CHAPTER X
BUTTON MAKES THE FARMER FIGHTING MAD
TUBBY was nibbling on his chicken leg with Duke and Button nearly half asleep when they were all startled by the farmer coming round the straw stack unexpectedly. But if they were surprised, the farmer was more so. To come unexpectedly upon two stray dogs and a black cat and one of those dogs the Red Cross dog he had just been feeding was enough to surprise any one.
“Well, well, well! Where did you all come from, I should like to know? And if here isn’t another Red Cross dog! But no, I am mistaken. You are a cat, but a cat with a regimental tag around your neck. Come here, little dog, and let me read what your tag says,” but when Stubby got up and tried to limp to him, the farmer saw that his leg was hurt, so he went to him and taking him in his arms, he felt of the injured leg and found it had been broken. As he had set many broken legs for dogs, he knew what to do for Stubby and he said, “You two follow me. I am going to take this little dog to my office and rub his leg with some strengthening liniment I have which will make it heal quicker. And I am also going to give him a tonic to brace him up for I see he is very thin and weak.”
Stubby licked the farmer’s hand to show how he appreciated all this kindness.
When they reached the office, the farmer put his glasses on and read the tags on all their necks, and when he got through he called to his wife to come quickly, that he had made a wonderful discovery. “Just you read that, wife,” he said, after he had read Stubby’s tag once again. “This cat and dog are the long lost and much advertised mascots of two American regiments, which are offering large sums for their recovery. Bless me but this is lucky! For I was just needing some extra money to repair the roof of the house and to fix up the place.”
“And I too. I need a new dress and bonnet badly,” said his wife.
“We’ll just fix them comfortably here in the office for to-night, so there will be no danger of them getting away while I am making arrangements for returning them to their own regiments and collecting the reward money. A thousand dollars for each! To think that that cat is the celebrated black cat from the Black Cat Regiment, and the dog the yellow dog from the regiment called after him, the Yellow Dog Regiment!”
The two dogs and Button looked at one another and either winked or rolled their eyes to let the others know that they were in a pretty fix and in danger of being carried back to the army. Then they all thought of Billy waiting on the outskirts of the town for them to come.
“One thing,” thought Button, “he won’t wait long. If we don’t come along on the third day, he will come back to look for us for he will know that trouble has detained us. A day’s rest here with the excellent care the farmer is going to give Stubby and plenty of good food for us all will help us along on our journey more than anything else would, as we are all run down, first from our hard work in the front and then from our wounds.”
Presently the farmer and his wife had them all fixed comfortably for the night, with Stubby on a nice soft sofa, and Duke and Button on old shawls and blankets in one of the corners of the room, and a dish of water for them to drink should they grow thirsty. As soon as the farmer and his wife left them alone they talked over their predicament, but all agreed it was for the best and soon they all fell asleep.
For two days they stayed with the farmer and each morning and evening he rubbed Stubby’s leg and gave him a tonic. He fed Duke and Button up fine too until they were so fat they could scarcely run. All day long all they did was to eat and sleep, “getting in condition to travel fast,” said Button.
The third day the farmer became very much excited when he read the mail for in it were two letters for him from the colonels of the regiments of which Stubby and Button were the mascots. They stated that they would give the reward to the person who delivered the dog and cat to them unhurt and in perfect health.
“This certainly is fine news, wife, and you better go along with me so you can pick out your new dress and bonnet while we are in town, for their headquarters, where I am to deliver the dog and cat, are in a large town where there are plenty of big stores. We will start early to-morrow morning, about daylight, as it is a long ways and we want to reach these headquarters before noon so as to get our money and have the whole afternoon to shop.”
Stubby heard all this as he lay on his end of the sofa pretending to be asleep. The minute the farmer and his wife left the room, he to get the automobile in shape for the trip in the morning, and his wife to lay out her best clothes, Stubby barked for Button and Duke to come in to share the news he had just heard.
They both listened without interrupting until Stubby had finished, then Button said:
“It is a good thing your leg has healed so you can walk on it and that you are feeling so strong and well, for if they mean to take us to headquarters to-morrow morning, we must manage to escape some time to-night.”
“You are right,” replied Duke. “But why wait until night? It would be easier to escape some time this afternoon before we are shut in for the night. The farmer never seems to think we will try to run away until dark as he leaves us pretty much alone all day but at the first hint of darkness he shuts us in.”
“That is all true. So let us wait and get a good dinner and then when he lies down to take his twenty winks of sleep, as he does every afternoon, we will skedaddle. His wife will be so busy getting her finery ready to wear to-morrow that she won’t have time even to look out of the window.”
