CHAPTER V
BILLY HAS ANOTHER EXCITING EXPERIENCE
BILLY and Stubby continued down the alley together until they came to a corner drug store. Here they separated, Stubby going down the side street and Billy going inside to get some gumdrops he saw displayed in the window.
Before going in, he looked through the window to be sure there was no one in sight, then he cautiously sneaked in the open door. By a coil of cigar smoke he saw rising from behind a partition where he knew the prescription desk was, he thought the proprietor must be putting up some medicine. As for the man who belonged at the soda fountain, he could see him talking to two young ladies in an auto outside to whom he had just served chocolate sodas.
“My! That foamy chocolate soda looks good and makes me thirsty! I think before I eat my gumdrops I’ll just step behind the soda fountain and see if he has left any setting round.”
Of course he had not, but what Billy saw that looked quite as good to him were several small boxes of little pink and yellow cakes standing up before some bottles on a shelf.
“Me for the cakes before I get my drink!” And Billy slipped his tongue around one of the pink cakes and before he knew it, it had slipped down his throat, leaving a nasty taste in his mouth and causing a thick foam to fill his mouth and throat.
“Horror of horrors! I have swallowed a cake of soap instead of one made of flour. Whatever shall I do to get the taste out of my mouth?”
Just then he spied a tub of water in which they washed the soda water glasses, and he hurried to it and began taking long gulps. But alas! the more he drank, the more foam came up into his mouth until he was nearly strangled and he felt quite ill.
“Oh! Oh! I must get outdoors immediately, I feel so sick.” And instead of running around the counter, he tried to jump over it, thinking it would be the shorter way. Alas, alack! His horns hit the spigot that turns the fizz into the soda water glasses and in a second Billy was blinded by the flying, sizzling fluid. It went in his ears, eyes, nose and mouth and for a minute or two he did not know which way to turn. In his blindness he turned the wrong way and instead of going toward the door, he landed behind the counter again, upsetting the ice-cream freezer and sending the ice and salt over the floor and knocking the lid off the can in which the ice-cream was packed.
At this critical moment the man came out from behind the partition to see what the racket was and the clerk who had served the sodas to the ladies came in also. As he went behind the counter he was met by a big billy goat foaming at the mouth. Of course he thought him a mad goat and he began to cry: “Mad goat! Mad goat! Look out, everybody!” and he ran out the door calling this as loudly as he could.
The ladies in the machine hearing the cry and seeing the man running from the store started the machine, but not before the man crying “Mad goat! Mad goat!” had had time to jump on their running board and tell them to “Drive on, drive on!”
Just as they started, Billy came running out of the drug store foaming at the mouth and close behind him the proprietor of the store, a broom held high over his head to chase Billy. But just as he reached the front door he stepped on a piece of ice from the ice-cream freezer and both feet slipped out from under him. He shot out the door and down the steps, landing beside Billy at the edge of the sidewalk, where poor Billy was coughing up great puffs of foam. At last up came what was left of the cake of soap and Billy soon felt relieved.
The proprietor of the store, on seeing this, knew that Billy was not mad but only sick and this provoked him so that he raised his broom to hit Billy. Now Billy was in no mood to be beaten, so when the broom came down on his back he turned to chase the man, who ran back into the store with Billy after him.
Back of the counter ran the man and when he rounded the corner he slipped again on the ice-cream that was now running out of the freezer. He slid along on the end of his backbone about five feet when he came up against the tub of water, upsetting it all over him, while Billy, who had jumped up on the counter, stood watching him.
“You squint-eyed, pig-tailed, crooked-legged old goat! I’ll break every bone in your body if I ever catch you, for causing all this mess!”
But while he was getting up Billy jumped from the counter and was about to run out the door when whom should he run into but a squad of policemen who had come in the ambulance to capture the mad goat the soda fountain man had reported was running wild.
Billy never faltered a minute. He and all policemen were sworn enemies, so before they knew what had happened to them, he had butted each one over on the grass or into the gutter and was off down the street. And when Billy turned to see if they were following, he saw them all piling into the ambulance preparatory to starting for him. But Billy had too much of a start for them to overtake him. He was just thinking of leaving the town to go to meet Nannie when he heard a terrible racket down an alley he was about to cross. Just before he reached it out ran Stubby with a tin can full of stones tied to his tail, chased by five or six hoodlums each with a stick in his hand.
