Billy Whiskers' Travels

by Frances Trego Montgomery

  *CHAPTER V*

  *THE WOODEN GOAT*

  Billy trotted contentedly on, liking all the noise and hubbub very muchbut not knowing that he was the cause of it all. Blocks away he couldhear their shouting, but he did not care to go back there, for all ofthat. He was finding a great many things to interest him in the shopwindows, which were all brilliantly lighted. Before one of these lowwindows he suddenly stopped. There, just inside the show window, was abig, brown goat. Billy did not know it, but this was a wooden goat,poised on its hind feet and ready to make a spring to butt somebody.The Swiss woodcarvers are the finest in the world, and they carveanimals so naturally that one would think they were alive. If even humanbeings can be fooled, there was very good excuse for Billy's believingthis to be a real, live goat, particularly as it had very naturallooking glass eyes; besides, its head was separate and was cunninglyarranged to shake a little bit from side to side.

  Now it is a deadly insult for one Billy goat to stand on his hind legsand wag his head at another one. Billy Mischief for one was not goingto take such insults as that, even though the goat that gave it to himwas much larger and older than himself, so he backed off into the middleof the street and gave a great run and jump. Crash! went the fineplate-glass window! The sharp edges of the glass cut Billy somewhat andstopped him so that he landed just inside the window glass. The othergoat was right in front of him, still insultingly wagging its flowingbeard at him so Billy gave one more spring from where he stood andknocked that goat sixteen ways for Sunday. It was the hardest headedgoat that Billy had ever fought, and its sharp nose hurt his headconsiderably, almost stunning him, in fact, so that he stood blinkinghis eyes until the people in the store had come running up andsurrounded the show window.

  Gave a great run and jump.]

  Billy was still dazed when the manager of the store, a nervous littleman with a bald head, hit him a sharp crack across the nose with aboard. The pain brought the tears to Billy's eyes and still furtherdazed him. The manager hit him another crack but this time on thehorns, and that woke Billy up. He looked back at the broken windowthrough which he had just come but the crowd had quickly gathered there.There were less people inside, so suddenly gathering his legs under him,he gave a spring and went clear over the manager, kicking him with hissharp hind hoofs upon the bald head as he went over. The place was adelicatessen store and Billy landed in a big tub of pickles. He did notcare much for pickles anyhow, so he quickly scrambled out of them,knocked over three tall glass jars that stood on a low bench, and turnedover big cakes of fine cheese. The manager was right after him with theboard and hit him two or three thumps with it.

  Billy was just about to turn around and go for the little bald-headedman when he noticed at the far end of the store a round, plump man withhis back turned to him. There seemed something familiar about hisfigure and the cut of his short little coat, and it flashed across Billyat once that here was his old enemy Hans Zug.

  Paying no attention to the manager and his little board, he dashedheadlong down the store for the plump man. Just as Billy had almostreached him, the man turned around. It was not Hans Zug after all, butBilly was going too fast to stop now. Anyhow, ever since he had knownHans he had taken a dislike to all fat men, so he dashed straight ahead.The man darted behind the counter and ran up the aisle, Billy closeafter him.

  There never was a fat man in the world who ran so fast as this one.Everybody had cleared out of the aisle behind the counter to make roomfor them. Nobody wanted to get in the way of that heavy man and thehard headed goat. The man stepped upon a pail of fish, overturning it,jumped upon the counter and was over in the center aisle, Billy rightafter him. Everybody in the store was packed in the center aisle,together with a lot who had come in from the outside when the excitementbegan, and they all made way for the fat man and for Billy. Women werescreaming and men were shouting and laughing. The manager was stillright after Billy with his little board and thumping him every now andthen on the back, but Billy scarcely knew it, so interested was he ingiving the fat man one for Hans Zug.

  The man headed straight up the middle aisle for the door, but, lookingover his shoulder, he found that Billy would overtake him before he gotthere, so he sprang over another counter, upsetting a pair of scales andsome tall, open jars of fine olives. Billy was still right after himbut this time the man fooled him by jumping back over the counter.Billy followed up that aisle to the end where he turned into the crowd,just as the fat man went out on the street. Here he upset two ladies anda policeman who was just coming in, and then took after the man wholooked like Hans. He was flying down the street as fast as he could go.After Billy came the manager of the store and two of his clerks, and allof the boys that had congregated on the sidewalk.

  Pell-mell they went, a howling, yelling mob, with the fat man and Billyin the lead. The man by this time was puffing like a steam engine andthe sweat was pouring from his face in streams. His collar was wiltedlike a dish rag. He had lost his hat and one of his cuffs, and he couldhardly get his breath.

