Billy Whiskers at the Circus

by Frances Trego Montgomery

Without waiting for a reply, the big wolf went on:

“My companions are no less unhappy than I am, though there is little in common between us as we have been collected from all over. There is no quarter of the globe in which branches of our family do not exist. We never stop trying to find a way to get out, and if we ever do, we will make some of these cruel people who have come here to look at us with never a thought of pity for our forlorn condition, wish they had stayed at home. There is that little rosy-cheeked, brown-eyed boy with his mother. He’s about three years old, I guess, just the right age to be tender eating. How I’d like to get my jaws into his throat!”

The old wolf smiled wickedly as he said it.

Billy looked to see whom he meant, and to his horror saw his own little Dick holding fast to his mother’s hand. They had passed within a few feet of Billy, but had not seen him. He was thankful for that because he felt that he could never look a member of the Treat family in the face again if he had been caught hobnobbing with the great Russian wolf, especially if it ever leaked out what the wolf had said.

Billy’s nerves were so shaken and he felt so sick after hearing the dreadful threats the wolf had made that he crept between the wheels under the cage and lay down behind the wooden side of the cage which was banked against the far wheels. Here he had time to recover his composure in peace and pull himself together.

It was not long, of course, before Billy felt well enough to go on.

Strange to tell, the more he thought of the old wolf’s story, the less he blamed him for being so savage. He realized that in picking out little Dick as the one on whom he would like to wreak his vengeance, he had not known that he was Billy’s dearest friend and that Billy had once risked his own life to save him from drowning in the old swimming hole, and was more than willing to do so again if the necessity ever arose. Finally Billy owned to himself if he had been treated as the wolf had been, captured, taken far from home, penned up in a narrow cage to be looked at by thousands of people day after day, year in and year out, with not the faintest hope or chance of escape, he would feel the same way. The very thought of such a fate made him quake and wish he had stayed at home.

Billy crept out of his hiding-place and slipped quietly past the next three or four cages without stopping to ask any questions, fearing that the wolves would see him and make an uproar trying to call him back to hear more of their sad story and to persuade him to find some means for their escape. Billy was always tender-hearted when it came to the cases of those in trouble and suffering, and he knew it would hurt his feelings to be obliged to disappoint even that pack of wolves, thieves and robbers though he knew them to be.

By just glancing sidewise at the cages he thus passed and observing the labels on each he was able to learn the names of the animals he felt obliged to skip. They were the North American panther or mountain lion, red deer, wild boar, and hyenas. The last were such ugly, awkward, unclean and altogether terrifying looking beasts that Billy did not mind not making their personal acquaintance, though he would have liked to exchange greetings with the beautiful, mild-looking, gentle-acting deer; and to have put a question or two to the mountain lion about his diet. He was crouched in one corner of his cage and looked for all the world as though he were ready to spring upon some victim.