Frances Trego Montgomery

“ Presently the cat quieted down and came and stood before Billy, and gazed and gazed and gazed into his eyes without saying a word. And Billy gazed back, wondering in his own mind what on earth had made the dignified Button act so crazily. After this long scare, the cat meowed, “Well, Billy, old fellow, I see it is really you in the flesh and not some other goat that looks like you. But how you ever managed to keep from being killed is more than I know. All of us had given you up as dead and mourned for you for months. Nannie, your poor little wife, is still bewailing your loss. ”

“ I shall likely go back to the front in another week.”
“You don’t mean that you are going back to the fighting line, do you?” asked a long white-haired collie that had fallen very much in love with the brave Red Cross dog. “Oh, why do you risk your life again?”
“Why do I risk my life?” in astonishment. “To try to save some brave soldier, whose life is a thousand times more valuable than any dog’s ever will be. Yes, I am going back and back and back as long as I have eyes, teeth or claws to go back with, until this cruel war is over.”
“Bully for you!” exclaimed Billy. ”

“ Home! The very word makes me so homesick I can’t see for tears. Well, I’ll just fix this homesickness, so I will! I start for there this very minute. It is a good dark night and I think I can slip out of camp easily as they have not been watching me so closely since my master was sent away.”
Suiting the action to the words, Billy jumped up, shook himself, took a long breath and said to himself, “Here’s luck to you, old fellow, on your long, long, perilous journey! And may you reach the other side and once more see your loving little wife Nannie and all your children and grandchildren!” ”

“ I am an American.”
“You an American?” exclaimed the dogs in chorus.
“Now we surely are glad to meet you!” barked the big Dane. “For if there is any place on earth we dogs have longed to see, it is America. Probably you will tell us about it?”
“Yes,” said another dog. “We have heard that every dog has his day over there and many of them two or three.”
“We have also heard,” added a French poodle, “that all dogs are free over there, and can go and come as they like, and that they are never tied up, shut in a house or muzzled. Is that true?”
“Yes and no,” replied Billy. ”

“ WELL, well, well! Whom have we with us?” exclaimed the cook at the dog hospital as he stood in the kitchen door in apron and cap ready to throw some more food in the dogs’ trough. “Bless my soul, I believe it is Billy Whiskers!”
Billy hearing his name spoken looked up, only to find himself gazing into the eyes of the cook who had once served the old General who had issued the strict orders for Billy not to be allowed to leave camp.
“Billy, you old rascal, come here and let me pull your beard for luck and old times’ sake! I will bet my whole month’s wages that you have run away from camp.” ”

“ We are on the eve of a big battle and we will both be needed at the front.”
“Here is where I give up going to America,” thought Duke. “But it is all for the best, for since I have seen my old master again and found how he loves me, I think it would have been a mean trick [151] to desert him while he is in danger of his life every moment. But I do wish I could have gone back first and said good-by to Billy, Stubby and Button. They are the three finest friends a dog ever had.” ”

“ WHILE Button was hanging on to the rope Billy and the dogs came around the hospital to look for him.
“There! I told you Button was the smartest cat you ever heard of, and I bet he would find a way to see Stubby. There he comes now, down that rope from Stubby’s window!” said Billy.
When nearly to the ground Button jumped from the rope and landed at Billy’s feet.
“Hello, Billy and friends! How do you find yourselves? I have just been up to pay Stub a visit, and I accidentally frightened two nurses nearly to death and made them both believe they saw a spook cat instead of a live one.” ”

“ But for all that there is not a human being buried there, for it is a dog cemetery where only pet dogs are buried.”
“Well, wouldn’t that beat the Dutch!” exclaimed Billy. “A regular cemetery with flowers on the graves and flower-bordered walks and fenced-in lots and monuments just like people have! It certainly does take the French to think of odd things!”
“Why shouldn’t pet dogs have a nice resting place?” inquired Duke. “They are man’s companions and guard and watch over him as if they were human. ”

“ Bravo!” cheered the dogs. “You and Stubby surely are bully friends for a goat to have. We congratulate you, Billy, on having such true and loyal ones.”
“Thanks,” bowed Billy. “Do you know the way to make and keep true, sincere and loyal friends? I’ll tell you. Be one yourself.”
“Hurrah for you, Billy! You will always have the last word.”
“Do you mind telling me a part of your immediate plan and how you propose getting from here to where we are to embark? Or are you thinking of stealing a ride home in an airship?” asked Button. ”

“ Chinaman who had proposed to cook me alive. It was very dark in the yard now as night had closed in while all the fuss was going on. So I proposed to hide and wait for the Chinaman to show himself in the yard. Well, all I can say is that if he ever did show himself I had made up my mind to kill him. Stubby and Button hid too, [71] and then we waited. And as we waited the earth under our feet began to quiver and shake and low, rumbling noises were heard like distant thunder. ”

“ And bending over me was a sweet-faced lady nurse. I found myself all bound up in splints and cotton batting. You see an interne to another Red Cross ambulance who had come to look for the wounded, if any had possibly survived the blow-up, had found me senseless on the ground. So he picked me up and brought me here as this hospital for dogs was on the way to the hospital where he was stationed. This is now my fourth week here, and I want to tell you that only angels in human form live here. They are so good to one! They have nursed me back to life. ”

“ Everything is done just as it is in a cemetery for people and not one thing is left out,” replied Duke. “If you should walk through, you would see on some of the graves the playthings the dogs liked when alive.” ”