  Policemen, by this time, were coming running from every direction andone of them, who turned off a side street just then, thinking the fatman must be a thief, got right in his road and opened up his arms. Thefat man, who had scarcely any strength left, fell right against thepoliceman who was also a very heavy fellow, and just at that time Billyovertook them and gave the man he was chasing all that was coming toHans Zug. Down in a pile together went the fat man and the policeman.The policeman had not seen the goat and for a moment imagined that thefat man had jumped upon him and was trying to overpower him, so hepulled out his club and, though he was underneath, began, in a way thatwas comical, to try to pound the fat man.

  They lay there, a struggling, wriggling mass, the policeman with hisshort arms trying to reach around the big round man on top of him inorder to hit him some place. Billy Mischief had stopped and backed upto give his fallen enemy another bump, and was just in the air after hisspring when the manager of the store caught his hind leg, and he alsowas dragged on top of the struggling two on the ground. The managerheld to Billy's leg, however, and the crowd which had been followingthem closely now crowded around them. The manager scrambled to hisfeet, still holding the kicking Billy by the hind leg, and it would,probably have been all up with the goat if a big, strong man had not atthat moment come up and putting his great arms around Billy, jerked himloose. Billy squirmed and struggled, but it was no use. The big manheld him tightly and began to run. The store manager got to his feetand started after them, followed by his two clerks, but the big strongfellow who was carrying Billy darted down an alley, then through anotheralley, and before the pursuers could see where they had gone, the mandarted through the back gate of a high board fence with Billy, closedthe gate after him, ran along the side of a great building which wasblazing with lights, ran down some cellar steps, opened the door, wentin, closed it after him, turned on a light and set Billy down.

  "There, you fool goat!" exclaimed the man. "I'll wash the blood off ofyou and nobody will know that you have been out."

  The big man was the porter and he had brought Billy back to the littlebasement room under the hotel. So ended Billy's first night in a bigcity.

  All that night, all the next day and night, and all the following day,Billy was cooped up in that little basement room with no chance to getout, and with only Frank Brown and the porter to visit him twice a day.How he did fret. The porter kept him well fed and saw that he had goodbedding and plenty of water, but he gave Billy no more chances to escapeand see the city. He watched carefully as he opened and closed the doorthat the goat should not again scramble between his legs or butt himover. On the third evening, however, the porter forgot to completelyclose the door which led into the other part of the basement, and youmay be sure that Billy lost no time in finding out what was in there.The room next to his led up into the kitchen and it was stocked withvegetables and all
sorts of kitchen stores.

  Billy was not very hungry, but he nibbled at everything as he wentalong, pulling the vegetables out of place, upsetting a barrel halffilled with flour in his attempt to see what was in it and working thefaucet out of a barrel of syrup in his efforts to get at the sweet stuffwhich clung to it. Licking up all of the syrup that he cared for, Billywent on to investigate another barrel which lay on its side not faraway, and knocked the faucet out of it. This, however, proved to bewine and he did not like the taste of it at all, so he trotted on out ofthe store-room into the laundry, leaving the two barrels to run towaste.

  Pulling the vegetables out of place.]

  Everybody in the laundry had gone up into the servants' hall for theirsuppers, and the coast was clear for Billy. They had just finishedironing, and dainty white clothes lay everywhere. From a big pile ofthem that lay on a table, a lace skirt hung down, and Billy took anibble at it just to find out what it was. The starch in it tastedpretty good, so he chewed at the lace, pulling and tugging to get itwithin easier reach, until at last he pulled the whole pile off thetable on the dirty floor.

  Hearing some steps then, he scampered out through the storeroom and intoanother large room where stood a big, brass-trimmed machine which he didnot at all understand. It was a dynamo, which was run by a big enginein the adjoining engine-room, and it furnished the electric lights forthe hotel. Two big wires ran from it, heavily coated with shellac andrubber and tightly-wound tape to keep them from touching metal thingsand losing their electricity. These crossed the basement room to thefurther wall, where they distributed the electric current to manysmaller cables.

  Billy sniffed at the two big cables at a point where they were very neartogether. They had a peculiar odor and Billy tasted them. He scarcelyknew whether he liked the taste or not, but he kept on nibbling to findout, nipping and tearing with his sharp teeth until he had got down tothe big copper wire on both cables; then he decided that he did not carevery much for that kind of food and walked away. It was not yet darkenough for the dynamo to be started, or Billy might have had a shockthat would have killed him.

  Hunting further, he found over in a dark corner a nice bed whichbelonged to the engineer, and it looked so inviting that Billy curled upthere for a sleep. When he awoke it was nearly midnight and there was ablaze of light in the basement. There was a strange whir of machineryand he could hear anxious voices. Billy, of course, did not know thathe had been the cause of it but this is what had happened:

  When the electric current passes through a wire, the wire becomesslightly heated and stretches a little bit. In stretching, the twocables where he had chewed them bare, came near enough together to toucheach other once in a while, and that made the lights all over the bigbuilding wink, that is, almost go out for a second, and the engineer wasvery much worried about it.

