Mr. Connor was much interested in learning all he could about them, and collecting all he could of the curious stone bowls and pestles they used to make, and of their baskets and lace work. He spent much of his time riding about the country; and whenever he came to an Indian hut he would stop and talk with them, and ask if they had any stone bowls or baskets they would like to sell. The bowls especially were a great curiosity. Nobody knew how long ago they had been made. When the missionaries first came to the country, they found the Indians using them; they had them of all sizes, from those so large that they are almost more than a man can lift, down to tiny ones no bigger than a tea-cup. But big and little, they were all made in the same way out of solid stone, scooped out in the middle, by rubbing another stone round and round on them. You would think it would have taken a lifetime to make one; but they seem to have been plenty in the olden time. Even yet, people who are searching for such curiosities sometimes find big grave-mounds in which dozens of them are buried,—buried side by side with the people who used to eat out of them. There is nothing left of the people but their skulls and a few bones; but the bowls will last as long as the world stands.
Now I suppose you are beginning to wonder when I am coming to the Hunter Cats! I am coming to them just the way Mr. Connor did,—by degrees. I want you to know about the place he lived in, and how he used to amuse himself, before he decided to build his house; and then I must tell you about the house, and then about the children that came to live with him in it, and then about the Chinamen that came to do his work, and about his orange-trees, and the gophers that gnawed the bark off them, and the rabbits that burrowed under his vines. Oh! it will be a good many pages yet 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 east and 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 sharp and jagged, with more peaks and ridges, crowded in together, than you could possibly count. At the bottom, they reach out into the valley by long slopes, which in the olden time were covered thick with trees and shrubs; but now, the greater part of these have been cut down and cleared 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 orange orchards 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 orchards and vineyards, he began to think he should like to have some too. So he went up and down along the base of the mountains, looking for a good place. At last he found one. It was strange nobody had picked it out before. One reason was that it was so wild, and lay so high up, that it would be a world of trouble, and cost a deal of money, to make a road up to it and to clear the ground. But Mr. Connor did not care for that. It was a sort of ridge of the mountains, and it was all grown over thick with what is called in California "chapparal." That is not the name of any one particular shrub or tree; it means a mixture of every sort and kind. You all know what mixed candy is! Well, "chapparal" is mixed bushes and shrubs; mixed thick too! From a little way off, it looks as smooth as moss; it is so tangled, and the bushes have such strong and tough stems, you can't possibly get through it, unless you cut a path before 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 thought how well a house would look up there, with the splendid mountain wall rising straight up behind it. And from the windows of such a house, one could look off, not only over the whole valley, but past the hills of its southern wall, clear and straight thirty miles to the sea. In a clear day, the line of the water flashed and shone there like a silver thread.
Mr. Connor used to sit on his horse by the half hour at a time gazing at this hillside, and picturing the home he would like to make there,—a big 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 longer he 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 had a big force of men hacking away at the chapparal, burning it, digging up the tough, tangled roots; oh, what slow work it was! Just as soon as a big enough place was cleared, he built a little house of rough boards,—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 wait for it to be done; and he was never happy except when he was overseeing the men, hurrying them and working himself. Many a tough old bush he chopped down with his own hands, and tugged the root up; and he grew stronger 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 stems of this shrub are bright red, and twisted almost into knots. They make capital firewood; so Mr. Connor had them all piled up in a pile to keep to burn in his big fireplaces; and you would have laughed to see such a woodpile. It was almost as high as the house; and no two sticks alike,—all prongs and horns, and crooks and twists; they looked like monster's back teeth.