CHAPTER IX ZEB’S FAME PRECEDES HIM

The stage-driver was getting somewhat impatient, although the delay had not been a long one, but the stranger turned for one more word with Zeb Fuller before he climbed back to his seat in front of the two old ladies.

“Are you a son of Dr. Dryer?”

“Son?” exclaimed Zeb, as he held in the bay colt. “Oh, no. Solomon’s a good boy, and I’ve done what I could to bring him up right, but he’s no son of mine.”

“Bring him up!” exclaimed the stranger.

“Yes,” said Zeb, “I’ve had him under my care for several years now, at the Academy, but there’s some things he won’t learn. The boys get away from him, and so do the cows. I wish I had some one to help me with him.”

A ringing laugh responded to Zeb’s last remark, and:

“Well, I’ll try, then. I’m Mr. George Brayton,[Pg 115] and I’m on my way to join Dr. Dryer. I’ll tell him how hard a fight you had for his cows.”

Zeb’s face lengthened a little, but he answered, quickly:

“And don’t forget Bob. Solomon doesn’t understand dogs much better than he does boys.”

“Likely as not,” exclaimed Brayton to himself, as he sprang into the stage. “Go on, driver. Now, there’s a boy worth somebody’s while to understand. Hullo! you didn’t tell me your name, after all.”

And, as the stage rolled on, Brayton heard something that sounded very much like:

“Rev. Zebedee Fuller, D. D., LL. D., etc.,” for Zeb remained behind at his duty.

The latter had no more difficulty in it. The cows had been milked, all three of them, and Zeb was glad of it, but they were in a worried and disconsolate frame of mind, and glad enough to find their peaceful heads turned homeward.

Bob had suffered very little in his combat with the yellow dog, and was now evidently conscious that he and his master had gained a very substantial kind of victory. You could see the sense of triumph expressing itself in the rigid[Pg 116] erectness of his remaining ear, and in the unyielding pride of his stump of a tail. A very intelligent sort of dog was Bob.

As for Zeb, that young gentleman had hardly come off so well as his canine ally, for the vagabonds had been hard hitters, and every bone of his body bore witness to that fact.

His face, too, was even less of a beauty than usual, and the cast in his left eye was by no means robbed of its effect by the deep tinge of blue which was beginning to show under the right.

Zeb had chaffed bravely enough with Mr. Brayton, but his mind was by no means easy, after all.

“Put my foot in it, as usual,” he said aloud to himself; “but how was I to guess that he was old Sol’s new man? Seems a good one, too. Not exactly the sort they generally make teachers of. Most generally they make ’em out of the chips after they’ve used up all the good timber on men. Now, he looks like a man. Well, if he is, he won’t tell on me in any bad way. Why, there was a speck of fight in his eyes, too, and I know he’d ha’ liked to see Bob walk into that[Pg 117] yellow dog. Reckon that might have done even old Sol some good.”

Zeb was in no way impatient to reach the end of his journey. In fact, the nearer he came to Ogleport the better contented he seemed to be that the cattle should take his own gait.

Still, those few miles could not last forever, and before sunset Zeb found himself in such a position as he had never occupied before. He was still on the back of the bay colt, and Dr. Dryer’s cows were plodding along before him down the main street of the village, but it seemed as if he had never before realized how many boys Ogleport contained.

They were all there, and determined to emphasize their appreciation of their hero by a species of triumphal procession.

The news of Zeb’s exploit had preceded him, growing as it traveled, and the smaller the size of the Ogleport boy might be, the more vividly his imagination had supplied him with crowds of the ferocious vagabonds of Rodney, on horseback and on foot, and miscellaneously armed and arrayed, with Zebedee Fuller careering among them on his father’s bay colt, and valorously[Pg 118] rescuing from their rapacious grasp the erring kine of the Rev. Dr. Dryer.

It had seemed at first like an impossible romance, a vision of the Middle Ages, or a leaf torn from a dime novel, but behold the reality was here, and no boy could disbelieve his own eyes.

There were the cows, safe and sound. There was the bay colt, and on his back rode home in glory the hero of the hand-to-hand conflict, his face yet liberally smeared with unwiped gore from his nose, now badly puffed, while every square inch of his summer clothing bore tokens that he had measured his length in the dust and mud of Rodney.

It was a grand thing for the boys of Ogleport. Every soul of them rose from one to five pegs in his own estimation, and took on more exalted views of the course in life which he must necessarily pursue that he might equal, some coming day, the laurels of the victorious Zeb.

Not the least appreciative of all these worshipers was the level-headed youth who delivered to Bob a bone of unusual size and meatiness.