“ Then they all thought of Billy waiting on the outskirts of the town for them to come.
“One thing,” thought Button, “he won’t wait long. If we don’t come along on the third day, he will come back to look for us for he will know that trouble has detained us. A day’s rest here with the excellent care the farmer is going to give Stubby and plenty of good food for us all will help us along on our journey more than anything else would, as we are all run down, first from our hard work in the front and then from our wounds.” ”

“ Five able-bodied men not able to keep one goat in an auto! To be sure, one man was not a man, only an idiot of a chauffeur,” he stormed.
“Say, Jean, you better stop working on that tire and go hang yourself with the rope in your hand!” scoffed the third, “for you [45] are likely to be hung in earnest when you get to camp for all the mistakes you have made to-day, to say nothing of losing the goat besides.”
But poor Jean heard this not at all for he was still unconscious from Billy’s terrific butt.
“Some goat, that, misters!” said the farmer in a dry way. ”

“ It was an hour after this when all were at supper but Dick, who was sitting whistling and braiding ropes, when a dapper young American orderly appeared at the gangplank and called out: “Hey, there! Have you seen a big white goat, a little yellow dog and a black cat around here any time to-day?” ”

“ Well, I made the jump all right, but just as my feet left the earth it opened under me with a ripping, tearing noise and swallowed the Chinaman with his dipper of hot water, and closed again so quickly that when I came down from my jump I lit on solid ground where but half a second before had been a yawning chasm. Whoo! That was a narrow escape, for had I stood still the earth would have opened under me or if I had not happened to jump high enough I would have landed right in the opening and been crushed or killed as had the Chinaman. ”

“ If we see the tide is turning, we can jump off the raft and swim for shore.”
“You would see some good in every situation, even if your home was burning,” declared Button.
“Well, wouldn’t you?” asked Billy.
“No. I nearly always feel despondent when in bad luck until I get mad and think what is the use. Then I make the best of whatever comes, while patient little Stubby here says nothing but just saws wood, as the saying is.” ”

“ We are like regular escaped prisoners with a price on our heads.”
“The nearer we get to Paris,” said Duke, “the harder it will be to keep hidden, for the country is very thickly populated for miles and miles outside the city. But an idea just flashed across my mind that, if carried out, would get us inside Paris without much trouble.”
“What is it?” asked Billy.
“It is this: that we enter Paris by boat instead of on foot.”
“And how can we do that?” inquired Stubby. ”

“ They have plenty of Red Cross dogs and police dogs, [88] too, so they can spare you now. As you have expressed a desire to see America many times, why not continue on with us and visit our fair land?”
“Just the thing!” exclaimed Button. “You may never have such another chance to visit our country in such good company as a goat, dog and cat of world renown—a-hem, a-hem!”
At this they all laughed and Pinky said, “Why, yes; why don’t you go, Duke? I only wish I had the chance.”
“Well, you have!” said Billy. “I extend my invitation to all here.” ”

“ All I need is the rope, and as it is fastened to the wall I will just have to slide down it.”
“Oh, Button, but you are a smart cat! You should have been born a man, not a cat. If you had, the world would have heard of wonderful things you had done, I am sure.”
“If you wish I had been born a man, I wish the three of us had. Wouldn’t Billy have made a splendid brigadier general, while you would have made a dandy lieutenant!”
“S-s-s-s-sh-h-h! I hear the nurse coming. Scoot! Drop out of bed on the side nearest the wall and run under the beds until you are near the window,” advised Stubby. ”

“ What is that call for?”
“Oh, that is our supper call,” said the Red Cross dog. “When they blow the bugle all the dogs that are running loose are supposed to go to the back kitchen door. There are long troughs there in which they put our suppers. Come ahead with us, and we will give you some food. There will be plenty for all of us and for you too, for they serve very bountifully here,” and all the dogs and Billy too moved off in the direction of the kitchen. ”

“ But he did not have a minute to spare as his short, stubby tail only just disappeared out of sight when all the men, including the Captain, came on deck. Then the Captain bawled out in his big voice for them to heave in the gangplank and cut loose. In less than fifteen minutes the old boat was out in the middle of the river, floating down toward Paris on the swift moving current.
“Gee, it seems good to be in a safe place once more,” said Billy, “where one can sleep without keeping one eye open for fear of capture or of being blown sky high by a carelessly dropped German bomb. ”

“ My chum was trained by him and lots of the dogs I know. My chum’s name is Sharp Ears, or rather that is what the Red Cross people call him, for he seems to be able to hear things long before any one else can detect the slightest noise. For that reason he is kept on police duty with the sentinels that have to tramp up and down, up and down in the deep woods on guard all night. He will hear or scent an enemy long before he comes in sight, and he always gives warning by pricking up his ears and looking straight into the sentry’s face, but he never barks to betray the sentry to the enemy. ”

“ Billy assured them. “I have crossed No-Man’s-Land many times, and been shot at and blown up once besides. See where a piece of my tail is gone? Well, I lost it at Verdun. A bomb exploded and threw me up in the air and also blew off part of my tail. I consider myself very lucky that it decided to blow a piece off that end of my body instead of the other, for if it had been my head in place of my tail, it would have killed me. I can’t get along without a head, but I can without a tail.”
“Haw! Haw! Haw!” laughed the dogs. ”

“ There is a man wants to see you,” called One-Eyed Dick down the hatchway.
When the Captain went on deck, he saw standing talking to Dick a poorly dressed, shifty-eyed individual. “Well, my man, what can I do for you?” asked the Captain, but as he passed one of his sailors he said in a low voice to him, “Get those animals below as fast as you can, and keep them out of sight!”
The sailor obeyed, and he got Stubby and Button down but when he came up for Billy he heard the man say,
“I’ve come for me pets. And you need not try to hide them. ”