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III.

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 int