Billy Whiskers in France

by Frances Trego Montgomery

He soon reached the road, and once on it he put his head down like a race horse to resist the wind, and ran as he had never run before, jumping stones, ditches and uneven places on the roadway until he was completely winded. As it took a great deal to wind Billy Whiskers, you may know he traveled many, many miles and left the dogs’ hospital far behind.

“I shall stop running when I come to the next stream, get a drink, take a bath, and eat whatever I can find by the roadside. Then after a good rest I shall start on again,” he planned.

All of this he did, and he was hidden behind a big bush beside the road down by a stream, watching the big ambulances and high powered touring cars go thundering by in endless procession when, all plans to the contrary, he dropped asleep. It seemed but a minute to him after his eyes had closed when he felt something tight around his neck. He tried two or three times to loosen it by stretching his neck without taking the bother to open his eyes, but when at last he did open them, he saw standing around him three officers with broad grins on their faces. And behind them was the old General in his touring car, waiting for his officers to bring Billy to him!

“I certainly was caught napping that time!” thought Billy to himself. “And they have me all right enough now with this strong rope around my neck. It is queer I did not hear them coming! It must have been I was so tired that it made me sleep like the dead.”

“Come, get up, Billy, you old rascal, and come along without any fuss! For you are a smart enough goat to see that there is no use resisting with a rope around your neck and five men against you—we three officers with the General and his chauffeur.”

Yes, Billy saw all this and as he walked along quietly behind them he wondered where they were going to put him. They could not mean to tie him behind the car as no goat, even if fitted out with twenty league boots, could keep up with the General’s car at the rate he drove. And with three staff officers, the General and the chauffeur he could not see where there would be room inside the car.

“Well, Master Billy, you thought you had escaped from me for good, didn’t you? But you see you haven’t. And, what is more, you won’t escape in a hurry again, for I propose taking you right along with us, though it will crowd us some. Here I was blustering about and scolding the chauffeur for his carelessness in not seeing that we had water enough in the car to carry us through when the very lack of it led us to finding you. He got out to carry a bucket of water from the stream and found you so fast asleep behind the bush that you had not heard our approach in the car or even the chauffeur’s steps when within three or four feet of you. He had time to come back to the car and tell us what he had found, get a rope and the three officers to help me capture you while you slept on. Now, my dear Billy, you are my prisoner. If you behave, you shall have every care and comfort, but try to escape, and I shall send a bullet through you, for I shall stand no nonsense. Hear that?” and the General pulled Billy’s beard in a joking manner. But Billy knew he would do as he said if he tried to escape or cut up any monkeyshines. So he quietly let them help him into the car, where he stood between the two seats in the tonneau while they tied him to the rod at the back of the front seat on which the extra robes hung.

Billy was experiencing one of his rare moments of dejection and discouragement, for he knew if they once succeeded in getting him back in camp it would be very difficult indeed to escape as they would use every precaution to keep him there and they might even put him inside the electrically charged barbed wire fence where they kept the German prisoners. That would be horrible indeed!

“I must think up some way to escape before we reach camp or I am lost,” thought Billy. “How I ever can unless we have a breakdown is more than I can tell!”