Billy Whiskers - Frances Trego Montgomery (learn to read books .TXT) 📗

He had hardly gotten the words out of his mouth when something struck him on the back and began to pull his hair out by the roots. It was Miss Polly who had dropped like a torpedo and who was screeching, pecking and clawing him at a great rate. She was in a bad humor that day as they had forgotten to feed her her accustomed crackers and coffee.

As soon as Billy got over his surprise, which was in a second, he lay down and rolled. This knocked Polly off but the minute he stopped she flew onto his back again and pecked him until the blood ran. The second time she lit on his back he thought of a way to get even. He saw the elephant's tub of water a little way before him and with two bounds he was by its side and before Miss Polly was aware of what was up, she found herself doused in the tub, and when she came up from under the water there was no goat in sight.

As Billy went out of the tent he ran into the animal keeper who was just coming in.

"Ho, ho! Master Billy, not so fast. I was coming to look for you, for we are about to start and you have a way of turning up missing just when you are most wanted." As he said this he caught hold of the piece of rope around Billy's neck that Billy had broken when he took his somersault, and said: "Come along with me. I am going to put you for once where you can't get out, no matter how hard you bite, chew or kick."

"I wonder what he is going to do with me," thought Billy.

But he soon found out, for the man led him to a vacant cage that a wild cat had died in the day before, and made him walk up an inclined board into it.

"Heavens!" thought Billy, "I'll never get out of here unless I die and am carried out like the wild cat was, and if I don't die I know I will go crazy, shut up in a little cooped up place like this, with only room enough to take one step and not enough to turn around unless you turn yourself in sections."

"Well, Billy, how do you like being caged?" asked the animal keeper.

"Yes, you vicious beast, you, how do you like being shut up where you can't butt and send people flying into mud-puddles and chew up their wigs, etc.?" asked the ring-master who had joined the animal keeper.

"Oh, it is you, is it? Well, you just wait until I get out of here and see where I will butt you next time, and the animal keeper, too," bleated Billy, but neither of them understood what he said.

When they left him alone Billy tried every way he could think of to break out, but he could make no impression on the iron bars, chew as he would,—in fact, he broke one of his teeth trying. Then he tried butting out the ends of the cage, but it was of no use. Next he stood on his hind legs and tried to push the roof off with his long horns, but to no effect; so he lay down tired and broken-hearted on the hard bottom of the cage and gave himself up to the blues.

He was lying there quietly, apparently asleep, when a man brought him a bundle of hay to eat, a bucket of water to drink and a pitch-fork of straw to lie on.

Billy did not move when they brought the things, pretending to be asleep, but he was rudely awakened out of his supposed sleep by the man sticking the prongs of the pitch-fork into him to make him get up so he could spread the straw on the bottom of the cage. He felt too disheartened to eat, especially food which he detested, but thought he would take a drink as he was very thirsty, but at one smell of the bucket he turned up his aristocratic nose for he detected the bucket had not been washed since it had been used by some of the other animals for he could smell and see their hairs on the rim; so he lay down more disgusted than ever. Poor Billy's confinement was going to be hard for him. He had roamed the fields and towns, master of himself, too long to take to being shut up easily.

At last Billy fell asleep and only awakened when they hitched the horses to the wagon-like cage he was in to draw it to the depot. Just before they started he heard a man say: "Here, you forgot to put up the sides on that cage with the goat in."

Then the man brought wooden sides and fastened them onto the cage over the iron bars. This left Billy only a little iron barred opening near the top, at one side, to get air through.

"I shall surely smother," thought Billy. "Oh, this is horrible! I feel as if I were buried alive."

At that minute the horses started up and poor Billy went down on his knees with a sudden jerk.

"How I wish Nanny was here to comfort me," thought Billy. "She was always so patient and cheerful." How like a man that was for Billy to forget all about Nanny while he was free and having a good time, but the minute he was in trouble to think of her and be willing to have her shut up if he could only see her.

After several hours of hard traveling they stopped, and Billy knew they must be at the depot for he heard the engines whistling and the bells ringing, and he was very glad of it for his knees were all skinned from slipping on the floor from one end of the cage to the other when they went up or down hill, for it was impossible to stand, so he had to lay down and make the best of it.

"I never pitied caged animals before," thought Billy, "but I did not know what they had to endure or I should."

After a great deal of commotion, swearing and fussing on the part of the men outside, Billy's cage was at last on board and the train started.

"Mercy!" thought Billy, "aren't they going to give me a drink of water or something fresh and cool to eat? Do they expect me to eat that dried up, tasteless, weedy hay this hot day; and as for the water, that got upset the first hill we went up. Oh, dear! and to add to the rest of my troubles I have got a cinder in my eye, along with this horrible dust that is blowing in that stuffy little window and I know I am going to be smothered to death. Oh, if Nanny were only here, to lick this cinder out of my eye! It smarts so I wish I had hands instead of feet for once in my life so I could get it out. I wonder if people ever think how inconvenient it is not to have hands sometimes."

And poor old Billy commenced to cry softly to himself. It was a good thing he did for he soon cried the cinder out and when his eye stopped hurting, he got some of his spunk back again and began to plan some way of getting out of his cage.

At twelve o'clock at night they reached the city and were driven through the silent streets to a vacant lot where all the circus bands were to meet. And here I will leave Billy until next morning.