XIV

Uphill and downhill the phaeton rolled along northward. Sometimes Mrs. Wiggins drew it and sometimes the two dogs drew it, but whenever they went through a town, or were where they were meeting a good many people, Hank drew it, because then the people didn’t stare so. Once, when they went through quite a large town, Hank wasn’t feeling very well, so Mrs. Wiggins put the rope over her shoulders and drew it for him. But the people all rushed to their doors and crowded round them and laughed so to see a cow harnessed to a carriage that Mrs. Wiggins got quite angry.

“I’m not going to have anybody laughing himself into a fit on my account,” she said. And after that she would draw it only when they were on very lonely roads.

They were all so anxious to get home again that they travelled faster than they had on the way down, and it was not many days before they saw in the distance the white house and the red barn where Hank and Mrs. Wiggins had been taken prisoner by the two men with guns. And there were the two men standing by the gate and talking.

The animals stopped and looked at one another, and at first they didn’t know what to do. Some of them thought they ought to wait until after dark and then sneak by when the men were asleep, but the others were in a hurry, and as the men didn’t have their guns, they decided to disguise themselves and try to get past.

So Jinx got out the two pails of paint they had put in the carriage, and with a stick he painted Hank with red stripes up and down, and Robert with green stripes lengthwise, and Mrs. Wiggins he dotted all over with large red and green polka dots. He wanted to put some stripes on her horns, too, but she wouldn’t let him on account of Mr. and Mrs. Webb.

Mrs. Wiggins he dotted all over.

Then Jack, the black dog, got up and sat on the front seat of the carriage, and he had on the straw hat and the overcoat, so that from a little way off he looked like a very small man. And Freddy sat on the back seat with the shawl over his head. Jinx painted circles around his eyes so that he looked as if he had spectacles on. His own mother wouldn’t have known him.

All the small animals got into the carriage and hid under the seats. Mrs. Wiggins walked behind and Robert ran along underneath, and they went on toward where the men were. When the men caught sight of them, they opened their mouths wide and just stared. The big man had a pipe in his mouth and it fell out on to the road and broke, but he didn’t even notice it. He just went on staring. Neither of the men had ever seen such queer-looking animals before.

“What is it?” said the big man at last, looking at Hank. “A zebra?”

“Maybe it’s part of a travelling circus,” said the little man. “I never see a horse with red stripes before.”

“Who’s the old lady in the back seat?” asked the big man. “She don’t live around here, does she?”

“Never saw her before,” said the other. “Why don’t you ask the coachman?”

But before the big man could get up his nerve to call out to Jack, who did indeed look like a coachman in his straw hat and overcoat, the carriage went past him and he caught sight of Mrs. Wiggins.

“Great earth and seas!” he exclaimed, and both he and his friend jumped clean over the gate and crouched down behind it, shivering with fear.

“It’s a leopard,” said the big man. “Look at the spots! A leopard with horns!”

“Leopard nothing!” said the little man. “It’s a cow. Look at the shape of it!”

“I never saw a cow all covered with red and green polka dots,” said the big man. “It’s a leopard.”

“It’s a cow,” said his friend. “Maybe it’s got some queer kind of measles.”

“If it had the measles as bad as that, it would be sick in bed,” said the other. “It’s a leopard.”

“Maybe it’s got walking measles,” said the little man. “I’ve heard of that kind. But it certainly is a cow.”

“It’s not!” shouted the big man. “It’s a leopard!”

“It’s a cow,” repeated the little man angrily.

“It’s a leopard!”

“It’s a cow!”

“A leopard!”

“A cow!”

The little man was so enraged that he suddenly slapped the big man hard on the cheek, and the last the animals saw of them, the big man was chasing his friend across a field. “A cow, eh?” he was roaring angrily. “Don’t you dare say that word again!” And they grew smaller and smaller and disappeared in the distance.

As soon as the animals had gone three or four miles farther they stopped and all went in swimming in the river that ran beside the road, to see if they could get the paint off. But it wouldn’t come off, no matter how hard they scrubbed. Jinx sat on the bank and laughed and laughed.

“You’ll laugh out of the other side of your mouth, young man, if I catch you,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “You knew it wouldn’t come off all the time.”

“It’ll come off if you rub hard enough,” said Jinx.

“Yes, and so will my skin,” snapped Mrs. Wiggins.

“Anyway,” said Jinx, “you can’t catch me. Who’s afraid of an old cow? Who——” But Robert had sneaked out of the water and come up behind Jinx, and just then he grabbed him by the neck. “I can catch you, though,” he said. “Freddy, get the pail of red paint. We’ll just fix Jinx up so he’ll look as funny as the rest of us. Then we’ll have something to laugh at too.”

So Freddy brought the pail of red paint, and Robert held Jinx over it and started to dip him down. He only intended to dip him in a little, so that he would have a bright red tail, but Jinx began to wriggle and twist so that Robert lost his hold, and splash! down went Jinx into the paint.

He jumped out at once and ran around like a crazy thing, rolling on the ground and scraping against trees, but the paint stuck to his thick fur and he couldn’t get it off. For the paint wasn’t very deep in the pail and he hadn’t gone all the way in, so that the front part of him was black and the back part was red, and he was probably the funniest-looking cat that anybody ever saw.

From this time on the animals attracted a great deal more attention on the road than they ever had before, and if the people had stared at them when they were just regular animals, they stared twice as much now that they were all striped and spotted with red and green.

Some of the people were scared too. There was a tramp lying asleep one day by the road-side, and just as the animals were passing him, Alice sneezed. A duck doesn’t sneeze very loud, but tramps don’t sleep very soundly, and this tramp was wide awake in an instant. He stared at the animals, and then he looked up at the sky and down at the ground and back at the animals again, and then he pinched himself hard two or three times. And then, finding that he was really awake, he gave one more horrified look and with a dreadful yell turned and ran. He ran so fast his feet hardly seemed to touch the ground. They saw him go up one hill and disappear over the top, and then in a few minutes they saw him, very much smaller, going up another hill way beyond. And he was running just as fast as when he started. For all I know he may be running yet. I don’t know that I blame him.

But the animals did not like to be stared at, and they did not like to scare people, so they did most of their travelling at night. They would sleep all day, and then along about sunset they would wake up and have a little something to eat and start out. They had some beautiful moonlight nights about this time, so that it was easier and pleasanter travelling by night than by day. The moon was like a great golden lantern hung in the sky to light them on their way, and now and then a watch-dog in some farm-house would wake up and bark sleepily as he heard them go by, laughing and singing and shouting to one another. They met very few animals or people on the road—only now and then a weasel or an owl, out hunting. And all the time they were getting nearer home.