CHAPTER II
MAKING PREPARATIONS
BILLY WHISKERS had more than a week in which to make his preparations to go to the Circus. The morning after he had heard Tom Treat, his young master, telling Jack Wright about it, he almost decided to give up going.
In the first place he didn’t know what might happen to him, and more than once the thought entered his mind that he would be running into all sorts of danger. You see that Billy was no greenhorn. He had knocked about a great deal and had been in some awful tight places. There had even been times when it looked as though he must pay for some of his escapades with his very life. Those of you who have known him before this remember his adventures in the Rocky Mountains and in Old Mexico, and how he was once lost overboard in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Well, all of these things tended to make him cautious, so that while he had been quick to make up his mind to see for himself this wonderful Circus, he did not finally start on the trip until he had thought it all over very carefully and counted, as he supposed, the cost. Whether he had or not we shall see as we go on.
As the first step in making ready, he decided to ask his animal friends at Cloverleaf Farm to tell him all they knew about circuses, for, thought he, certainly some of them must know and can just as well give me pointers as not. He did not propose to tell anyone, however, not even his best friend, Rex, the colt, what his plans were.
With this scheme in mind, he first approached Abbie, the black cat. Her real name was Abagail, and while the boys called her Ab for short, sister Emma and Billy Whiskers always addressed her as Abbie, “for,” said Billy, “it isn’t so hard a name to pronounce as Abagail and sounds very much more friendly than just Ab.” He knew that it was well worth his while to be on good terms with her.
“Abbie,” he said, when he found her napping the next morning on the mat before the front door, “what’s a circus?”
She didn’t move though she heard every word that Billy said. The truth is she had been very restless the night before and didn’t want to be disturbed in her morning snooze. More than that, she had no idea what a circus was and didn’t want to let Billy Whiskers see that she couldn’t answer his question if it could be helped. Cats, you remember, have been considered very knowing creatures ever since the days of the Pharaohs in Egypt, and Abbie was very proud of her race and its reputation and didn’t propose to lessen it. So she lay perfectly still when Billy asked her about the circus.
He repeated the question in a louder tone. Still there was no reply. If his mind had not been so taken up with the matter, Billy would have known that there was something wrong and gone elsewhere with his question. But he did not stop to think, he was so bent and determined on finding out about circuses. So he next, with more force than he probably intended to use, poked Abbie in the side with his left horn. Then there was a fuss. She jumped up as though she had suddenly found herself sleeping on a bumblebee’s nest, and the first Billy knew she was looking at him for all the world as he had seen her look one day at a strange dog which had chased her into a corner where further flight was no longer possible and she had turned to fight him off if necessary. Billy Whiskers had appeared on the scene then just in time to rescue her, but Abbie had now forgotten all about that debt of gratitude.
There she stood with her front and hind feet close together, her back all humped up, her fur sticking out so that she looked twice as big as usual, her tail all swelled up and jerking nervously, while her eyes looked, as Billy said afterward, as green as old Croaker’s back. (Old Croaker was the big frog in the pond behind the great barn.)
“Why, Abbie,” exclaimed Billy, “it’s me, your old friend. Don’t look like that! I only want to ask you what’s a circus.”
Then he got a piece of Abbie’s mind.
“Billy Whiskers, you are no gentleman. If you were, you wouldn’t be around here disturbing my rest. You know that I am half dead with neuralgia and that the only sound sleep I get is when the sun shines on my right side. Now you be off, and if you ever cut up like this again, you’ll get a scratching that you can’t forget to the last day of your life.”
She would probably have kept right on scolding for a long time, but as soon as Billy Whiskers realized what he had done, he turned and trotted off without even trying to apologize.
“She probably don’t know what a circus is and takes that way to conceal her ignorance. I’ll never believe in cats again,” thought Billy.
“There,” said Abbie, when Billy disappeared around the corner of the house, “he’s gone and I’m glad of it. He thinks that I know all about circuses but wouldn’t tell him because I was cross at being disturbed. Wasn’t that a good one about my neuralgia!” and Abbie laughed as cats do, and washed her face.
Billy next asked his best friend and greatest chum, Rex, the colt; but Rex, who was quite young, owned up at once that he didn’t know.
“Billy Whiskers,” said he, “how can I be expected to know about such things when you don’t? You have been almost everywhere and I always thought you had seen everything. If you don’t know what a circus is, there is no one at Cloverleaf Farm who can tell you.”
Some people would have been discouraged by this time, but not so Billy Whiskers.
“I’ll have to ask old Polly Parrot and I don’t want to one bit. She will probably laugh at me, and it is quite as likely as not she may suspect my plan and in that case she will blab it all over Cloverleaf and I’ll find myself shut up and closely guarded by Tom and Harry. While I don’t like Polly Parrot any too well, I must admit that she is as sharp as tacks and if I’m to get anything out of her I shall have to be very sly when I ask her about the matter.”
Billy was just saying these mean things to himself when he spied Miss Polly out in the grape arbor, swinging and chattering.
“Now is my time,” thought Billy.
“How do you do, Polly Parrot? Nice morning, isn’t it? You have no idea how fine you look with the sun shining on your beautiful feathers. I’ve always known that you are handsome but you certainly outshine yourself today.”
“That will fetch her,” thought Billy.
“What do you want now, Billy Whiskers? You can’t fool me by your soft talk. You are up to some mischief. What is it?”
Billy, without replying, beat a hasty retreat, thankful that he had not asked Polly Parrot outright about circuses.
“She is a suspicious old maid,” he said to himself, “and I can’t afford to fool with her.”
Billy then went to the stable to interview old Gyp, the horse that was said to have been in the Treat family for nearly thirty years.
