Billy Whiskers Out for Fun

by Frances Trego Montgomery

Mr. Stevenson had shut the window when he saw him coming. This made no difference to Mr. Bull; he just ran his sharp horns along the outside of the window and every pane was shattered and fell over his head.

Just at this crucial moment Mrs. Stevenson called from upstairs that she could see two or three buggies coming down the road with wedding guests in them. They must be stopped for in his present state of mind the bull would gore the horses and perhaps kill some of the people.

“It is the minister in one buggy and the groom in another,” called out one of the bridesmaids who was keeping watch at one of the upper windows. “What shall we do? What shall we do?” she wailed.

“One of you girls,” said Mr. Stevenson, “keep banging on the pans to attract his attention while I sneak out of the house and go warn them.”

He ran down the front yard trying to get to the road to stop the guests before they turned into the lane. Then the bull, on hearing the horses coming, stopped trying to get in the window and turned his head in the direction the sound came from. He rolled his upper lip over the end of his nose as bulls do sometimes when intent on smelling something that is far away, and immediately he detected the odor of perspiring horses. Now here was something nice and big to vent his spleen on. He stopped pawing the ground and butting the window, and was about to turn and run out after them when to his dismay who should he see coming toward him but those two horrid goats that had butted him and stuck their long horns into him in the barnyard. He did not wait for them to come nearer, but hustled his fat self round the corner of the house and ran down the yard toward the road as fast as his great bulk would let him.

He arrived at the foot of the yard just as the first buggy reached the lane. On seeing the horse, the bull threw his whole weight against the rail fence and it fell over like a pack of cards and over it he went after the horse.

The horse hitched to this buggy was afraid of bulls, so he reared, plunged and then bolted down the road on a dead run with his driver pulling on the reins as hard as he could. The young lady with him hung on to the side of the buggy to keep from being thrown out, while her hat flew off and lit on one of the bull’s horns. This he soon demolished by lowering his head and throwing the hat in the mud and stamping on it.

This horse having escaped, the bull ran down the road to meet the other buggies he saw coming. The next horse, driven by the minister, turned straight around in the woods, upsetting it and throwing the minister over a rail fence, where he landed in a squashy turnip bed, leaving the tails of his long coat as he went over the fence.

The third horse became frightened also and in trying to turn around he ran his buggy into the overturned one, locking the wheels and breaking himself loose, as well as throwing out the groom, for it was none other than the groom himself in this buggy. Then with a snort of fear he ran down the road with the bull close to his heels.

When he recovered from his dazed feeling, the groom found himself in the muddy road under the two overturned buggies. He tried to extricate himself and get out from under the wreckage, while his bride, who had seen all this from her window, fainted again when she saw his buggy upset. But presently the man whose horse had bolted down the road succeeded in getting him under control. He came back, and with his help and that of Mr. Stevenson and the minister, they soon were able to rescue the groom from the wrecked buggies. And just as soon as this was done they shut the gate and reinforced it with logs so that should the bull come back, he could not break the gate down and come into the farmyard after them again.