While turning his head to look at it he found that by stretching his neck he could just get hold of the edge of the girth that strapped it to his back. Consequently he began squirming and twisting until he got a good hold with his teeth. Then with a mighty tug he pulled it toward his head, and joy of joys! in three long strong pulls he had it up to his neck. So all he had to do was to duck his head and the saddle fell over his head and neck to the floor of the box.
“Ha! Ha!” laughed Billy to himself. “I think I am pretty smart to rid myself of that saddle. Now I can go wherever I wish and no one will suspect that I am not just an ordinary goat out looking for something to eat. Speaking of eats, I believe I’m hungry. Aren’t you, Nannie? Now that we are rested, I think we had better go in search of food.” So they squeezed themselves out of the box and went trotting down the alley as independently as you please.
When they reached the corner where the alley crossed the street, they found a grocery store with baskets of vegetables and fruit displayed outside. Billy took a peek and no one being in sight, he reached for a nice fresh cabbage and retired to the alley to eat it. Nannie did the same. Having finished the cabbage, they ate a bunch of carrots and were beginning on a head of lettuce when the grocery wagon drove into the alley and the driver chased them away with his long whip and then threw stones at them.
Billy was now feeling pretty fine, having had all he wanted to eat, so he thought, “Now is the time for us to find the depot, so I can see if we can’t steal a ride out of here back to Minneapolis. There we must change cars and get on a train going west, or we will never catch up with Stubby and Button.”
Had Billy only known it, he was at that minute within three blocks of the very depot he was looking for. He did not know this, but hearing a train whistle he thought he would follow the sound and see where it led him, in town or out. By jumping a fence or two and crossing a vacant lot, they soon came to a railroad track and looking down it what should he see but the very circus train they had come on!
“Hurrah! This is surely good luck for us for now I know we shall get on the right train to take us back. We’ll go over to the depot and watch for a chance to sneak into a freight car going in the right direction to carry us back to Minneapolis.”
Billy soon found a good place for them to hide from which they could watch all the incoming and outgoing trains, but he saw no freight cars with the doors open. What he did see when it grew dark and the lights were lighted was an express mail train all made up and ready to start. He could see men throwing on mail bags and storing away express packages while the engine blew off steam and waited for the signal. He was watching this intently when the audacious thought struck him, “Why not go on that train instead of waiting for some old slow freight? We will try it. They can but throw us off and I’ll put up such a fight they won’t dare do it after we have once started. But the hard part will be to get aboard without one or the other of us being seen. However, it is pretty dark, which will help some, and I am going to try it.”
So they trotted across the intervening tracks and jumped up on the platform. Now there were two platforms where this train stood and the doors of the car were open on each side so a person could board the train from either side. Billy noticed this, and while the man in charge of the mail car was standing at one door talking to the driver of a mail wagon that had just brought a big lot of mail bags, Billy and Nannie stepped in the opposite door and tiptoed into a dimly-lighted corner and hid behind a pile of mail bags. They had scarcely secreted themselves when the train gave a jerk and they were off.
“Pretty slick work I call that!” said Billy. “This surely has been our lucky day to run away from the circus and get started back to Minneapolis.”