CHAPTER VII
WILD EXCITEMENT IN THE BARNYARD
THE spotted cat led Button under the floor of the barn until he came to a round hole in the floor that led to the main barn where the grain bins were. Through this hole they squeezed themselves and from there crossed the barn floor to a ladder that led up into the haymow.
Once in the hayloft they hurried over to the door that was directly under the window where the pigeons went in and out to their nests, but there on the hay, wriggling and crying, were the baby squabs who opened their mouths so wide they nearly fell over backwards when they heard the spotted cat and Button approaching. They thought every sound was their mothers coming to feed them.
“Now help yourself, Mr. Button. Pick out the plumpest, and fall to. But before we begin we better drag to the door a couple of squabs and drop them down to your friend.”
Though their intentions were good, only trouble came from it, for just as the squabs fell from the open door, the farmer happened to be passing and they hit him on the head. This surprised him greatly and he immediately came running up into the hayloft to see what had happened to his squabs.
And there he found that a whole row of boxes which held the nests had fallen down from the upper window into the hay and spilled out nearly all of his nice fat squabs that were to be one of the delicacies at the wedding feast. This was bad enough, but it infuriated him to find a big stray cat and his own cat eating them up as fast as they could and he grabbed up a pitchfork that was sticking up in the hay and ran toward them.
Button saw by the angry gleam in his eye that he would as soon run the pitchfork into them as not, so he ran for the door, preferring to take the risk of having his neck broken by the fall to being run through with the pitchfork.
The loft was high—at least fifteen or eighteen feet from the ground—but Button took the leap without a moment’s hesitation, not even casting his eyes down to see where he was going to land, for he had felt the prongs of the fork prick his tail as he left.
Imagine his surprise on landing to find himself sitting on the broad back of a big Durham bull! Also imagine the surprise of the bull at having a pincushion land on his back filled with pins that stuck into him when he was doing nothing but standing quietly in the yard!
Button had scarcely touched his back when the bull bounded forward. Of course this made Button stick his claws deeper into the hide of the bull to keep from falling off, and of course this hurt the bull and made him try to shake off whatever was on his back. He started around the yard on a run, jumping up and down and shaking himself, but no matter what he did the sharp prickling thing on his back stuck on.
Just then he spied a little dog coming around the corner of the barn. He hated dogs at any time and now being hurt and cross and looking for some person or animal to vent his spite on, he started for the dog who was no other than Stubby.
Seeing Button on the bull’s back and the bull running around like mad, Stubby barked and ran up to the bull to try to drive him into a corner of the barnyard and keep him there just long enough for Button to loosen his claws which had become embedded in the bull’s hide by this time, and give him a chance to jump off.
But Stubby missed his calculations. He thought the bull was too fat to run fast, so he ran straight toward him, barking as he went. But alas! with a lunge forward the bull’s horns slipped under Stubby and tossed him up in the air so high that he thought he must surely be going on up over the moon. Then all of a sudden he started to come down and from the speed he knew when he hit the ground that the breath would be knocked out of him so hard that it would kill him. Just when he had made up his mind that he had to die, he hit something soft and opening his eyes to see what it was, he found he had fallen in the middle of a load of hay.
Now when the bull saw Stubby up in the hay, he tried to get to him and went bellowing round and round the hay wagon, butting his head into the hay and trying to scratch Button off by rubbing his sides against the load. But the first time he did this, with a mighty pull Button loosened his claws and with a spring he found himself safely on top of the load beside Stubby.
Just at this critical moment Billy and Nannie came trotting into the barnyard and the bull ran straight for them with head lowered ready to toss them over the barn. But this time he had met something that could hook and butt quite as hard and much faster than himself. And when he got to the place where he had seen two goats standing, he found no goats in front of him, but one on either side of him sticking their long horns into him. With a bellow of rage he ran forward and Billy and Nannie chased him until they came to a little shed whose door was open. Into this they dodged and let the bull go raving and bellowing to his heart’s content.
And while they describe their sensations to each other, I will tell you what became of Spot, for that was the name of the black and white spotted cat. When her master went after Button with the pitchfork, she ran up the side of the barn and hid on one of the rafters away up high where her master could not possibly reach her. And there she stayed until her master left the loft. When he did so there was murder in his eye, for he had taken one look out the loft door just in time to see Button riding on the back of his pet Durham bull, and it was at that moment the bull tossed Stubby up on the load of hay.