On seeing them Billy said: “So that is your game, is it? I’ll teach you not to tie a tin can on a dog’s tail and then chase him and beat him when he has done nothing to you. Well, I’ll show you how it feels to be hurt and, what is more, I will give you full measure, so you and the rest of your gang will never tie another can to a dog’s tail again.”
Then he baaed to Stubby: “I’ll take care of this gang. You go chew the rope off your tail and I will be back and help you the minute I have butted every one of those boys into the middle of next week.”
The largest and foremost of the boys was about to strike Billy when, my, Oh my! what was the matter with his back? It hurt him so he felt it must be broken and here he was flying skyward as fast as he could go! Had he been blown up by a bomb or was a mad bull trying to kick him over the moon? Surely a goat could not butt one like that.
And while he was thinking this, Billy was chasing the other boys down the alley as all had taken to their heels when they saw their leader going skyward after Billy butted him. One boy jumped over the fence into a yard and climbed a tree; another climbed up on the roof of a shed; a third jumped into a milk wagon that was standing in the alley, while a fourth ran through a yard and into a kitchen where he saw the door open. This one Billy followed straight into the kitchen and when the boy saw Billy still pursuing him, he ran upstairs and jumped in bed and pulled the covers over his head.
After butting the fat cook down the cellar stairs when she tried to stop him, Billy followed the boy upstairs and leaped on the bed, butting and kicking him until he cried for mercy. After a few minutes of this, thinking the boy had been punished enough, Billy jumped out the open window on to a low shed roof and from there to the ground. Then he hurried into the alley again to hunt up the other boys, for he had made up his mind he would punish them all. The next boy he saw was the one that had tried to get away from him by jumping into the milk wagon. All Billy had to do was to walk up to the horse and give him a slight hook in the stomach which startled him so he ran away. The boy was tossed around among the rattling milk cans like a pea in a pod, hurting his toes and giving him a bloody nose besides.
The next boy Billy came to was the boy in the tree. He tried to climb the tree but of course could not. So then he butted the tree until it shook so it knocked the boy out. When he tried to jump up and run away, Billy was after him and he chased him until he was within a few feet of his home. Billy spied a big hogshead of rainwater and into this he butted the boy and left him crying for help.
Now the only boy left was the one on the shed roof who had sat there and laughed as he watched Billy chasing the other boys. He had laughed until his sides ached and called to Billy to “give it to them, you old clummergudgen!”
“Oh! You can laugh at your chums’ misery, can you, you cowardly sneak,” baaed Billy, “because you think you are safe? Now let us see which side of your mouth you will laugh on when you find I too can climb up on a shed roof.”
Billy was right. This boy was the worst sneak and coward of the gang, so when he saw Billy coming up on the shed roof after him, his hair fairly stood on end and he yelled for help as if wild Indians were after him. But no one heard. The alley was deserted at this time of day. Billy chased him around and around the roof for some time, giving him little butts just to show him what a big butt would be like. Then when he got to the place on the roof where he wanted him, Billy gave him a mighty butt that sent the boy fifty feet off the roof out in a straight line over the cowyard fence where he dropped on a pile of manure. And here Billy left him and went to find Stubby.
When he reached the place where he had left Stubby, he found he was in good hands. A kind-faced lady with a big heart for hurt animals had picked Stubby up in her arms and was carrying him home where she could cut the string around his tail and bathe the wound in warm water and witch hazel. The boys had tied the string on so tightly that she could not undo the knot, so was taking him home where she could get a pair of scissors and cut it off.
Billy followed them closely and waited until Stubby came out of her house with his tail wrapped up with a witch hazel bandage, and as he stood eating from a plate of food she had given him, Billy told him what he had done to his four boy tormentors.
“Thank you so much, Billy! But how I should have loved to have seen you butting them right and left and skyward! My, that is a nice lady who fixed my tail! I like her so much, I’d like to stay with her always if it were not for our trip west. And it seems mean to run away from her without saying good-by after she has been so good to me. But the best of friends must part some time. I am going to promise myself to come back and see her when we return from our trip. As soon as I have finished eating this delicious luncheon she has given me I will be ready to go with you to where Nannie is waiting for us.”