CHAPTER XV
THE ELEPHANTS ARE ENRAGED AT THE GOATS
Billy Junior, Daisy and Nannie visited the cages of all the animals,and gave no more thought to the runaway Twins until hour after hourwent by and the Twins did not come back. Neither had they seen themplaying in the Park and Daisy began to grow nervous about them. Atlast she said to her husband,
"Billy, I can't stand this suspense any longer. I am beginning to fearthat something has happened to the Twins. You know they might havewandered over to the lake and been drowned. You and Nannie may go oncalling on the different animals, but I am going to hunt for thekids."
"You are quite right," said Nannie. "I have been uneasy about them forsome time, but did not like to mention it for fear of alarming you. Wewill go with you and help hunt for them."
"Yes," agreed Billy Junior, "it is high time we were finding them.There is no knowing what they might do, they are so daring andmischievous. We'll outline a systematic plan for the hunt. Each onewill go in a different direction and scour all the paths in thatsection of the Park, looking around every cage that we see. Then whenthe clock strikes twelve we will meet in front of the yard where theelephants are kept."
Billy Junior went to the south, Nannie to the east and Daisy to thenorth.
Every step Daisy took, she grew more worried, and when she passed acage of ferocious tigers and panthers who she knew lived on kid meat,she shivered to think that perhaps they were licking their chopsbecause they had just finished eating one of her darlings who in someway might have squeezed between the iron bars of their cage.
On, on she went, her knees knocking together from fear and fatigue,when she thought she heard their voices calling, "Mamma! Mamma!"
She hastened in the direction from which the sound came and there,sure enough, shut up in a yard with other goats she saw her twodarling babies. There was no mistaking them as they were thehandsomest kids you ever saw, one being white as snow like Daisy andthe other black as night like its father, Billy Junior.
"Oh, my darlings, my darlings!" she called when she saw them, and bothkids came running to the fence to be kissed on the ends of their saucylittle noses which they stuck through the bars of the iron fence."Where have you been and how does it come you are shut up here?"
"Oh, mamma, get us out for we are afraid of that big, horrid blackgoat over there with the great horns. He said if we did not stopcalling for you, he would hook us over the moon with his big horn."
"Who said they would hook you?" asked Billy Junior, who had just comeup to the fence with Nannie.
"That old fellow over there asleep by the house," said one Twin.
"I should like to see him try to do it. If he did, he would seehimself flying over the moon," said Billy angrily.
While the goats had been talking to the kids, several men with rakesand pitchforks in their hands had come up behind them and formed in asemicircle. Hearing a crunching of the gravel on the walk behind him,Billy looked around and knew in a second that they were trapped. Therewas no use of trying to fight men armed with pitchforks, so when theybegan to drive them toward an open gate that led into the pen wherethe kids were, Daisy, Nannie and Billy Junior showed no fight, butwent quietly as lambs. After the men had left, Billy Junior said,
"Well, this is a pretty how-de-do! Here we are locked up and fathercoming to see us after being away two years. Now we can't greet himexcept through the bars of a fence! It really is too bad. We shouldhave had sense enough to leave the kids at home, knowing as we do howmischievous they are."
They were shut in this pen three days and were growing heartily sickof the monotony of walking around their small yard in the daytime andbeing shut in a stuffy little room at night with the other goats whopaid little attention to them.
"If that fence were not so very high, I could jump it," said BillyJunior. "But should I try and fail, I might fall back on the long,sharp spikes and hang there."
"Or if only the bars were not so close together, we would starveourselves and squeeze through," remarked Daisy.
"Or dig under," suggested Nannie, "if the bars did not go down intothe ground so far."
"Oh my, oh my, oh me! Isn't this life awful, with nothing to do butwander around this old yard where the grass is all tramped down andburnt by the hot sun, with people walking by and looking at you allthe time? Only an occasional kind-hearted person gives you a peanut orthe core of an apple," grumbled Billy Junior.
"I wish your father were here," said Nannie. "When everything lookedhopeless, he always found a way out."
"So do we wish he was here," chimed in Daisy and Billy Junior.
"Mercy sakes alive!" exclaimed Daisy the next moment. "See where thosekids are! In the elephant yard!" and she jumped to her feet and ran tothe fence which separated the yard where the goats were confined fromthat of the elephants. "How did you two get over there?" she askedseverely. "Come straight out of that yard! The elephants may not likekids and kill you."
"You are perfectly correct, madame," said an elephant. "I dislikegoats of all kinds, and so would you if in my place. Forced to livemonth in and month out next to a goat pen where the disagreeable odorall goats have is carried to my nostrils until I am sick from it andcannot eat is far from pleasant."
