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.”