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.