"Did I hear you say," said Billy Junior, stepping up beside his wife,"that you do not like the smell of goats?"
"That is exactly what I _did_ say," replied the elephant. "And I willrepeat it if you wish me to do so."
"Oh, don't take the trouble! Saying it once is enough. But allow me toinform you that the odor of a goat is as sweet to the nostrils asroses and lilies compared to the odor from an elephant. Thatresembles the smell from a garbage pile!"
Now Billy Junior had done it! The elephant became enraged and tried tobreak down the fence between them. When he found he could not do this,he trumpeted and pawed the earth, throwing great clods of dirt allover them.
"Come out of there! Come out of there!" called Daisy to the kids. "Hewill kill you!"
But the Twins could not get out as the elephant was between them andthe hole through which they had crawled. Seeing them, he charged buthe was so big and they so small that they simply ran between his legswhen he tried to catch them up with his trunk.
Daisy, Nannie and Billy Junior all stood panic-stricken at the chancesthe kids took. First they would run under his body from side to side,then between his hind legs. Had he moved a foot, they would have beencrushed between his great legs. There being two of them and both sosmall and frisky, they confused the beast so he did not think asquickly as usual. He had been out of the jungle for years where he hadhad to think fast, and now he found himself rusty and unable to copewith frisky little pests like these two kids.
"I'll fix them," he said to himself, and he walked over to where histub of drinking water stood, and filled his trunk. Then he chargeddown on the Twins where they stood in one corner, waiting to see whathe would do next. The little rascals were enjoying the rage of theelephant very much and were not afraid of him at all as they thoughtthey could trust to their wits to save themselves.
The elephant walked up to within five feet of them. Then he stoppedand squirted the water at them with such force that it knocked one ofthem over when it hit him broadside. The other kid it blinded so hecould not see where to run. Then they heard a bellow of rage and pain.Shaking the water from their eyes, they saw a big white goat run underthe elephant's stomach and scratch the skin with his short horns sobadly that it made the monster cry out with pain and turn to see whathad attacked him so suddenly. When he faced about whom should he seebut old Billy Whiskers himself in front of him. At the same moment hefelt a cat on his back and a dog snapping at his heels.
But what had changed the enraged elephant so quickly? For now he wasas docile as a lamb, and the kids saw him go up to Billy and wind histrunk around Billy's beard and playfully pull it, at the same timesaying,
"Billy Whiskers! My old friend Billy Whiskers of the circus! Where byall that is wonderful
did you come from? I supposed you were dead longago."
Elephants live to be over a hundred years old, but goats not so long,and as it had been many years since these two had traveled andperformed in the same circus, the elephant had taken it for grantedthat Billy was dead.
"Excuse me a minute until I throw out these smelly young kids. I can'tstand their odor," said the elephant.
"If you don't mind, I will put them out myself, as I think I can do itmore gently than you could, and I happen to have an interest in thoseparticular kids as they are my well beloved grandchildren whom I havenot seen for two years," replied Billy.
"Your grandchildren!" exclaimed the elephant. "I beg your pardon. HadI known they were related to you in the most distant manner, I wouldnot have harmed a hair of their skin. I do hope you will forgive me!"
"Certainly I will forgive you. And perhaps they were annoying you anddeserved being punished, for as I remember them they were prettymischievous kids."
"Take after their grandfather, eh?" said the elephant.
"I guess so," said Billy.
"Baa, baa, baa!" came a voice as sweet as music to Billy's ears andturning he saw his darling wife looking through the fence.
"How did you get shut in there?" he asked. "I'll be with you in aminute!" But though he looked and looked he could find no openingleading into the yard where Nannie was confined. He had gotten intothe elephant's yard by jumping through an open window in theelephant's house and running out the door that led to the yard, andStubby and Button had followed him. Billy had recognized the kids, andseeing them in danger he had not stopped to figure how they got there,but had rushed to their rescue immediately. He and Stubby and Buttonhad just arrived in the Park after their long journey from New YorkState, and were looking for the family when they chanced to turn acorner in the path and came upon this scene.
The kids slipped back into the goat yard the way they had left it,while Billy, Stubby and Button stood and talked to Nannie, the fencebetween them.
"Oh, if I could only find a way to get over into your yard," baaedBilly to Nannie.
"I have it!" said the elephant. "I can get you all over there if youdon't mind being dropped a few feet."
"Certainly we don't, but how are you going to do it?"
"I'll just pick you up with my trunk and drop you on the other side ofthe fence."
"You can't do it," said Billy. "I am too heavy."
