PLANNING A SHOW
Bunny did not have a very tight hold of the reins when he was driving
Toby, for generally the pony was so gentle that he needed but little
guiding. And when the little horse gave a jump and started to run,
after being frightened by the auto truck, the reins, or the “lines”
as Sue sometimes called them, slipped over the dashboard and dangled
around Toby’s heels.
“Stop him, Bunny! Stop Toby from running away!” begged Sue.
For a moment her brother did not answer. He was as surprised as Sue at
Toby’s strange action. Then, as Bunny saw that the reins had slipped
away, he cried:
“I can’t stop him, Sue!”
“Why not?” she asked, still holding to the side of the pony cart as it
lurched from side to side of the street.
“I can’t stop him ’cause I can’t pull on the reins,” Bunny answered. “I
can’t reach ’em!”
“You--you’ve _got_ to!” insisted Sue. “We don’t want to be runned away
with and thrown out! Stop him, Bunny!”
Bunny knew that he would have to do something, and the best thing he
could think of was to reach forward and grasp the reins. He started to
do this, leaning over the dashboard.
But just then a strange dog ran out of a yard and began barking at
Toby. Patter, who was running alongside the cart, not riding in it
this time, barked and growled at the strange dog. This sound seemed to
make the little horse go faster, and he dashed off so suddenly that,
as Bunny leaned toward the dashboard, the little fellow almost went
“overboard,” as he said later.
“Oh!” cried Sue, as she saw what had happened. “Look out!”
“Oh!” cried Bunny Brown. He, too, was frightened. He managed to get
back again to the seat from which he had risen, and there he sat, safe
for a little while, at least. And so was Sue. She was on the seat
across from Bunny.
“I--I’m not going to do that again!” gasped the boy. “I can’t reach
those reins and I’m not going to try. They’re too far away.”
“But what--what are we going to do?” faltered Sue, almost ready to cry.
“He’s runnin’ away, isn’t he, Bunny?”
She seemed not quite sure about it.
“Oh, yes, he’s running away all right,” admitted Bunny. “He hasn’t done
that for a long time, though. But he’s running away now.”
“Maybe he feels so good now, ’cause his hair doesn’t fall out any more,
that he wants to run,” went on Sue.
“Maybe,” agreed Bunny.
“But we have to stop him!”
“Yes, we have to stop him.”
Bunny agreed on this point, but how it was going to be done was another
matter. Toby seemed to be going faster now. He was running away in
earnest, and the reins, dangling around his hind feet, did not make him
feel any better. In fact they scared him.
The street was a quiet one, and up to now Bunny and Sue had met no
other wagons, carriages or automobiles. And there were no persons in
the street to run out and stop Toby, which might easily have been done,
for the Shetland pony was not much bigger than a large Newfoundland dog.
As for Patter, he trotted alongside the runaway and seemed to think it
was all in fun. Now and then he looked up at Bunny and Sue and barked,
as much as to say:
“Why don’t you take me up there in the cart with you and give me a nice
ride?”
But Bunny and Sue thought of nothing like this. Finally, as the small
pony seemed to be running away faster, Sue exclaimed:
“I don’t care, Bunny Brown! I’m going to jump out! I’m not going to be
runned away with and all mashed up against a tree! I’m going to jump
out!”
“No, don’t do that!” begged her brother.
“I’ll have to if you don’t stop Toby.”
“I can’t stop Toby! I can’t reach the reins!” replied Bunny. “But maybe
Patter can stop him.”
“How?”
“Patter can grab hold of the reins and pull back. And when Toby feels
the reins being pulled back he’ll stop,” said Bunny.
“Oh, try it! Try it!” entreated Sue.
Now this was a trick that Patter had never been asked to do. It was
not really a trick at all. In fact it was more useful than doing some
of the tricks Patter could perform. For if Patter could stop Toby from
running away he might save Bunny and Sue from being hurt. At any rate
Bunny was going to try.
Leaning over the side of the cart, Bunny called to the trick dog:
“Stop him, Patter! Take hold of the reins and stop Toby from running
away!”
