“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.
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.