"Indeed, I _can_ do it! I guess you are no heavier than the mahoganylogs I used to lift and put in high piles when I lived in Siam. Comehere and let me try."
The elephant encircled Billy's body with his trunk and lifted him upfrom the ground and over the fence as easily as if he had been afeather. When he had raised Billy to the top of the fence, he unwoundhis trunk and dropped him over into the next yard where his familyawaited him.
When the elephant turned to get Stubby and Button to put them over thesame way, he found they had crawled through the hole the kids hadused.
Such a smelling of noses, and licking of faces you never saw as whenthe Billy Whiskers family and their friends were once again reunitedafter this long separation while Billy had been in the war in Europe.
"Isn't it too bad, my dear," said Nannie, "that we are all shut up inthis yard with no hopes of getting out? And I was just saying to Daisythat if you were here, you would soon find a way to secure ourfreedom."
"And I shall, my dear. I shall just wait until the keeper comes inthrough the gate to look after the goats. Then I shall either butt himover as he comes in or butt down the gate when he takes the padlockand chain off. Anyhow, I shall find a way to get us out of here verysoon, I am sure. Now we will think only of the present and enjoy everyminute of being together. What fine kids the Twins have grown to be!But I imagine they are just as mischievous as ever."
"Can you wonder at it when you stop to consider who their father andgrandfather are?" said Nannie.
"Gracious! What can be causing all that commotion over in the farthercorner of the yard, I wonder?" said Daisy.
"Where are the Twins?" asked Billy Junior.
"I don't know," answered their mother.
"Then I guess you will find that they are at the bottom of the fracasover there. I'll go see," said their father, and off he trotted tofind out if the kids were in mischief.
Presently he came back, driving both kids before him. But what hadhappened to them? They were as dirty as dirty could be and both werecrying.
"Oh, my precious darlings!" exclaimed Daisy. "Who has been hurtingyou?"
"No one has been hurting them. They need a good spanking! Where do youthink I found them? In the middle of a ring of Angora goats, having afight with two kids about their own size. It would have been all rightto have had a boxing match, but they did not play fair. They losttheir tempers and when they got the other kids down, they hooked andtramped them unmercifully. I don't like that! They must fight fair andkeep to the rules of boxing, and not beat up their adversaries whenthey are down."
"Come here, kids," said their grandfather. "If you will promise to begood all the rest of the day, I will tell you a story of the Great Warand of some of the things that happened to Uncle Stubby and UncleButton and myself when fighting in the army."
CHAPTER XVI
A PANTHER ESCAPES FROM THE CAGE
The Billy Whiskers family as well as all the Angora goats wereenjoying themselves listening to Billy, Stubby and Button tell warstories, when they noticed great excitement among the people in thePark, who began running in all directions, screaming as they ran.
"What can the matter be?" they asked one another. "I'll go over by thefence that leads along the walk," suggested Billy, "and listen and seeif I cannot find out what is frightening the people so. Somethingimportant must have happened for they all look so scared andpalefaced."
All the larger goats went with Billy, while the mothers and youngNannies stayed behind.
"Where are the kids?" called out Daisy. "They were here just a minuteago."
"I guess they have gone with their father and grandfather," repliedNannie.
"I shall have to go after them then for they are sure to get intotrouble, and besides I want them with me if anything happens."
"Yes, bring them back, and I will look after one and not let him outof my sight a moment, while you look out for the other."
"You stay here," commanded Stubby, who had not yet joined the crowd bythe fence. "I'll bring them both back."
And presently they saw Stubby driving the two kids in front of him. Ifthey tried to turn back, he snapped at their heels, and if they triedto separate, he grabbed them by the neck and made them march straightto where their mother and grandmother were waiting.
The Twins were crying and pleading to go back. "Uncle Stubby, do letus go back! We want to see the escaped panther! We never saw one!"they said.
"Escaped panther, did I hear them say?" Daisy asked Stubby.
"Yes. One of the largest panthers has escaped. When his keeper openedthe cage door to put in a bucket of water, he opened the door a littlewider than usual, and the panther that was lying on a ledge in theupper part of the cage leaped for the opening, hit the door whichthrew it still wider and he escaped. The keeper had enough presence ofmind to slam the door shut as the mate awoke from a nap and also madefor the door. When she found herself shut in and her mate gone, shemade such a row she has upset all the animals. Anything like thisalways excites the animals and makes them roar and slash around intheir cages trying to break through to freedom too.
