Billy Whiskers at the Circus

by Frances Trego Montgomery

It was a sorry day for any dog who bothered the flock when Billy Whiskers was around. Many a one went howling home after Billy got through with him. Small boys, too, learned that it was safer and better not to throw stones in his direction. Probably there are as many as twenty of them who have had the awful feeling that comes of trying to run fast enough to get away from the biggest goat that almost anybody ever saw, knowing that he was losing ground every second, hearing plainer and plainer every jump of his pursuer, and the last dreadful moment just before the shock came, and then flying through the air as though fired out of a gun, believing his end had surely come. But it never did. Billy Whiskers looked out for that and so timed his attacks that he could land his victim in a soft place, though he did not in the least mind if it happened to be a mud puddle.

One day he tossed a particularly mean boy right on top of a hedge where he staid until his yells attracted the attention of the hired man ploughing in a near-by field who made no haste, Billy noticed, to pull him out of his prickly nest.

You must not suppose from this description that Billy Whiskers was a model of good behavior for he certainly was not that. When he was hungry, he would eat whatever he could get hold of, whether it was intended for him or not. He preferred a lettuce bed or garden generally but did not draw the line at eating clothes hung out on the line to dry, or going into a pantry, no matter whose, and helping himself to everything in sight.

Of course, tricks of this kind got Billy Whiskers into serious trouble more than once, but he never said much about it and the animals at Cloverleaf Farm either didn’t know or wouldn’t believe such stories of their Billy even if they had leaked out and been whispered around.

Ever since he had been living at Cloverleaf Farm, which is near Farmersville or “The Corners,” as the place was more generally called, Billy had behaved himself, had stopped stealing things to eat, had quit fighting, which it must be confessed he dearly loved, and in less than a year had established himself on the friendliest footing not only with his master and mistress and all the children, but likewise with the black cat, the dog, the colt and his mother, as well as the other horses, the cows and calves and even Big Red, the bull, said to be very fierce, also the flock of sheep with Old Buck for leader.

As was stated at first, Billy Whiskers had found life so pleasant of late that he had fully made up his mind to stay where he was as long as he lived. The work he had to do was much to his liking. It consisted mainly in pulling little Dick around the place in his express wagon when Tom or Harry usually did the driving. Now and then the drivers would want to ride, sometimes both of them, when the load would be pretty heavy and more than once, at such times, Billy was tempted to run away as he used to do in his earlier years, upset his load and smash the wagon all to flinders; but he stoutly resisted these promptings of rebellion, knowing well by long experience that it is with goats as it is with boys and girls better to take things as they come; that it is the hard work now and then, the giving up to others and readiness to do one’s share of whatever comes along that tells whether he is made of the right kind of stuff.

So things were moving smoothly with Billy Whiskers and he had no thought of not spending the rest of his life with the Treat family, when one June day he heard Tom Treat ask Jack Wright, his playmate and chum, if he were going to the Circus that was coming to Springfield the next week. Jack said that he had not heard about it. Tom, who had just returned from The Corners where he had gone on an errand for his mother, then told him about the show bills that some men were putting up on the sides of the post office and blacksmith’s shop. He said that he had waited so long to see them all that he had forgotten all about his errand—he called it his “old errand”—that his mother was waiting for the baking powder and that he had caught “hail Columbia” when he finally got home.

Jack said that was nothing, it did not hurt when a fellow was used to it as he was, and that if he had been in Tom’s place he wouldn’t be home yet.