Part 15

The gardener grudgingly counted out two dimes, and then, with a grunt of satisfaction, carried away the two big rabbits by their long hind legs.

As the weeks wore by, several other dead rabbits were reported, and despite the grumbling of the head gardener, the tumultuous and merry students had quite a revenue, and their hopes for the future were high, especially when that artillery should arrive from Boston!

Meantime, the little brown Aztec boy had done nothing at all. However, when Friday afternoon came, he earnestly begged, and finally obtained, leave to go down to his home at Tia Juana. He wanted very much to see his Mexican mother and his six little Mexican brothers, and his sixty, more or less, little Mexican cousins.

But lo! on Saturday morning, bright and early, back came the little Bear-Slayer, as he was called by the boys, and at his heels came toddling and tumbling not only his six half-naked little brown brothers, but dozens of his cousins.

Each carried a bundle on his back. These bundles were long, finely woven bird-nets, and these nets were made of the fiber of the misnamed century plant, the agave.

This queer looking line of barefooted, bareheaded, diminutive beings, headed by the silent little Aztec, hastily dispersed itself along the outer edge of the grounds next to the chaparral abode of the jack-rabbits, and then, while grave professors leaned from their windows, and a hundred curious white boys looked on, these little brown fellows fastened all their long bird-nets together, and stretched two wide wings out and up the hill.

Very quiet but very quick they were, and when all the nets had been unwound and stretched out in a great letter V far up the hill, it was seen that each brown boy had a long, heavy manzanita wood club in his hand.

Suddenly and silently as they had come they all disappeared up and over the hills beyond, and in the dense black chaparral.

Where had they gone and what did all this silent mystery mean? One, two, three hours! What had become of this strange little army of silent brown boys?

Another hour passed. Not a boy, not a sign, not a sound. What did it all mean?

Suddenly, down came a rabbit, jumping high in the air, his huge ears flapping forward and back, as if they had wilted in the hot sun.

Then another rabbit, then another! Then ten, twenty, forty, fifty, five hundred, a thousand, all jumping over each other and upon each other, and against the nets, with their long legs thrust through the meshes, and wriggling and struggling till the nets shook as in a gale.

Then came the long lines of half-naked brown boys tumbling down after them out of the brush, and striking right and left, up and down, with their clubs.

In less than ten minutes from the time they came out of the brush, the little fellows had laid down their clubs and were dragging the game together.

The grave professors shook their hats and handkerchiefs, and shouted with delight from their windows overhead, and all the white boys danced about, wild with excitement.

That is, all but one or two. The boy from Boston said savagely to the little Aztec, as he stood directing the counting of the ears, "You're a brigand! You're the black brigand of San Diego City, and I can whip you!"

The brigand said nothing, but kept on with his work.

In a little time the president and head gardener came forward, and roughly estimated that about one thousand of the pests had been destroyed. Then the kindly president went to the bank and brought out one hundred silver dollars, which he handed to the little Bear-Slayer of San Diego in a cotton handkerchief.

The poor, timid little fellow's lips quivered. He had never seen so much money in all his life. He held his head down in silence for a long time and seemed to be thinking hard. His half-naked little brothers and cousins grouped about and seemed to be waiting for a share of the money.

The boy's schoolmates also crowded around, just as boys will, but they did not want any of the silver, and I am sure that all, save only one or two, were very glad because of his good luck.

Finally, lifting up his head and looking about the crowd of his school-fellows, he said, "Now, look here; I want every one of you to take a dollar apiece, and I will take what is left." He laid the handkerchief that held the silver dollars down on the grass and spread it wide open.

Hastily but orderly, his schoolmates began to take up the silver, his own little brown fellows timidly holding back. Then one of the white boys who had hastily helped himself saw, after a time, that the bottom was almost reached, and, with the remark that he was half ashamed of himself for taking it, he quietly put his dollar back. Then all the others, fine, impulsive fellows who had hardly thought what they were about at first, did the same; and then the little brown boys came forward.

They kept coming and kept taking, till there was not very much but his handkerchief left. One of the professors then took a piece of gold from his pocket and gave it to the little Bear-Slayer. The boy was so glad that tears came into his eyes and he turned to go.

"See here! I'm sorry for what I said. Yes, I am. I ought to be ashamed, and I am ashamed."

It was the smart boy from Boston who had been looking on all this time, and who now came forward with his hand held out.

"See here!" he said. "I've got a forty-dollar shotgun to give away, and I want you to have it. Yes, I do. There's my hand on it. Take my hand, and you shall have the gun just as soon as it gets here."

The two shook hands, and the boys all shouted with delight; and on the very next Saturday one of these two boys went out hunting quail with a fine shotgun on his shoulder.

It was the silent little hero, The Bear-Slayer of San Diego.