“What is it?” he exclaimed, also springing to his feet.
“Goats,” laughed Billy. “They’re climbing all over the roof.”
And sure enough they were, for what Billie had seen was the hoof of one of them sticking through the roof.
“They’ll all be coming through, first thing you know,” said Billie.
“I’m not so much afraid of that as that they will make holes for the rain to come through,” declared Adrian. “We must scare them off. Shoo!”
But he might as well have cried shoo at the moon.
“Wait a minute,” exclaimed Billie, “I’ll fix them.”
He crawled over to the other side of the kitchen, where a great dry cactus stem was leaned up against
the side of the wall. It was as thick as a man’s leg, about six or eight feet long, and almost as light as cork. Waiting until he was satisfied by the sound that a goat was directly over his head, he gave a great thrust with the cactus log.
His aim was a good one. With a loud bleat, that was almost a wail, the goat went tumbling off the roof, and in a minute the boys heard it pattering away as fast as it could scamper. Twice during the night was the feat repeated, the only inconvenience it caused being that the boys did not sleep as soundly as they otherwise would.