“Billy Whiskers,” she said, hearing his question, “I wish I could tell you about circuses, but I can’t. My memory is no longer good. It seems to me that more than twenty years ago I heard a lot about a circus being in Springfield and a man by the name of Barnum who was connected with it, but I am not sure and it makes my head ache to try and recall the circumstances. I’m sorry I can’t help you, and I am afraid that you will not come to call on me soon again because I am so old and forgetful.”
“There, there, old Gyp, don’t worry any more about it. I am sorry I asked you the question. I know you would gladly tell me if you could and that’s kind of you, I am sure. Of course I am coming to see you every day. I make few calls that I enjoy so much.”
With this kind speech Billy left the old horse feeling sure that she had a good friend in him. It was by such little kindnesses as these that Billy made himself popular.
Billy felt pretty sure that the big Newfoundland dog, Bob, could tell him. Of late they had grown to be the greatest friends, though it had seemed for a number of months as if they must always remain enemies. Billy thought that Bob was jealous of him, and Bob thought Billy was conceited and vain. But after they had together saved little Dick Treat from drowning in the swimming hole down by the wood lot, they had the utmost respect for each other and were ever after the very best of friends.
“Bob,” said Billy, “what’s a circus?”
“I can’t tell much about it, Billy Whiskers. When I was living in the city, a circus came one day. There was immense excitement. I went early to see the parade. After long waiting, I heard someone say that the head of the procession was in sight and that the elephants were leading. I ran right out into the middle of the street to get a good look. One was enough. I turned and ran, never stopping until I was safe under the barn at my home. The head of that procession, the elephant, was the biggest, the most dangerous, the worst looking beast I ever laid my two eyes on. I hope, Billy, you may never see one for if you do, your rest will be broken for months you will have such dreadful nightmares.”
Bob fairly shivered as he recalled the elephant to mind.
Billy asked him no more questions for he saw that Bob had told him all he knew about the subject. He made up his mind that it would do no good to ask any more of his home friends about it, but then happened to think of his disreputable acquaintance, the old striped Coon who lived in the big chestnut tree down in the woods, so he went down to see him.
Mr. Coon was at home and a few knocks on the trunk of the tree with Billy’s horns brought him to the door.
“Hello, Billy Whiskers,” said the Coon. “What do you want? Don’t you know that this is my time for sleeping?”
Billy did know it for he was aware that Mr. Coon spent his nights, to a large extent at any rate, in robbing hen roosts. In fact, their first meeting had been late one evening when Billy had gone to the garden to select some choice lettuce heads for his own eating, a thing he wouldn’t have dared to do in the daylight. (This was before he had entirely reformed.) He was nibbling away at a great rate on the finest plant in the whole bed when he was startled not a little at seeing a strange thing creeping noiselessly along just inside the garden fence. It seemed to have fur and also feathers. Just as Billy decided that there was a spook after him and it was time for him to run for his life, the Coon, for he it was, dropped the white chicken he was carrying along in his mouth, and said:
“Good evening, Mr. Billy Whiskers. I have often seen you at a distance but have not had the pleasure of making your acquaintance before. It seems that you, like me, get your living at night. I think that we ought to be friends.”
Poor Billy, what could he say? He did not want to associate as a general thing with the Coon who was known to be a thief, but at the same time he did not see how he could snub him under the circumstances. So he replied politely to the Coon’s greeting, and ever since they had been more or less friendly, though Billy never told anyone at Cloverleaf Farm that he knew the highwayman and robber who lived in the old chestnut.
Billy now answered the Coon’s question by asking another.
“Mr. Coon, what’s a circus?”
He was never more surprised in his life than at the effect of his question on the tough and wicked old Coon, for no sooner had the word circus passed his lips than the Coon fainted dead away and dropped down in a limp heap with his head hanging out of the big knot hole which served as the door of his house. As Billy could not climb up the trunk of the tree to fan him or dash water in his face, there was nothing to do but wait for him to revive.
Pretty soon he began to show signs of returning life and finally pulled himself to his feet again. Billy was then not more astonished at what he said than at the awful expression on his horrified face.
“He looked,” as Billy said when he told the story years afterward, “as though he had seen forty ghosts with every last one of them after him.”
When the Coon began to speak, his voice was so cracked and squeaky that Billy wouldn’t have known that the bold old Coon was talking had he not seen his jaws wagging. This is what he said:
“William Whiskers, (he called him ‘William’) never mention that horrid name to me again. It wakes memories that I cannot endure. The very thought of them makes me faint and spoils my appetite for days. Years ago I was captured and sold to a circus and it was nine horrible months before I was able to escape. Ever since, the very thought of all I endured makes me weak and sick. Nights after eating too much, even of the tenderest chicken, I have the most awful nightmares when I see again those horrid monkeys who worried me until I was almost crazy. I hated them most of all. If the time ever comes when I catch a monkey alone, I’ll make mince-meat of him if it is the last thing I ever do. But the monkeys were not all. I can hear yet, in my dreams, the roars of the lions, the snarling tigers and wild-cats, can see the crowds of people and feel the canes that were shoved through the bars of my cage and punched into my ribs, and can hear and see that fool of a clown saying and doing the same silly things day after day. Oh, it was awful! It makes me faint to think of it.”
Billy thought he was going to keel over again, but he didn’t. Feebly waving his paw in farewell, he slowly withdrew from sight.
The story told by the old Coon made Billy very sober, and again he wondered if he had better not stay at home and take no risks, for he said to himself:
“What if the circus folks should take it into their heads to capture me and make me one of their attractions and I should have as bad a time as the old Coon? I’d wish then that I had stayed at home and minded my own business.”
After the day spent in fruitless inquiry, he went to bed saying that he would sleep over the matter and decide later what he had better do.