“I have them now!” he cried. “I’ll run into the house and get my gun and shoot both of them. I won’t have any stray dog and cat coming round here and eating up my squabs and sticking their claws into my prize bull’s back!”
The minute Spot’s master left the barn, she climbed down from the rafters and going to the door meowed to Button and Stubby who were still on the load of hay only a short distance from the door. She told them to jump off the load and hide somewhere as her master had gone to the house for his gun and he intended to shoot them on sight. “But don’t go away. Hide until dark and then come back and we will feast on what is left from the wedding supper.”
“All right,” they meowed and barked, and jumping from the opposite side of the load of hay from which the bull was still pawing the earth and bellowing with rage, they ran to an empty corn crib at the further side of the barnyard. They crawled up through a hole in the floor of the crib and found a place of shelter as no one would ever think of looking for them there. Besides being safe, it was situated in a very advantageous place, for from its latticed sides they could see the farmhouse between the end of the barn they had just left and the cluster of sheds and outhouses. Now they could see everything that went on, both in the barnyard and at the house. They could see the bridegroom, the minister, and all the guests arrive, to say nothing of the bridal procession they could watch as it left the house on its way to the church whose tall, sharp steeple they could see piercing the clear, blue sky.
“Here Spot’s master comes now, running around the barn with his shotgun in his hand and the Saint Bernard pup at his heels.”
Just as the farmer came around the corner and was looking wildly in all directions for the cat and dog that had eaten his squabs and hurt his bull, the bull spied him and being of a cross, disagreeable nature, he wished to vent his anger on someone. Here was a good chance, a man and a dog. He cared not that the man was his master and that the dog had never even so much as barked at him. They were something to hurt and he wished to make someone smart and burn as did the scratches that Button had inflicted on his back.
Consequently Farmer Stevenson was more than surprised when his own bull came toward him at full speed, bellowing as he came. And he had just enough time to turn and run for his life before the bull was upon him. Then the chase began. Mr. Stevenson headed for the house with the bull close at his heels. He would have caught him had the bull not spied the dog and ducked his head to toss the poor puppy up in the air to land on the shed roof. Then the bull continued the chase and he caught Mr. Stevenson’s coat tails which were flying out behind him in his mad flight and ripped the coat straight up the back from hem to shoulder. His long sharp horns did not touch Mr. Stevenson and luckily he escaped through an open gate into the yard of the farmhouse and slammed it in the bull’s face.
As it shut it hit the bull in the nose which hurt him considerably and made him madder than ever. Now he began to kick and paw the gate down. It held for awhile, but when he threw his big broad sides against the fence, it gave way and a whole section fell into the yard. The bull walked over it, bellowing and shaking his head as he made straight for the kitchen door, through which he had seen Mr. Stevenson disappear.
Now here was a pretty how-de-do—a wedding in preparation in the house with the guests about to come and a mad bull running wild on the premises. The maids preparing the wedding supper were scared nearly out of their lives and went fluttering and squealing around the kitchen like a flock of chickens. The mother of the bride and the bridesmaids looked out the upper story window in alarm while the bride fainted for fear the groom would arrive on the scene and the bull would kill him. Of course Mr. Stevenson would shoot him at any minute but he did not want to kill his prize full-blooded, pedigreed Durham bull and sell the carcass for beef, as this would make him lose three thousand dollars, the amount at which the bull was valued. He was hoping the bull would quiet down and go back into the pasture if he saw no one to infuriate him. But how was he to get out of the house and warn the guests, who would soon be coming? He could go out the opposite side of the house, but what good would that do, for he must shut the bull out of the barnyard and he could not do that without being seen.
“Milly,” he said to one of the maids, “peek out of the window and see what he is doing now.”
Milly looked out and saw the bull standing but a few feet from the window pawing the earth and throwing it over his shoulder in his mad rage, bellowing all the time so loudly you could have heard him a mile away.
“Oh, it is terrible the way he is pawing and hooking all the geraniums out of the bed!”
“I know why he is doing that,” spoke up another of the maids. “It is because they are red and they say a bull hates red. He thinks someone is waving a red flag at him. Look! Look! There go two plants he has uprooted flying up in the air! Let us beat on a tin pan and see if we can’t attract his attention before he uproots the whole bed.”
