Billy Whiskers Out for Fun

by Frances Trego Montgomery

“I thank you, friends, for your close attention and I will now step aside and give Stubby a chance to tell you of one of his hairbreadth escapes.”

With pawing the ground and bellowing in lieu of handclappings, the animals made night hideous for awhile with their applause. And at last Billy had to baa for them to stop or they would bring the police down upon them.

Stubby being so small, they could not see him if he stood on the ground, so he had to jump up on Billy’s back and from there to a horse’s back and from there to a high vase of flowers. There he was above the heads of the animals and they could all see him when he talked. And he certainly looked cunning with his saucy little face, one ear cocked high on one side peeping out from among the flowers.

“My dear friends,” began Stubby, “I am trembling in every limb at the thought of addressing such a distinguished crowd. Especially after my friend Billy, who is a noted after-dinner speaker. I am no speaker and what I have to tell you will seem tame indeed after the recital of his wonderful escape.”

“We are not critical,” called out the animals. “Go ahead and tell us anything, for we know you have been through the War and must have had many narrow escapes.”

“Yes, I have. If you would care to hear of one of them I can tell you of one of the closest shaves which was at one of the battles Billy and I were in when we were in the war between Japan and Russia, and it happened when we were close up against the enemy trenches and not fighting at long distance. It was a couple of days before the final battle when my master was assigned some spy duty. This meant creeping out in the dead of night close up to the enemy’s front. I heard the order given and I determined to follow him. I knew he would forbid my going for fear I would be shot or maimed in some way, not because he was afraid I would give him away, for I had been with him on too many just such dangerous duties. So when he started I pretended to be asleep on the foot of his bed where I always slept.

“But what do you think he did to keep me behind in case I should wake up? He threw a blanket over me and pinned me in with big safety pins, and then sneaked out. I only waited long enough for the sound of his footsteps to die away in the distance when I tried to get out of the blanket. I felt sure there was some hole I could crawl through where the pins were not too close together. But alas! He had done his work too thoroughly. There was not a space I could even get my head through, so I rolled over on my back and began to scratch and claw at that blanket like mad, but the fuzz and dust got in my eyes and my nose so I had to stop or be suffocated, pinned in as I was. Consequently I stopped the clawing and scratching and tried to think of some other way to get out. I did not want to bark as that would awaken the soldiers and they would find out my master was missing. This I did not want them to know, for when an officer goes out on a secret task, the fewer that know it the better.

“As I lay there resting and wondering what I should do, the thought struck me: ‘Use your sharp teeth, chew a hole in the blanket and when big enough for you to get your nose through, tear it the rest of the way.’ And in a jiffy I was doing this and in another jiffy I was out and nosing around to get on the scent of my master.

“This was easy to do, but to my surprise I found he had crawled under the back of the tent instead of going out the front way. What was more, I soon perceived that he was wiggling along on his stomach instead of walking. He did this until he had crossed the bare place where the tents were pitched and had entered a thick woods. Now of all dangerous places, this woods was the worst as it was filled with spies of both armies trying to find out the number of men on the opposite side or secure any information they could pick up. And one was as likely to be picked off by a bullet from one of his own men as by an enemy, unless he gave the proper signal and gave it quickly at that. When my master was well into the woods, he stood up and seemed to move cautiously from tree to tree, selecting big ones to hide behind. All of a sudden I came to a bush that had had half of its branches broken off, and all around it where the branches were off I could smell my master’s tracks.

“‘Heigho!’ I thought, ‘I know what he is up to now. I have seen him play this same trick on the enemy before. He is covering himself with branches so when he stands still he will look like a bush and the enemy’s sentinel will pass him in the dark.’ To find his own way he had a tiny little electric searchlight which he could flash on for a minute at a time but so small was it that it had the appearance at a distance of being a firefly, should anyone see him using it.