Back Aa

Billy Whiskers in France

<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VI BILLY RELATES SOME OF HIS ADVENTURES</h2></div> <div> <ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/i-p059.jpg" alt="" /></div> OH, Billy, are you hurt?” whined Pinky at his heels. “Yes. I have a bee sting on my ear that hurts like the very mischief. And, by Jove, I believe I have another over my eye for it is fast swelling shut.” “Come with us,” said the Red Cross dog, “over to the grove before it closes entirely and you can’t see where to walk. When we get there I’ll fix you up for I know what is good for stings.” On the way they had to cross over a little stream with a soft, muddy bank, and the Red Cross dog stopped there and said, “Now stoop down and rub your head in the mud so it will cover your eye and get into the lid where the sting is. As soon as the mud closes over it you will find that the pain will stop almost instantly. I have seen my master rub mud on too many stings not to know it is a sure cure.” [60]“Gee, but I hate to get that nasty mud in my ear and all over my face!” <div class="figleft"><ANTIMG src="images/i-p060.jpg" alt="" /></div> “Never mind the dirt! It is clean mud and will dry and fall off itself so it won’t be hard to get out of your ear or off your face. Should it be, you can just shut your eyes, hold your breath and dip your head up and down in the trough until your hair is as white as snow again.” “Well, I’ve got to do something, dirt or no dirt, for this pain is setting me crazy. So here goes!” Billy knelt down and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed one side of his head up and down in the soft mud until it was as brown as an African’s face. When at last he stood up all the dogs tried not to laugh, but finally they went off in a perfect howl of merriment. “What you laughing at?” asked Billy. [61]“Just step here where the water is clear and look at yourself,” said the Red Cross dog. This Billy did, and then he too began to laugh, for he was a most comical sight. One side of his face looked twice as large as the other, and on this side the eye was swollen shut with a bump as big as a hen’s egg standing out above it. And this whole side of his head was as brown as could be while the other was white, which made him look exactly as if his head had been made in two parts and they were misfits. “Hurry!” said a hound that was with them. “We better get to the woods. I hear some one coming!” and away scampered the dogs and goat to the grove, their old trysting place. I should like to have had a picture of them as they stood beside the clear stream, with the dogs surrounding the mumpsy looking goat, laughing at his discomfort. There was the big St. Bernard, majestic and tall; the long, sleek, black hound with tan ears and feet; the fluffy white French poodle with pinkish eyes; and the Red Cross Belgian dog with his short, sharp ears, wide-awake face and short, glossy black hair, while over his breast was still the white band with the Red Cross on it. Once in the woods and comfortably fixed, Billy related to them the story of his life and how and where he first met the big black[62] cat they had just seen, and the little yellow dog that was now wounded and in the hospital. “Before you begin, Billy,” said the Red Cross dog, “I want to ask if the pains in your ear and eye are better?” “Why, bless my soul, they don’t hurt at all! Even the swelling is going down. You sure are some doctor!” “Now go on with your story, and excuse me for having interrupted you.” “Well, to begin with, all three of us—the little yellow dog named Stubby, the big black cat called Button and myself—were born in the United States of America. We have known each other for years and been great chums. Why, we have scarcely been out of sight of one another for years until I joined the army. My regiment left so unexpectedly for France that I had no way of letting them know I was going, as they were away at the time on a vacation. And I bet you we will find out when I get a chance to talk to them that the minute they got home and found I was gone they managed to make friends with some of the soldier boys and made themselves so useful that they brought them along. Why, do you know that we three have crossed the big American continent twice, and we have been from Northern Wisconsin away down to the Gulf of Mexico? Not being satisfied with that, we have crossed the Pacific to Japan and we all three were in the war between Russia and Japan as mascots.