So they brought a tin pan and opening one of the windows began to pound on it. The bull heard, paused, listened, looked, and seeing two or three faces at the window stopped pawing and with a mighty roar he rushed for the window. It was too high and small for him to go through as it came half way up to his shoulder, but he raised himself on his hind legs and tried to get his head in just the same.
Mr. Stevenson had shut the window when he saw him coming. This made no difference to Mr. Bull; he just ran his sharp horns along the outside of the window and every pane was shattered and fell over his head.
Just at this crucial moment Mrs. Stevenson called from upstairs that she could see two or three buggies coming down the road with wedding guests in them. They must be stopped for in his present state of mind the bull would gore the horses and perhaps kill some of the people.
“It is the minister in one buggy and the groom in another,” called out one of the bridesmaids who was keeping watch at one of the upper windows. “What shall we do? What shall we do?” she wailed.
“One of you girls,” said Mr. Stevenson, “keep banging on the pans to attract his attention while I sneak out of the house and go warn them.”
He ran down the front yard trying to get to the road to stop the guests before they turned into the lane. Then the bull, on hearing the horses coming, stopped trying to get in the window and turned his head in the direction the sound came from. He rolled his upper lip over the end of his nose as bulls do sometimes when intent on smelling something that is far away, and immediately he detected the odor of perspiring horses. Now here was something nice and big to vent his spleen on. He stopped pawing the ground and butting the window, and was about to turn and run out after them when to his dismay who should he see coming toward him but those two horrid goats that had butted him and stuck their long horns into him in the barnyard. He did not wait for them to come nearer, but hustled his fat self round the corner of the house and ran down the yard toward the road as fast as his great bulk would let him.
He arrived at the foot of the yard just as the first buggy reached the lane. On seeing the horse, the bull threw his whole weight against the rail fence and it fell over like a pack of cards and over it he went after the horse.
The horse hitched to this buggy was afraid of bulls, so he reared, plunged and then bolted down the road on a dead run with his driver pulling on the reins as hard as he could. The young lady with him hung on to the side of the buggy to keep from being thrown out, while her hat flew off and lit on one of the bull’s horns. This he soon demolished by lowering his head and throwing the hat in the mud and stamping on it.
This horse having escaped, the bull ran down the road to meet the other buggies he saw coming. The next horse, driven by the minister, turned straight around in the woods, upsetting it and throwing the minister over a rail fence, where he landed in a squashy turnip bed, leaving the tails of his long coat as he went over the fence.
The third horse became frightened also and in trying to turn around he ran his buggy into the overturned one, locking the wheels and breaking himself loose, as well as throwing out the groom, for it was none other than the groom himself in this buggy. Then with a snort of fear he ran down the road with the bull close to his heels.
When he recovered from his dazed feeling, the groom found himself in the muddy road under the two overturned buggies. He tried to extricate himself and get out from under the wreckage, while his bride, who had seen all this from her window, fainted again when she saw his buggy upset. But presently the man whose horse had bolted down the road succeeded in getting him under control. He came back, and with his help and that of Mr. Stevenson and the minister, they soon were able to rescue the groom from the wrecked buggies. And just as soon as this was done they shut the gate and reinforced it with logs so that should the bull come back, he could not break the gate down and come into the farmyard after them again.
“MY MOTHER STRETCHED OUT HER TRUNK AND THREW
THE HUNTER OVER HER HEAD.”
Nothing else happened and very soon the bride and groom were locked in each other’s arms, rejoicing over the narrow escape of the groom. The minister was given a coat in place of the one with the tails torn off and everyone else calmed down and the wedding preparations went on as smoothly as if no bull had ever been around.
“Well, I never saw such a mix-up as that before, did you, Stub?” said Button.
“No, I never did,” replied Stubby. “Hear that Saint Bernard pup howl! He has been up on the shed roof ever since the bull tossed him there and he is afraid to jump down. I’ll bark to him to go to the other side and jump on a heap of straw I see piled up against it.”
“You better not. Someone will hear you and find out our hiding-place.”
“Oh, no, they won’t hear me! They are all too much excited over their narrow escapes from being gored to death to hear me. Besides I won’t bark loud.”
This he did and soon the Saint Bernard puppy had joined them in their hiding-place and he was telling them all about the runaway horses and wrecked buggies that he had seen from his high place on the shed roof.