  What interested Billy more, however, was a small, wire-screened roomthat stood near to him. Presently a big cage, brightly lighted, camedown in it with a man and a boy. It stopped when it got down into thebasement, when the man and the boy stepped out, going down into theengineer's room. They were the proprietor of the hotel and his elevatorboy. Billy, as curious as any boy could have been, walked into thelittle cage to see what it was like. The sides of it were padded withleather, there were mirrors in it that made it a place of light, andthere was a seat at the back end of it. At the front side near the doora big cable passed up through it, and to this the boy who ran it hadleft hanging a leather pad with which he gripped the cable. Billy couldbarely reach it with his teeth and he pulled sharply on it. It wouldnot come away so he hung his weight on it, and immediately the cagebegan to go up. Billy was in an elevator and he was taking a ride allby himself. It never stopped until it reached the top floor where asafety catch caught it. Luckily the door on the top floor had not beencarefully closed, and Billy was able to slide it open with his horns andwalk out into a narrow hall which had a thick velvet carpet upon it andfrom which opened many doors and other halls.

  BILLY FELT HIS COURAGE COMING BACK.]

  Billy trotted along this hallway, liking the soft feel of the carpetunderneath his feet. As he did so, all the lights about the buildingwent out and everything was dark. The cables in the cellar had at lastsettled down so that they lay square across each other where Billy hadchewed the covering off, thus making all the electric current which ranout of the machine on the one side come right back into it on the other,with the result of burning out the dynamo so that there could be no morelights from it that night. This did not worry Billy any. Light came infrom the street at the far end of the hall where some white lacecurtains fluttered in the breeze. It worried a great many people whowere still awake in their rooms, however, and of course they openedtheir doors to see about it.

  By this time Billy had reached the curtains and took a nibble at one ofthem, and, found that it was finished with the same starch, the taste ofwhich he had liked so much in the laundry. He wanted it down where hecould get a good bunch of it in his mouth, so he pulled hard, raising upon his hind feet and throwing his weight upon it. The curtain gave wayat the top but it was not so convenient as he had expected, for thelong, wide curtain came right down over his back. He tried to get outfrom under it and his horns ran through the open work. He tried to turnround and his hind feet ran through other open work places. He tried toback out of it and his forefeet got tangled in some more of it. Themore he tried to get loose from his starched meal, the more tangled uphe got, and at last, growing angry, he began to jump as high in the airas he could.

  In the half darkness, he was a great white figure with a long trailingwhite robe behind him, and the first woman he met in the hall screamedlike a steam calliope. Of course her screams brought others out intothe hall and everybody, even the men, began to run when they saw thisjumping white ghost coming toward them, every once in a while lettingout a loud "baah!" Many ladies were so frightened that when they cameto their doors, instead of running into their rooms, they started downthe hall ahead of Billy, shrieking and screaming at the top of theirvoices.

  The noise only confused Billy the more. The more confused he grew, theharder he jumped and struggled to get out of the curtain, until at thevery end of the hall, he came to a stairway and went down it head overheels to the next floor.

  Here things were even worse than they had been on the top floor, for bythis time the hubbub above them had brought everybody out of theirrooms, and the crowd was already there. As soon as Billy scampered tohis feet after his tumble and made another jump high into the air, theytoo began running and screaming.

  Billy now had gotten into a series of halls that ran the whole length ofthe building and had a stairway at each end, so now he jumped andstruggled his way along until he came to a stairway, tumbled down it,jumped back through another hall full of screaming people to anotherstairway, and so on until he reached the ground floor. Here thestairway opened into the great, marble-paved, main corridor of thehotel. This was just now thronged with men, all wanting to know why thelights were out and what all the uproar was about. Through these menBilly dashed like a hurricane, having now torn the curtains enough tolet his legs have some action. One big fellow whom he upset fell on thelong trailing end of the curtain, and the shock nearly tore Billy'shorns loose from his head, but the curtain pulled in two and at lastBilly was free except for a few stray shreds and small pieces that stillclung to his legs and horns.

  Now he could see where he was going, and, darting out of the side door,he ran back to where he remembered the cellar steps into the porter'sroom to be. The door was wide open and inside he found his friend, theporter, with a lantern, looking for him. The porter saw at once fromthe shreds of curtain that Billy had been into mischief again, but asbefore, he was afraid to say anything about it for fear somebody wouldfind out that he had left the door of the store-room open, so he simplytook the shreds of lace curtain off of Billy to carry away with him, andfixed Billy's bed nicely for the night.

/>   "Bet you came from the Bad Place sure, goat-beast," said the porter,shaking his head.