"And now I want to tell you to be most watchful. For panthers are fondof goats and sheep--they like them best of all meats. They may smellgoats and come over here to eat a kid or two," and Stubby lookedstraight at the kids, his face very sober, trying to frighten them sothey would keep close to their mother and not run away again.
By this time men were running all over the Park with loaded pistolsand guns in their hands, while others carried pitchforks and ropes totry to lasso the panther for they reall
y wished to capture him aliveif they could.
Mothers with children hurried out of the Park, and soon few peoplecould be seen except the Park guards and the men who were hunting theloose beast. It was about four o'clock when the escape was made and atdusk they had not found him yet. The animals quieted down when theywere given their supper, forgetting that one of their number hadgained the much-desired freedom. All but the panther's mate. Sherefused to be comforted, but snarled and showed her teeth when any onewent near her cage.
It was just that hour between twilight and darkness when shapes canstill be distinguished moving about that Billy chanced to look up inthe big tree that stood near the fence of the goat yard. He thought hesaw two yellow balls of fire about the size of big marbles shining upamong the leaves in the tree. As he looked, they seemed to move slowlytoward him. Then looking more closely, he made out the outline of abig panther crouching on the limb ready to spring down on theunsuspecting Angoras peacefully sleeping directly under the limb thebeast was on.
Billy gave the alarm, but too late. The panther had made a spring andlanded on the back of a young Angora goat and was now devouring itgreedily, while all the rest of the goats ran over to where Billy andhis family stood in an opposite corner of the yard.
"All of you big goats with horns get ready to fight," commanded Billy,"for the minute that panther has devoured that victim, he will comeover here for another nice young, juicy goat."
"Oh, my darlings! He will pick them out," wailed Daisy, "because theyare the very youngest and will make the most tender eating."
"Don't cry, Daisy. He hasn't gotten them yet, and he won't while I amalive," said Billy Whiskers.
"Nor while I breathe either!" exclaimed Billy Junior, not to beoutdone.
When the panther had finished his meal, he stood up, looked around,licked his chops, switched his tail, and called for his mate to comeand join him in the feast. But that call was his undoing. His matecould not get out of her cage, but the panther's keeper recognized hisvoice and hastily calling some men and guards, he started to find thepanther by going in the direction of the call. As the moon had come upin full glory, they had no trouble in locating him.
They found him none too soon, for just as they appeared at the fence,the panther started toward the goats to select another victim. He hadhis eye on one of the Twins, that Billy Whiskers could see. Brave ascould be, Billy walked out of the herd and straight at the panther,intending to try to drive him away at least, but he knew it would bealmost impossible as these beasts are strong, as quick as a cat andare bloodthirsty fighters.
When Billy Junior saw his father advancing on the panther, he too leftthe herd and walked out by Billy. Then Stubby and Button followed.This in no way frightened the panther. He still advanced on them,crouching as he came and ready to spring at any moment.
Billy Senior whispered, "We must make a rush at him or he will springover our heads and we can't reach him. When I say three, spring at himprepared to rip him open with your horns. I will do the same. We can'tboth miss him. And, Stubby, you go for his neck, and, Button, you tryto scratch his eyes out, so he can't see where to jump. One, two--"
But what had happened? The panther was jerked back off his feet andlay sprawling on his back, his feet in the air. This is what hadoccurred:
The men had come up to the yard behind the panther and goats so noneof the animals had seen them. The man with the lasso had climbed thefence and thrown it, catching the panther around the neck just as hewas about to spring, while the other men stood with pistols aimed andready to fire did the lasso fail to go around the panther's neck andpull him back in time to save the goats.
"Gee! Those two goats and that dog and cat had nerve to face thatbeast," said one of the men. "I should like to own them for pets."
"So should I," replied one of the others. "Let us get that panther outof their yard and then give the goats a rousing good supper to show weadmire bravery in animals as well as in people."
So it happened that the men all came back carrying bunches of cloverand other things they thought the goats would like to eat.
When they dragged the panther out they closed the gate, but neglectedto close it tightly. They had no sooner gotten out of sight than Billysaid, "Now is our chance for freedom. The gate can easily be pushedopen far enough for us to squeeze through."
He told the Angora goats about it, but they had been in captivity solong they did not yearn for freedom, as they had no homes to go to.Besides, they were well treated where they were and so they decided togo out into the Park and roam around a little, but not to run away.
"Well, we are all going to make our escape and skedaddle for home. Sogood-by to you all!"
"Here is wishing you and your family a safe and happy journey,"bleated the leader of the Angora flock.
"The same to you and yours!" baaed Billy as he, his family and friendsfiled out the gate and started on a run toward their old home in Fondu Lac, Wisconsin.
THE END
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