“Not unless you wish to give up your trip West, for if you once left this car you could never find your way back among all those hundreds of others in the yard here that look just like it.”
“I could easily find my way back if that was all,” said Billy Jr., “but the thing I am afraid of is that they might start West and leave me, or switch you off to another yard where I could not find you.”
Their conversation was interrupted here by a man bringing them something to eat and a bucket of water.
“I do not see why they did not run this car over to the Stock Yards so these animals could have been taken out and fed and watered and their car cleaned in proper shape,” Billy Jr. heard a red-headed man say, as he pushed back the sliding door that shut them in. “For heaven’s sake! I thought it was two horses we had been sent to look after and not a car of goats,” as Billy Jr. appeared at the door.
“You can have the job,” said a jolly-looking, fat man. “I throw up my share right here. I had all I wanted to do with goats when I was a boy.”
“Why, what did they ever do to you that you should take such a dislike to them?” said the red-headed man.
“Well, I’ll tell you. The first thing they did to me when I was a little shaver was to chew my hair off.”
“Chew your hair off! How in the world did they get a chance to do that?”
“It happened in this way,” said the fat man, “I went to sleep on a bank by the side of the road one hot day, and when I woke up my hair was all chewed off, and the old Billy had commenced on one leg of my trousers. I stoned him good for this, but he got even a week after when he met me coming home from one of the neighbors with a basket of eggs in one hand and a pat of butter in the other. The first thing I knew I was standing on my head in the pat of butter and the eggs were all broken beside me with the basket turned upside-down. From that day on that goat and I were enemies. He would do me a mean trick and I would pay him back the first chance I got. But somehow or other he always seemed to get the best of me. And this goat is as much like him as two peas; and how do I know but what it is the same goat, though that was years ago? Goats may live to be a hundred for all I know, and I don’t care to take my chances; so I will attend to the horse and you look after the goat.”
As these words left his mouth Billy Jr. made a plunge for him and, landing in the yard clear over his head, ran off and disappeared behind some freight cars.