And so it was planned for them to push on to where Billy waited for them.
It is a good thing that they decided to go when they did for Billy was getting terribly restless waiting for them, and was likely to get in mischief if they did not arrive soon.
The three simply stuffed themselves at dinner time. And as they were finishing, Button said, “Isn’t it too bad we haven’t pockets in our skins so we could take some of this fine food along with us to eat when we can’t find anything along the roadside?”
“It surely is,” said Stubby, “and I don’t see why we could not have had our tails so constructed that we could have hung packages on them like the opossums carry their young, hanging over their mother’s tail with all their little tails curled around hers to hold them on.”
“You two do think of the most outlandish things I ever heard of,” said Duke. “Any one could tell you were from the United States of America. You are so clever and original. Now a European would be too staid and too conventional to think of a thing like that.”
While they were talking, not one of them had taken his eyes off the farmer who had been lying on the sofa to take his nap. But to-day he was slower than ever in dropping off to sleep, due, I suppose, to the excitement of the reward he was thinking of getting. But presently habit was too much for him and he fell fast asleep. At the first snore he made the three chums crept out of the office and sneaked away toward the garden. One by one they squeezed themselves through a hole under the fence and came out in the garden, right under the noses of the farmer’s wife and son who were picking raspberries.
“Why, what are you doing here? Trying to escape us?” and with that the woman stooped and grabbed Stubby up in her arms while her son grasped Duke, but Button escaped them.
“You naughty, naughty dogs and cat to try to run away from us when we have been so good to you!” Then she turned to her son and said, “I think they heard your father and me talking of taking them back to the army and probably they don’t want to go back, and that is why they were trying to run away.”
“Bet you that is it!” replied the son. “They are so smart they can understand every word that is said.”
“I told your father not to trust them out alone, but he said he was feeding them so well that they would not try to run away. It is a good thing that I decided to pick those raspberries to take to your Aunt to-morrow, or we would not have caught them. And then I hate to think of how it would have affected your father.”
When they reached the office, the farmer was still asleep and from the smile on his face he was probably dreaming he was buying things with the reward money. Just as they opened the door he called out, “Thieves! Thieves!” and jumped up from the sofa. He was dreaming that some thieves had stolen his pocketbook. “Why, what are you doing here with the dogs in your arms? They haven’t been hurt, have they?” he asked at last.
“No; worse than that. We caught them trying to run away,” said his wife.
“You don’t say so! That would have been a calamity.”
And then his wife explained to him how she and her son had caught Stubby and Duke.
“But the worst of it is that black cat is still loose. Still I don’t think he will run away and leave the two dogs behind.”
“Neither do I, but we won’t take any chances. Come and see if we can’t catch him. We’ll lock the two dogs in and then see if the three of us can’t catch the cat. Where did you leave him?”
“Up a tree beside the garden gate.”
“I’ll get a nice piece of meat and see if I can’t coax him down,” said the farmer. So while he went for the meat his wife and his son went to the tree where they had left Button. But alas! alack! when they got there he was gone and nowhere in sight though they searched everywhere for him and called, “Kitty! Kitty! Kitty! Pussy! Pussy! Pussy!”
The farmer was nearly crazy to think that with the cat gone he would lose half of the reward he had been counting on so much.
“We must find him, I tell you!” and he began to scold his wife and son as if it was their fault that the cat was gone. At last his wife grew angry and said:
“Shut up! I have heard enough of your complaining. If it had not been for me, they both would have been gone for good. Why, I told you to keep them under lock and key; that they were too valuable to let run loose. But you go accusing us of losing them, while you sleep and let them sneak off. Don’t you suppose I want a new dress and bonnet with that reward money as much as you want to spend it on fixing up the place?”
This was good logic, so the farmer stopped his scolding. In the first place he knew it was not her fault but like some men he tried to lay everything that went wrong on some one else. Whoever happened to be near at the time usually got the scolding.
“Gee, how I hate a man who lays everything that goes wrong on his wife!” said Duke.
Button had hid under some currant bushes and was having great fun watching them hunt for him. When supper time came they put his supper outside the kitchen door on a plate but left the door part way open, so they could open it quickly and grab him if he came to eat the food. But they waited in vain, for Button had seen the crack and knew what it meant.
“I am not very hungry, and I can wait for my supper until you go to sleep. You will have to go to bed,” he thought.
At last the farmer could stand waiting no longer. He wanted to find that cat and lock him up so he could go to bed and be ready for an early start to headquarters in the morning. With no cat, there would be no use in going.