Bunny snapped his fingers and pointed to Toby’s back. Perhaps he
should have pointed to the trailing reins, but he did not. And Patter,
pricking up his ears and looking at Bunny’s outstretched hand pointing
to the pony, had but one thought in mind. This was to do the trick he
had done before--that of jumping on Toby’s back.
And, in another instant, Patter leaped up, landed on the pony’s back
and sat there. He did not try the trick of standing on his front legs
as he had done before.
“Oh, look what he did!” cried Sue.
“Yes,” said Bunny. “I didn’t mean for him to do that. I wanted him to
grab the lines from the ground.”
“Well, he can do it just as well from Toby’s back,” said Sue.
“Oh, so he can!” exclaimed Bunny. “Grab the lines, Patter! Grab the
lines!” cried the little boy.
Whether Patter, crouched on the pony’s broad, fat back, understood
these words or not, he saw the gesture and he reached forward and
caught hold of the reins in his teeth, near the place where they ran
through two shiny rings on the middle part of the harness.
Patter leaned back and pulled as hard as he could. And as soon as Toby
felt himself being pulled in, he did just what he always did when that
happened. He slowed down. I think he had had enough of running away and
thought it time to stop. And probably he thought it was Bunny pulling
on the reins. But it wasn’t. It was Patter, the trick dog.
Anyhow, Toby slowed down to a walk, and then, as Patter kept on pulling
the reins, the pony stopped.
“Oh, the runaway is over!” sighed Sue. “I’m so glad!”
“And we didn’t get hurt,” added Bunny Brown.
Just then around the corner of a street near which Toby had stopped,
came Bunker Blue. The boy from Mr. Brown’s boat and fish dock had been
on an errand. Seeing the two children, with Patter up on Toby’s back,
Bunker Blue said:
“You two oughtn’t to be playing tricks like that out in the street
here. It’s all right to make Patter do tricks, but not in the street.”
“We weren’t making him play tricks,” answered Bunny. “Toby ran away and
Patter stopped him.”
And when he and Sue had told how it happened, Bunker said:
“Oh, that’s all right! That was fine. But I’ll drive Toby back home for
you, as he might get frisky again.”
But the little horse did not, trotting along very quietly. And when
Bunny and Sue reached home, and Mrs. Brown heard what had happened, she
remarked:
“I’m afraid it won’t be safe for you children to go out with Toby alone
any more. He is too frisky.”
“Oh, I guess it will wear off,” said Bunker Blue. “You see, he hasn’t
had much exercise since he came back from the farm. He’ll be all right.”
And Toby was, for he did not again run away--at least not for a long
time. Daddy Brown said Patter was a very smart dog to stop a runaway as
he did. They were talking about it after supper, and then Mrs. Brown
asked:
“Did you hear anything more about the poor man in the hospital?”
“No, except that he says his name is Jason Stern, and he says he has
no friends left to help him unless he can find Jim Denton, the circus
owner,” replied Mr. Brown. “But no one seems to know where Jim Denton
is, and Mr. Stern is too ill to tell the hospital folks very much.
I think the old man came to the wrong town. He must mean some other
Bellemere; there are a lot of them in this country. Well, I’ll go to
see him again soon when he gets a little better.”
Bunny Brown and his sister Sue continued to have a lot of fun with the
trick dog and their pony. One day some of his boy chums came over to
see Bunny.
“Say,” asked Charlie Star, “when are we going to have that show you
were talking of, Bunny?”
“That’s right,” added Harry Bentley. “We want to get up a show with
your trick dog and your pony. We can get some other animals, too.”
“All right,” agreed Bunny. “Let’s go out to our barn now and talk about
it. If we have the show it will be in our barn.”
To this the other boys agreed, and they strolled out to the barn where
in times past they had had many good times.
Near the barn was a little brook of water, and Bunny and the boys
began throwing stones in this to hear the splashes. As Bunny threw
his second stone his cap dropped off and the wind carried it into the
brook. It fell in the middle of the stream.
“Oh, look, Bunny threw his cap in!” cried Charlie.
“No, I didn’t throw it!” said Bunny.
But no sooner had Patter seen the cap in the water than in he plunged
and began swimming toward it.