't be any money to pay Caterina," Jusy would say.

  "The King might give us enough for that, Jusy. He is so kind. I'm surehe would, don't you think so?" was Rea's answer to this difficulty.

  "No," said Jusy, "I don't think he would, unless I earned it. Papa hadto work for all the money he had."

  It was a glad day for the children when the news came that their unclein America was going to send for them to come and live with him; andthat in three weeks the man who was to take them there would arrive.This news came over by telegraph, on that wonderful telegraph wire,down at the bottom of the ocean. Their kind Uncle George thought hewould not leave the children uncheered in their suspense and lonelinessone minute longer than he could help; so he sent the message bytelegraph; and the very day after this telegraphic message went, Jim setout for Italy.

  Jim had travelled so much with Mr. Connor that he was just the bestpossible person to take charge of the children on their long journey. Heknew how to manage everything; and he could speak Italian and French andGerman well enough to say all that was necessary in places where noEnglish was spoken. Moreover, Jim had been a servant in Mr. Connor'sfather's house all his life; had taken care of Mr. Connor and his sisterwhen they were a little boy and girl together, just as Jusy and Rea werenow. He always called Mr. Connor "Mr. George," and his sister "MissJulia;" and when he set out to go for the children he felt almost as ifhe were going to the help and rescue of his own grandchildren.

  Jusy and Rea did not feel that they were going to a stranger; for theyhad heard about their Uncle George ever since they could remember; andall about "Jim" too. Almost every year Mr. Connor used to send hissister a new picture of himself; so the children knew very well how helooked.

  When the news came that they were to go to America and live with him,they got out all of these pictures they could find, and ranged them in aline on the mantelpiece in their parlor. There was a picture of Jim too,as black as charcoal. At first, Rea had been afraid of this; but Jusythought it was splendid. Every morning the lonely little creatures usedto stand in front of this line of pictures and say, "Good-morning, UncleGeorge! Good-morning to you, Mr. Black Man! How soon will you get here?We shall be very glad to see you."

  It was over a month before he arrived. The children had been told thathe might be there in three weeks from the day the despatch came; and assoon as the three weeks were ended, they began almost to hold theirbreaths listening for him; they were hardly willing to stir out of thepalace for a walk, for fear he might come while they were away. Reawatched at the windows, and Jusy watched at the doorway which led intothe corridor.

  "He might be afraid of the sentinel at the corner there," he said."Caterina says there are no palaces in America."

  "Goody!" interrupted Rea, "I'm so glad."

  "And so perhaps he has never seen a man in armor like that; and I'dbetter be at the door to run and meet him."

  All their clothes were packed ready for the journey; and all the thingswhich had belonged to their mamma were packed up too, to go with them.The huge rooms looked drearier than ever. The new chamberlain's wife wasimpatient to get settled in the apartment herself, and kept coming tolook at it, and discussing, in the children's presence, where she wouldput this or that piece of furniture, and how she would have her pictureshung.

  "I think she is a very rude lady," said Jusy. "The Queen said these wereour rooms so long as we stayed, just the same as if mamma were here withus; and I think I see her coming in here that way if mamma was here!"

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