[63] Before that we crossed the Atlantic Ocean, sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar and over the Mediterranean Sea to Constantinople. We are some little globe trotters, don’t you think?” “Heavens! It makes my head dizzy to even think of it!” said Pinky. “And you lived to tell the tale!” said the big St. Bernard. “Yes, as I shall live to tell the tale of this war and about all of you to my grandchildren when I get home,” replied Billy. “But you must have had a great many narrow escapes and thrilling experiences,” suggested the hound. “I should think so! More than would fill a book the size of Webster’s dictionary. As for hurts, bruises and scars, I have been wounded so many times I don’t believe there is a square inch on my body that has not a scar of some kind on it. It is a good thing I am not a hairless goat, like those little hairless dogs they have in Mexico, for if I was, I would look like a tattooed man,” said Billy. “Tell us of your most thrilling experience,” begged the Red Cross dog. “Heavens! I have had so many hairbreadth escapes I would not know which one to pick out.” “Tell us two or three of them,” said Pinky. “I just love to hear you tell of your adventures.” “Yes, do!” exclaimed all the other dogs in chorus. [64]Just then Billy gave his head a shake and a big clod of dry mud fell off his eye, leaving it practically well and the swelling gone. “A mighty quick cure, I should say,” remarked Billy. “I recommend you, Doctor Red Cross!” “Turn your head to one side and shake it and I think the rest of the mud will fall off. Then by holding your head well over on one side, the mud will fall out of your ear.” All this Billy did. “My, but it certainly does feel good to be able to see out of both eyes and hear with both ears once again! So you all want to hear of some thrilling adventure I have had? Well, let me see which one I shall tell first, about being wrecked at sea, falling in the crack of an earthquake that opened at my feet, or being blown up by a bomb in this war or—” “Oh, don’t tell us anything about bombs!” exclaimed Pinky. “They are too common around here. We want to hear something we don’t know so much about.” “Well, then I guess I’ll tell you about the earthquake experience. It happened when Stubby, Button and myself were in San Francisco. “One day we were trotting along one of the streets in Chinatown, the name given to the Chinese quarters of that city. It was about lunch time, and Button had jumped up into a milk wagon that had stopped opposite us, to see if he could not find some milk to drink,[65] Stubby had run into a butcher shop to see if he could find some meat, and I decided to sneak into some Chinaman’s back yard and see what I could find to make a meal. <div class="figcenter"><ANTIMG src="images/i-p065.jpg" alt="" /></div> “Presently I came to a long, narrow, dark passageway that led to a back yard. I sneaked in quickly, so a Chinaman looking out the window would not see me. But alas, he did, and I had scarcely gotten half way down the passage when I heard a door slam shut behind me and a bolt slipped into place. I knew before I even turned around, when I heard that bolt slip into place, that I was caught in a trap like as not. But I went right on pretending I did not hear the Chinaman shut the door. [66]“The end of the passage opened into the back yard of a Chinese laundry and there were lines and lines stretched from one side of the yard to the other, but there were no clothes hanging on them when I went in. Without paying any attention to me, the Chinaman began to take down the lines, but instead of taking them all down, he only took a short one, I noticed. Then he made a slip knot in one end, whistling as he walked toward the laundry. He went inside, still without looking at me, and I was beginning to think I had been mistaken and he had not seen me enter and that the rope was not to tie me up, when out he came with a carrot in one hand, the rope still in the other. “He came straight toward me, holding out the carrot in one hand while he kept the other behind him. As he approached me he kept saying, ‘Nice little goatee! Nice little goatee! Have a carrot!’ “And I thought to myself, ‘You might as well try to catch a bird by putting salt on its tail as to try to catch me with a carrot in one hand and a rope hidden in the other behind your back, especially when that rope has a slip knot in it. Oh, no, Mr. Chinaman, I was not born yesterday or the day before! And unless you open that door quickly and let me out, you are going to be carried out of it on my horns. I am in no mood for play or jokes!’ “Just then another Chinaman came out of the laundry with a basket heaped up with clothes to hang on the line, and the Chinaman with the carrot said, ‘Yum, you watcha me catcha little goatee. Keep little goatee. Him bring heap money at butcher’s!’ <div class="figcenter"><ANTIMG src="images/i-p066b.jpg" alt="" /></div> Billy gave one long, loud baa that resounded down the big, bare room. (Page 49) [67]“‘So-ho! You would sell me for chops and roasts, would you? Well, just you come a little nearer and see what happens to one little Chinaman!’ “The Chinaman with the clothes began to hang them on the line, singing a queer, monotonous refrain in his cackling language. By this time the first Chinaman was within three feet of me, holding the carrot straight out before him and staring into my eyes. Evidently he was not used to goats, and felt a little uncertain as to what I would do. While I was watching him, expecting he would try to throw the rope over my head every minute, to surprise him I stretched my neck out quickly, grabbed the carrot out of his hand and ate it up. Then he came boldly up to me, as this gave him the assurance I was not going to butt him. But when he tried to put the rope around my neck, I simply lowered my head and butted him over flat on his back. This infuriated him, and he leaped up and grabbed a clothes pole to hit me with it. Then the chase began. Around and around that small back yard we went, upsetting everything, he trying to hit me all the while and I dodging him but trying to butt or hook him at every turn. Then I took to butting everything and anything that came in my way. One thing I butted was the basket full of clothes the second Chinaman had left, having sought[68] a place of safety when first the chase began. Now he sat cross-legged on the low roof of the back porch grinning from ear to ear and watching the sport. When I butted the basket, it shot straight up in the air, spilling out the clothes as it soared, which the wind caught and carried over into the other yards. “Presently from all the doors and windows of the adjacent buildings one could see grinning faces. But not one person came to help that Chinaman I was butting and chasing. He must have been thoroughly disliked by his neighbors for them to act as they did. Their jeers and calls made him madder and madder and every time he tried to hit me with the long pole and missed, they would call: “‘Try it again! Try it again! Don’t give up!’ “Once the pole just grazed my back, and for this I went to the clothesline and taking a shirt sleeve in my teeth I jerked it off the line, stamped on it and then tore it to pieces. He nearly foamed at the mouth when he saw this. And I was just walking up to get another when some one slipped up behind me and threw a blanket over my head. Well, of all the rolling and tumbling that went on then you never saw the like! First I was on top, then the two Chinamen were. My legs were loose and you better believe I used them. I kicked and kicked. Then all of a sudden it seemed as if every Chinaman in all Chinatown was sitting on top of me.[69] They came from over the fences, from all directions, and every one that came proceeded to sit on me. At last there were so many of them I could not move. They tied all four of my feet together and strung me on a pole, which they suspended over a place where a bonfire had been made over which to make soap. Some one removed the big kettle of soap and then they put me right where the kettle had been. Next they took the blanket off my head and began dancing around me, and spit at me and jabbed me with sticks, doing everything they could possibly think of to torture me. “The blood ran into my head so from being hung upside down that I could scarcely see, and the ropes binding my feet cut into me until I bled. But still these heathen Chinese showed no mercy and I was beginning to wonder if they intended leaving me to die a slow death when the first Chinaman said, ‘Let’s build a fire under him and cook him alive! Roast goatee is velly, velly good, me hear.’ “This seemed to please the crowd, and they joined hands and ran around and around me, chanting some heathen song until the old Chinaman who had proposed cooking me alive came with some matches and shavings to start the fire. “Then for the first time I began to be worried, and thought, ‘Well, at last I am in a tight place I can’t get out of,’ when I heard howls of pain and rage and the fierce growl of a dog. Opening my eyes to see what was taking place, I saw Stubby biting the[70] heels of the Chinaman as he stooped to light the fire, while Button sat on his back scratching the very shirt off him. In about two minutes the yard was cleared of Chinamen, I can tell you! Stubby bit and Button clawed them until they were glad enough to climb the fences to get away alive. “They had frightened the Chinamen off and saved me from being roasted to death. But how were they ever to get me off that pole? “At last I thought, ‘Perhaps if I wriggle and squirm my weight will break the pole. Anyway, I am going to try it.’ “And soon I found that by moving my body in a certain way I could start a certain motion that made me swing up and down and the more I moved the higher I went and the pole began to creak. Then presently it broke in two and came down all in a heap. I had scarcely touched the ground when Stubby and Button began to gnaw the ropes that bound me, and in a jiffy they had gnawed them through and I was loose. “Do you think I ran away when I was free once more? No, indeed, I did not! I stayed right there to get even with Mr. Chinaman who had proposed to cook me alive. It was very dark in the yard now as night had closed in while all the fuss was going on. So I proposed to hide and wait for the Chinaman to show himself in the yard. Well, all I can say is that if he ever did show himself I had made up my mind to kill him. Stubby and Button hid too,[71] and then we waited. And as we waited the earth under our feet began to quiver and shake and low, rumbling noises were heard like distant thunder. These shakings and tremblings of the earth continued growing more and more violent until they threw me off my feet once or twice, while the ripping, roaring noises grew louder and more frequent. Presently fire bells began to ring and the night sky was illuminated with vivid red reflections from huge fires. But still we three watched for those Chinamen to come out of the house. “‘Come on, Billy!’ Stubby barked in a whisper. ‘Let us get out of here. We must be having one of those terrible earthquakes they sometimes have out here in this country.’ “‘Yes, come, Billy,’ urged Button, ‘and leave the Chinaman to the mercy of the ’quake. Perhaps the earth will open and swallow him!’ “‘Hope it does, but I am going to give him a butt that will break his back first. I’ll teach him not to torture goats in the future!’ “‘S-s-s-s-h-h-h!’ exclaimed Button. ‘I see him through the window. He is coming now.’ “Cautiously the door opened a crack, and the Chinaman’s crafty face peered out. His eyes searched every nook and corner of the yard, but he saw no goat, dog or cat. Button was so black one could not see him as he sat on top of the fence. Stubby was hidden under a pile of old chairs, tables and so on, while I was close against the[72] house behind the door the Chinaman had just opened. I got there on purpose so that when once he stepped into the yard he could not go back unless he passed me for I would be between the man and the house. “‘What has he in his hand that smokes so?’ I wondered. ‘Why, it is a dipper of boiling water! Gee, I bet he intended to throw that on me when he saw me. Well, I’ll just sneak up behind him and give him a butt in the back and make him spill it on himself and then he can see how he would like boiling water thrown on him.’ “I did not dare to try to walk up behind him for fear I might stumble over something and then he would hear me and throw the water, so I made one big jump from behind the door and butted him squarely in the back. Well, I made the jump all right, but just as my feet left the earth it opened under me with a ripping, tearing noise and swallowed the Chinaman with his dipper of hot water, and closed again so quickly that when I came down from my jump I lit on solid ground where but half a second before had been a yawning chasm. Whoo! That was a narrow escape, for had I stood still the earth would have opened under me or if I had not happened to jump high enough I would have landed right in the opening and been crushed or killed as had the Chinaman. “The ’quake that swallowed the Chinaman had extended far and[73] shaken down lots of the old rickety buildings in the neighborhood, and buildings were tottering and falling all around. So Stubby, Button and I lost no time in getting out of that place, I can tell you. I simply butted down the door the Chinaman had bolted when I came in, and we all three ran out and down the street towards the Bay. I won’t stop to tell you of the destruction of the beautiful city and the fearful, gruesome sights and sounds we saw and heard, or how the flames licked up the handsome buildings after the earthquake had shaken them down, for the destruction of San Francisco has passed into history and any one of you who wish to hear more of it can listen as some one is reading aloud about it. This ends the tale of one of my most thrilling adventures.” “Oh, thank you! Thank you so much, Mr. Whiskers, for telling us this story,” exclaimed the facile Pinky. “I have enjoyed hearing it so much, though you did make my skin creep and my hair stand on end when you were telling of how they proposed to cook you alive.” Then all the other dogs thanked him also for relating to them this wonderful tale. “I think we better go back to the hospital and look for Button and see if we cannot find a way for me to slip in and see Stubby,” remarked Billy. [74] <hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> [75] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.