For many days after this Lightfoot lived around the squatter’s shanty learning to leap and do other things that goats have to do in this world. And one day he had an adventure that was not exactly pleasant.
Lightfoot was getting to be quite a big goat now, and sometimes he wandered away farther than he had ever gone before. Two or three streets from where the Malony shanty was built ran an electric car line. At first Lightfoot did not know what it was, but the other goats told him that people rode in the queer, yellow cars which went rolling along in such a queer way on the shiny rails, a bell clanging in front.
One afternoon Lightfoot wandered down to the trolley tracks. An ash wagon had passed a little while before, and the goat had seen fall from it a tin can with a big, red, tomato-paper pasted on it.
“I’ll get that paper and eat off the paste,” thought Lightfoot.
The can was in the middle of the tracks. Lightfoot began nosing it, tearing off the paper and eating small pieces. It tasted very good to him.
Suddenly there was the clanging of a bell, and along came a car, headed straight for Lightfoot. The goat looked up.
“Bother!” he exclaimed to himself. “You’ll have to wait until I finish my lunch,” he went on. “I’m not going to hurry out of the way for you. I’m as good as you!” Lightfoot wanted his own way, you see.
But goats have no rights on a trolley track, though Lightfoot did not know this. The motorman clanged his bell, and cried:
“Get off the tracks, you goat, or I’ll bump into you!”
Now Lightfoot knew very little indeed about trolley cars. He did not know how strong they were. And so, as he stood between the rails, chewing the paper from the can, and saw the big yellow car clanging its way toward him, Lightfoot stamped his hoofs, shook his horns and said to himself:
“Well, do as you please, but I’m not going to move until I finish eating. I guess I can butt as hard as you!”
“Get out of there!” called the motorman again. But Lightfoot did not understand. The car slowed up a little, but still came on.
“Bump into him, Bill!” called the conductor to the motorman, and the next instant the fender of the street car struck Lightfoot’s lowered horns, and tossed him to one side over into a ditch full of weeds.