“He might not try,” whispered Pinky to herself. “But I bet he could butt down the door if he took it into his head he wanted to do it.”
The cook got Billy to the foot of the stairs leading to the porch of the hospital. Here the cook went ahead and tried to lead Billy up. But all of a sudden Billy planted his fore feet straight in front of him and pulled back. His quick stop accompanied by the jerk nearly cracked the cook’s head off his shoulders and Billy, giving a second pull just then, jerked the cook backwards off the steps where he landed at the bottom, sitting straight up and facing Billy, with their noses not three inches apart. He looked so comical with his legs spread apart, cap on one side of his head and his hair standing straight up, that Billy had to laugh. Surely the cook’s startled expression was a study as he gazed into Billy’s eyes.
On seeing this, the dogs all laughed out loud. The cook jumped up and looked around to see who was making sport of him, but of course he saw no one. So he thought some one must have been leaning out of one of the upper windows, then quickly ducked after they laughed. Anyway, he would make Billy pay for his discomfort. He jerked him up the steps and was about to shove him into the room he had just unlocked when Billy gave a big, big pull and started to run off the porch. He ran so fast and was so strong that he jerked the cook along as if he had been a rag. Along the porch they went until Billy came to one end. Here there were no steps, so Billy just gave a big leap and landed in the middle of a flower bed, the cook sailing on behind, hanging on to the rope that was still around Billy’s neck. And it was a lucky thing for the cook that there happened to be a nice soft flower bed right there for him to fall in; otherwise he might have broken his back.
Billy gave another pull to the rope which brought the cook to his feet, and away went Billy across the lawn and down the lane, jerking the cook around trees, over stumps and beehives, upsetting them and causing all the bees to come out to see what was the matter. For a while the air seemed to Billy to be black with bees. Then they stung the cook so that he let go the rope and rolled in the grass to try to keep them off his face. But they settled on him thick as flies on a molasses covered paper.
“Run for the watering trough in the barnyard!” called a nurse who saw all this, and the cook did, diving headfirst into the water to drive off the bees, which it did effectively.
Billy thought they could not sting up through his long hair, and he stood enjoying seeing the cook trying to fight them off. But all of a sudden one bee stung him on the ear. The pain made him frantic and he started for the watering trough, regardless of the fact that the cook was still sitting on the edge, rubbing his swollen face and hands and putting mud on them to take out the burning, stinging pain. Strange as it may seem, neither the cook nor Billy paid the slightest attention to each other. They were too much occupied each in trying to stop the pain of the bee stings.
Presently the cook got up and limped into the kitchen, saying to himself as he went, “That goat sure has the devil inside of him! I’ll never try to capture him again for the General. No, not for the President of the United States himself! I am done! What with having my head jerked off, my spine driven through the top of my head, and my legs nearly broken off, to say nothing of running me into stumps, trees and beehives, I’ve got enough of that goat, even with one thousand dollars as a reward offered for his return. No! No more at all, at all, do I ever have anything to do with goats!”
CHAPTER VI
BILLY RELATES SOME OF HIS ADVENTURES
