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 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 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.