“I have it!” he at last exclaimed to his wife. “I’ll go unchain Towser and get him to smell out the cat for me. That dog is a crackajack for finding cats. He hates them so—or most of them. This cat is the only one I ever saw him make friends with.”
So Towser was unchained and set to looking for Button. He ran around and around, smelling everywhere and he barked up the tree that Button had climbed. But still he had not found the missing cat. At last he got the scent, but just before he got to him Button shot out from under the bushes and ran up a tree.
“He has found him, found him!” called the farmer to his wife. The farmer had been close on Towser’s heels all the time, a bag in his hand. He had intended to put the cat in it when Towser caught him by the nape of his neck as he did most cats. But Button was too quick for them. He was up a tree before they could wink. The next thing was to get him down. The farmer, his wife and son coaxed and coaxed Button to come down but he just sat on a limb and blinked at them.
“Climb the tree and see if you can’t catch him,” said the farmer to his son.
One thing Billy butted was a basket full of clothes.
This the boy did, and Button let him come within reaching distance of him. Then he climbed a little higher up the tree. This kept on until he was away up in the topmost branches, and away out on a limb so thin that it would not bear the weight of the boy. When he saw this he took hold of the limb and tried to shake Button off by swinging the limb backwards and forwards with all his might. But he might just as well have tried to dislodge the bark itself as Button. He simply stuck his sharp claws down deeper into the tree and enjoyed the swinging of the branch.
“Come down, Pierre!” called his mother. “We will try smoking him out.”
Pierre climbed down and they all busily set about building a big smudge fire under the tree. As it was a still evening, with no wind, the smoke rose straight in the air to where Button sat, but by shutting his eyes he did not mind it much and he sat on. The smoke made the farmer, his wife and son sneeze and cough and their eyes smart and water. That was all the good their fire did, for when the fire at last died out and the smoke had cleared away, they looked up in the tree and there sat Button as composedly as ever.
“Darn that cat!” exclaimed the farmer.
“Father, you must not swear, and before our son at that.”
“I can’t help it, for I am so mad at that cat I could kill him. And if he doesn’t come down pretty soon, I’ll shoot him and take his hide to headquarters.”
“That would do no good, for they say in their letter the reward will only be given if the dog and cat are alive and well,” replied his wife.
“Well, what next can we do to get him down? I am at the end of my string of suggestions.”
The three sat down under the tree, their heads on their hands and elbows on knees, to try to think of some way to capture Button. After sitting there for about ten minutes, the son exclaimed, “I have it! I know how we can get him down and not hurt him in the least.”
“Let’s hear your plan, quick!” said the father.
“I’ll go up and saw off the limb he is sitting on, while you and mother hold a net under the limb. Then when it falls, the cat and limb will fall in the net and the cat won’t be hurt.”
“An excellent idea, my son,” commended his mother.
“But where are we going to get the net?” asked his father.
“We can use my tennis net.”
“Run and get it while I go for a saw and, mother, you stay here to keep him from escaping while we are away,” said the father.
Presently the father and son were back with the saw and the net. The boy climbed the tree, while the father and mother stood under the limb, waiting to catch Button when the limb should be sawed off. Button never stirred while the boy sawed the limb, for he had made up his mind what he was going to do when the limb fell into the net. This it did in about two minutes. The branch had scarcely touched the net when Button with a bound ran up the side of the net, jumped to the ground and ran up the next tree. And could you have looked into the faces of those three people, you would have said you never had looked into three more disappointed ones in your life.
“That cat is possessed of the devil!” said the father.
“I truly believe he is!” said the mother.
“Well, gosh darn his skin, I say!” exclaimed their son.
“I have another idea,” said the father. “You go get your fish net and then you can climb the tree he is now in, and throw it over his head, and we will have him.”
The boy went after his round net on a long pole, climbed the tree and threw it over Button’s head, but just as it came down Button gave a leap for the next tree which was six feet away and lit on a limb as nicely as if he had been a flying squirrel and used to jumping from tree to tree all his life.
“Well, that cat surely beats the devil! He can stay in that tree for all of me! I shan’t try to catch him any more. But I’ll just go and get some sleep, and in the morning we will go to town and get the reward for the little dog and say nothing about ever having seen the cat. Then when we come back, if he is still seen around the premises we will try some other plans to capture him.”
When they had all three gone to bed, Button came down out of the tree and ate the supper they had put out for him early in the evening. After finishing it he went over to the office and jumping up on the window sill he talked to Stubby and Duke through the window and told them how he had been having some fun with the family.
“Don’t worry, boys! You will be able to give him the slip as he takes you to town. And if you don’t, you can get away in a few days. I will go on and tell Billy what has happened and then the two of us will come back and help you escape.”