Billy Whiskers Out for Fun

by Frances Trego Montgomery

Seeing Button on the bull’s back and the bull running around like mad, Stubby barked and ran up to the bull to try to drive him into a corner of the barnyard and keep him there just long enough for Button to loosen his claws which had become embedded in the bull’s hide by this time, and give him a chance to jump off.

But Stubby missed his calculations. He thought the bull was too fat to run fast, so he ran straight toward him, barking as he went. But alas! with a lunge forward the bull’s horns slipped under Stubby and tossed him up in the air so high that he thought he must surely be going on up over the moon. Then all of a sudden he started to come down and from the speed he knew when he hit the ground that the breath would be knocked out of him so hard that it would kill him. Just when he had made up his mind that he had to die, he hit something soft and opening his eyes to see what it was, he found he had fallen in the middle of a load of hay.

Now when the bull saw Stubby up in the hay, he tried to get to him and went bellowing round and round the hay wagon, butting his head into the hay and trying to scratch Button off by rubbing his sides against the load. But the first time he did this, with a mighty pull Button loosened his claws and with a spring he found himself safely on top of the load beside Stubby.

Just at this critical moment Billy and Nannie came trotting into the barnyard and the bull ran straight for them with head lowered ready to toss them over the barn. But this time he had met something that could hook and butt quite as hard and much faster than himself. And when he got to the place where he had seen two goats standing, he found no goats in front of him, but one on either side of him sticking their long horns into him. With a bellow of rage he ran forward and Billy and Nannie chased him until they came to a little shed whose door was open. Into this they dodged and let the bull go raving and bellowing to his heart’s content.

And while they describe their sensations to each other, I will tell you what became of Spot, for that was the name of the black and white spotted cat. When her master went after Button with the pitchfork, she ran up the side of the barn and hid on one of the rafters away up high where her master could not possibly reach her. And there she stayed until her master left the loft. When he did so there was murder in his eye, for he had taken one look out the loft door just in time to see Button riding on the back of his pet Durham bull, and it was at that moment the bull tossed Stubby up on the load of hay.

“I have them now!” he cried. “I’ll run into the house and get my gun and shoot both of them. I won’t have any stray dog and cat coming round here and eating up my squabs and sticking their claws into my prize bull’s back!”

The minute Spot’s master left the barn, she climbed down from the rafters and going to the door meowed to Button and Stubby who were still on the load of hay only a short distance from the door. She told them to jump off the load and hide somewhere as her master had gone to the house for his gun and he intended to shoot them on sight. “But don’t go away. Hide until dark and then come back and we will feast on what is left from the wedding supper.”

“All right,” they meowed and barked, and jumping from the opposite side of the load of hay from which the bull was still pawing the earth and bellowing with rage, they ran to an empty corn crib at the further side of the barnyard. They crawled up through a hole in the floor of the crib and found a place of shelter as no one would ever think of looking for them there. Besides being safe, it was situated in a very advantageous place, for from its latticed sides they could see the farmhouse between the end of the barn they had just left and the cluster of sheds and outhouses. Now they could see everything that went on, both in the barnyard and at the house. They could see the bridegroom, the minister, and all the guests arrive, to say nothing of the bridal procession they could watch as it left the house on its way to the church whose tall, sharp steeple they could see piercing the clear, blue sky.

“Here Spot’s master comes now, running around the barn with his shotgun in his hand and the Saint Bernard pup at his heels.”