Part 14

But I must bear in mind that I set out in this story to tell you about "The Bear-Slayer of San Diego," and the South Pole is a long way from the subject in hand.

I have spoken of San Diego as one of the great new cities, and great it is, but altogether new it certainly is not, for it was founded by a Spanish missionary, known as Father Junipero, more than one hundred years ago.

These old Spanish missionaries were great men in their day; brave, patient and very self-sacrificing in their attempts to settle the wild countries and civilize the Indians.

This Father Junipero walked all the way from the City of Mexico to San Diego, although he was more than fifty years old; and finally, after he had spent nearly a quarter of a century in founding missions up and down the coast of California, he walked all the way back to Mexico, where he died.

When it is added that he was a lame man, that he was more than threescore and ten years of age, and that he traveled all the distance on this last journey on foot and alone, with neither arms nor provisions, trusting himself entirely to Providence, one can hardly fail to remember his name and speak it with respect.

This new city, San Diego, with its most salubrious clime, is set all over and about with waving green palms, with golden oranges, red pomegranates, great heavy bunches of green and golden bananas, and silver-laden olive orchards. The leaf of the olive is of the same soft gray as the breast of the dove. As if the dove and the olive branch had in some sort kept companionship ever since the days of the deluge.

San Diego is nearly ten miles broad, with its base resting against the warm, still waters of the Pacific Ocean. The most populous part of the city is to the south, toward Mexico. Then comes the middle part of San Diego City. This is called "the old town," and here it was that Father Junipero planted some palm trees that stand to this day--so tall that they almost seem to be dusting the stars with their splendid plumes.

Here also you see a great many old adobe houses in ruins, old forts, churches, fortresses, barracks, built by the Mexicans nearly a century ago, when Spain possessed California, and her gaudy banner floated from Oregon to the Isthmus of Darien.

The first old mission is a little farther on up the coast, and the new college, known as the San Diego College of Letters, is still farther on up the warm sea bank. San Francisco lies several hundred miles on up the coast beyond Los Angeles. Then comes Oregon, then Washington, one of the newest States, and then Canada, then Alaska, and at last the North Pole, which, by the way, is almost as far as the South Pole from my subject: The Bear-Slayer of San Diego.

He was a little Aztec Indian, brown as a berry, slim and slender, very silent, very polite and not at all strong.

It was said that he had Spanish blood in his veins, but it did not show through his tawny skin. It is to be conceded, however, that he had all the politeness and serene dignity of the proudest Spanish don in the land.

He was now, by the kind favor of those good ladies who had heard of his daring address in killing the bear with his knife, a student of the San Diego College of Letters, where there were several hundred other boys of all grades and ages, from almost all parts of the earth.

A good many boys came here from Boston and other eastern cities to escape the rigors of winter. I remember one boy in particular from Philadelphia. He was a small boy with a big nose, very bright and very brave. He was not a friend of the little Aztec Indian, the Bear-Slayer of San Diego. The name of this boy from Philadelphia was Peterson; the Boston boys called him Bill Peterson. His name, perhaps, was William P. Peterson; William Penn Peterson, most likely. But this is merely detail, and can make but little difference in the main facts of the case.

As I said before, these college grounds are on the outer edge of the city. The ocean shuts out the world on the west, but the huge chaparral hills roll in on the east, and out of these hills the jack-rabbits come down in perfect avalanches at night, and devour almost everything that grows.

Wolves howl from these hills of chaparral at night by hundreds, but they are only little bits of shaggy, gray coyotes and do little or no harm in comparison with the innumerable rabbits. For these big fellows, on their long, bent legs, and with ears like those of a donkey, can cut down with their teeth a young orchard almost in a single night.

The new college, of course, had new grounds, new bananas, oranges, olives, all things, indeed, that wealth and good taste could contribute in this warm, sweet soil. But the rabbits! You could not build a fence so high that they would not leap over it.

"They are a sort of Jumbo grasshopper," said the smart boy from Boston.

The head gardener of the college campus and environment grew desperate.

"Look here, sir," he said to the president, "these big-eared fellows are lazy and audacious things. Why can't they live up in the chaparral, as they did before we came here to plant trees and try to make the world beautiful? Now, either these jack-rabbits must go or we must go."

"Very well," answered the president. "Offer a reward for their ears and let the boys destroy them."

"How much reward can I offer?"

"Five cents apiece, I think, would do," answered the head of the college, as he passed on up the great stone steps to his study.

The gardener got the boys together that evening and said, "I will give you five cents apiece for the ears of these dreadful rabbits."

"That makes ten cents for each rabbit, for each rabbit has two ears!" shouted the smart boy from Boston.

Before the dumfounded gardener could protest, the boys had broken into shouts of enthusiasm, and were running away in squads and in couples to borrow, buy or beg firearms for their work.

The smart boy from Boston, however, with an eye to big profits and a long job, went straight to the express office, and sent all the way to the East for a costly and first-class shotgun.

The little brown Aztec Indian did nothing of that sort; he kept by himself, kept his own counsel, and so far as any of the boys could find out, paid no attention to the proffered reward for scalps.

Bill Peterson borrowed his older brother's gun and brought in two rabbits the next day. The Boston boy, with an eye wide open to future profits to himself, went with Peterson to the head gardener, and holding up first one dead jack-rabbit by the ear, and then the other, coolly and deliberately counted off four ears.