CHAPTER I
BILLY FIRST HEARS OF THE CIRCUS
WHEN Billy Whiskers settled in Farmersville he fully expected to end his days in that quiet little community where he had a good home, plenty to eat, many friends and enjoyed the reputation of being the wisest of the animals at Cloverleaf Farm.
Those of you who do not know his earlier adventures had better read them in the other Billy Whiskers books. There is no time to tell them now for so much happened at the Circus we shall have to hurry in order to get through telling about it by the time this book comes to an end.
Even Billy himself, in after years, when he amused his great grandchildren with stories of his earlier life, used to say that the day at the Circus and those that followed were the most exciting and interesting of all his life; and although he was asked to repeat the story very often he generally refused, keeping it for special occasions like birthdays, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving or Christmas. He said if told too often, it would become an old story and all the kids in time would begin to regard their grandfather an old bore, just as they did the Mexican parrot who was forever telling the same thing over and over again. Billy Whiskers, you see, was very wise. He knew that good stories are just like good clothes or anything else choice, that in order to keep them good, they must not be brought out every day.
Billy Whiskers, many of you remember, was a very remarkable goat, larger and stronger than others, with a beautiful white coat that when cleaned and well combed was the color of ivory and shone like silk. His horns, too, always attracted attention, they were so long and shiny. He could run faster, jump higher and butt harder than any goat he ever met in all his travels, so that wherever Billy went he very soon became a leader, though he often had to fight before the other goats found out that they had far better mind than take the consequences of disobedience.
He was saved from being a bully, conceited and cruel, by a kind heart and sunny disposition. As soon as he succeeded in establishing his right to leadership, instead of abusing his power by taking the best of everything for himself, he would protect and help the weak, kindly look after the little kids and always see that the old goats were fed before he ate himself.
It was a sorry day for any dog who bothered the flock when Billy Whiskers was around. Many a one went howling home after Billy got through with him. Small boys, too, learned that it was safer and better not to throw stones in his direction. Probably there are as many as twenty of them who have had the awful feeling that comes of trying to run fast enough to get away from the biggest goat that almost anybody ever saw, knowing that he was losing ground every second, hearing plainer and plainer every jump of his pursuer, and the last dreadful moment just before the shock came, and then flying through the air as though fired out of a gun, believing his end had surely come. But it never did. Billy Whiskers looked out for that and so timed his attacks that he could land his victim in a soft place, though he did not in the least mind if it happened to be a mud puddle.
One day he tossed a particularly mean boy right on top of a hedge where he staid until his yells attracted the attention of the hired man ploughing in a near-by field who made no haste, Billy noticed, to pull him out of his prickly nest.
You must not suppose from this description that Billy Whiskers was a model of good behavior for he certainly was not that. When he was hungry, he would eat whatever he could get hold of, whether it was intended for him or not. He preferred a lettuce bed or garden generally but did not draw the line at eating clothes hung out on the line to dry, or going into a pantry, no matter whose, and helping himself to everything in sight.
Of course, tricks of this kind got Billy Whiskers into serious trouble more than once, but he never said much about it and the animals at Cloverleaf Farm either didn’t know or wouldn’t believe such stories of their Billy even if they had leaked out and been whispered around.
Ever since he had been living at Cloverleaf Farm, which is near Farmersville or “The Corners,” as the place was more generally called, Billy had behaved himself, had stopped stealing things to eat, had quit fighting, which it must be confessed he dearly loved, and in less than a year had established himself on the friendliest footing not only with his master and mistress and all the children, but likewise with the black cat, the dog, the colt and his mother, as well as the other horses, the cows and calves and even Big Red, the bull, said to be very fierce, also the flock of sheep with Old Buck for leader.
As was stated at first, Billy Whiskers had found life so pleasant of late that he had fully made up his mind to stay where he was as long as he lived. The work he had to do was much to his liking. It consisted mainly in pulling little Dick around the place in his express wagon when Tom or Harry usually did the driving. Now and then the drivers would want to ride, sometimes both of them, when the load would be pretty heavy and more than once, at such times, Billy was tempted to run away as he used to do in his earlier years, upset his load and smash the wagon all to flinders; but he stoutly resisted these promptings of rebellion, knowing well by long experience that it is with goats as it is with boys and girls better to take things as they come; that it is the hard work now and then, the giving up to others and readiness to do one’s share of whatever comes along that tells whether he is made of the right kind of stuff.
So things were moving smoothly with Billy Whiskers and he had no thought of not spending the rest of his life with the Treat family, when one June day he heard Tom Treat ask Jack Wright, his playmate and chum, if he were going to the Circus that was coming to Springfield the next week. Jack said that he had not heard about it. Tom, who had just returned from The Corners where he had gone on an errand for his mother, then told him about the show bills that some men were putting up on the sides of the post office and blacksmith’s shop. He said that he had waited so long to see them all that he had forgotten all about his errand—he called it his “old errand”—that his mother was waiting for the baking powder and that he had caught “hail Columbia” when he finally got home.
Jack said that was nothing, it did not hurt when a fellow was used to it as he was, and that if he had been in Tom’s place he wouldn’t be home yet.
From this you can see what sort of a boy Jack was.
Billy Whiskers, who was standing near by at the time, smiled to himself for only the day before he had both seen and heard Jack Wright, who was now talking so bravely, spanked for going in swimming after his mother had told him he mustn’t because the water was too cold and likely to make him sick. Jack hadn’t acted then as though it didn’t hurt. In fact, it had hurt so much and made him so mad that he had almost decided to run away from home and join the gipsies who were then camping at the river not far away.
But he hadn’t gone after all and was now waiting for his friend Tom to tell him more about the Circus. It made him almost sick when he thought that very likely his mother might, as further punishment for his disobedience, not only not let him go to the big Show but put him to catching potato bugs instead. “If she does,” thought wicked Jack, “I certainly will run away and never come back.” He got some consolation out of imagining how much they would miss him.
While he was planning this revenge, Tom was talking as fast as he could and his stories were all the time getting bigger and bigger. By that time he said that the elephant was as big as the corn barn, that the giraffe was as tall as the old oak, that the boa-constrictor could swallow Jeff, the hired man—he wished in his heart he would, for Jeff had told his father that Tom had made a mighty poor job of hoeing corn the day before—that there were bears and tigers, lions and hyenas, wolves and wild-cats, ostriches and eagles, and everything else. He then began to talk about clowns and beautiful lady horseback riders, Arabian steeds and the wonderful doings of the trapeze performers.
All the time Billy Whiskers was listening with might and main. He had never in all his eventful life been to a circus, didn’t know what it was, hadn’t even heard of such a thing before.
The stories Tom Treat was telling Jack Wright excited him and the first he knew he had forgotten all about his resolve to never run away again and had fully made up his mind that come what might and cost what it would, he, Billy Whiskers, goat, would attend the Circus at Springfield.