That was the way Zeb came to miss his faithful[Pg 119] follower, for Bob was a conscientious dog, and that bone had to be entombed at once in the deacon’s backyard.

Zeb’s spirits were rising rapidly, but, just before he reached the wide open gate of Dr. Dryer’s cow-lot, the voice of his father smote upon his ear with:

“Zebedee, my son, have you been fighting?”

“Not exactly, father,” replied Zeb; “the other fellows did the fighting. Bob and I went for the cows.”

“What will your mother say?” exclaimed the deacon, for it really required an unusual amount of hypocrisy to be hard on Zeb just then, and the deacon was no hypocrite.

“Say! Why, father, you don’t suppose she’ll take the side of those Rodney boys, do you?”

Whatever answer the deacon might have made was interrupted by the appearance of the Rev. Dr. Dryer, attended by the females of his family and by Mr. George Brayton himself.

“That’s the boy, Doctor,” said the latter. “You’d have had to get your cows out of the Rodney pound if it hadn’t been for him.”

“I only wish some person would afford me[Pg 120] trustworthy information as to the manner of their escape from my own inclosure,” replied the doctor, solemnly.

“Are you sure you fastened the gate last night?” asked Zeb.

“I am positive that all things were in order when I retired,” was the response.

“Then there’s only one way they could have got out,” said Zeb.

“What’s that?” asked the deacon.

“Flying,” said Zeb; “and, not being used to it they flew further than they meant to.”

Effie Dryer came to the relief of her puzzled elders with a burst of girlish merriment, in which George Brayton, though more reservedly, was willing enough to join her; but her father’s countenance was full of stern reproof of both her and Zeb.

“You are too much disposed to trifle, my young friend,” he said to the latter. “You have done me a very excellent service, for which I thank both you and your worthy father. I regret exceedingly the apparent necessity of a resort to violence. You have evidently suffered severe contusions.”

[Pg 121]“But, Doctor!” exclaimed Zeb, “you ought to have seen those two Rodney chaps. My face isn’t a sign to their’n. And then their dog! Bob had him down for close on to five minutes. You’d have enjoyed it as well as I did if you’d only been there. Ask Mr. Brayton. He missed the best of it, though.”

“I must say,” said the gentleman appealed to, “that Zeb had evidently done his whole duty by his opponents, and his dog had left nothing to ask for on his part. Zeb, hadn’t you better go home and wash your face?”

“Yes, Zeb,” exclaimed his father, “and tell your mother about it and take care of the bay colt.”

Zeb was glad enough to get away, for he was becoming conscious that Effie Dryer’s merry eyes had discovered something absurd and laughable in his appearance, and he was by no means “hardened” enough to stand that.

He was quite well satisfied, moreover, to avoid any further discussion of the manner in which the cows had “escaped” the night before, for a more utterly wingless set of quadrupeds were never accused of flying.

As for his mother, good soul, Zeb had small[Pg 122] fears of any trouble there, as soon as she should be sure that he had suffered no real injury.

Good Mrs. Fuller, the meekest soul in Ogleport, had come of sound “revolutionary” stock, and the deacon himself would have been more surprised than Zeb was at the real character of the “scolding” she gave him.

“You couldn’t help it, Zeb?”

“Not without giving up the cows.”

“Sure there was no other way but to fight those boys? I wouldn’t have had to.”

“You’d have had to let ’em drive the cows to the pound, then.”

“You thought you were doing your duty, then, Zeb?”

“Yes, mother,” said Zeb, firmly. “It was my fault that the cows got away, and so it was my duty to bring ’em back again.”

“Oh, Zeb! More of your mischief? I’m sorry for that, and I’m sorry you had to fight.”

“Mother!”

“But, Zeb, my boy, I’m not at all sorry you tried to do your duty, and that you didn’t flinch.”

Zeb half believed his mother to be an angel at[Pg 123] any time, but she had never before seemed nearer one than just then.

It was pretty certain her words would return to him some other time, when a question should arise between duty and “flinching.”

Just then, however, after a good bit of work at the wash-basin, Zeb went out to look after the wants of the bay colt, with a glow at his heart and a sort of feeling that he wouldn’t mind having his other eye blackened.

“I’m getting awful stiff, though,” he said to himself, “and I don’t believe I could make much of a wrestle till I get the marks of that club off my arms and legs.”

On his way to the pasture afterwards, Zeb learned from Bill Jones and Hy Allen the results of their day’s fishing, and the other boys assured him they had kept for him a liberal share of the spoils of the old “sweet tree.”

At Dr. Dryer’s house, that evening was an unusually lively one, for the doctor and his wife, and even Effie herself, were “on their good behavior” in one sense over the newcomer.