The Hero of Ticonderoga Part 16

Everything had been calm up to that point.

The other members of the family had gone out.

Zeb was alone with his father.

"Come here."

"What for?"

"Come here, I say, and place yourself across my knee."

"Not this time, dad."

If Zebedee had drawn a pistol and shot at his father that worthy could not have been more astonished. He almost dropped the stick.

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I say. You are never going to beat me again."

"What?"

"Just what I say, dad. I'm going to make a bargain with you. You swear that you will never hit me again and I'll make you a rich man."

Ezekiel dropped the stick.

He opened his ponderous jaws and looked at his eldest son much as he might at a wild beast.

"You--what?"

"Just what I say, dad. Little pitchers have big ears. Well, the big ears have heard that you hate Ethan Allen."

"Well?"

"You would get the reward if you could."

"Well?"

"Swear that you will never hit me again----"

"I will not. Come here, you rapscalion, and I'll teach you to make a laughingstock of me."

Zeb saw his father pick up the stick again, and he got into the corner, and picking up a chair, held it so that his father could not strike him.

"See here, father," he said, very quietly, "you are stronger than I am.

You have a right to whip me, and I perhaps deserve it; that isn't saying much, but it's enough. Now I want to tell you that if you strike me I'll leave you this very night, and either join the Green Mountain Boys, or I'll get the reward and go to York and never see you again."

"What has come over you?"

"Nothing, only I see a way to make some money for you, or myself, and I'll give it to you if you swear never to strike me again."

"It's a bargain."

"Honor bright?"

"Yes, honor bright."

"All right, father. Pull down your sleeves and come with me where no one can hear what I have to say."

To the great surprise of the family, no sounds of crying or sobbing came from the kitchen, and when Zeb's mother--a little, frail woman, who had never had her own way since she had been married to Zeke, opened the door an hour later and peeped in, she screamed out:

"It's all over! I felt he would do it some day."

"Do what, mother?" asked a girl of twelve.

"Your father has killed Zeb. He said he would, and now he has done it, and he has gone to bury him."

Then there was a scene of shrieking and weeping and sobbing.

All the children joined in, and the mother was heart-broken.

In the midst of it all father and son walked in, radiant and smiling.

If Zeb had been really dead and made himself visible to his astonished family, they could not have been more alarmed.

"Mistress Garvan, stop your blubbering. We shall have visitors this night; sha'n't we, Zeb?"

"Yes, dad."

"Friends of mine. Oh, it will be a great time. Mistress, I'll buy the childer new clothes, ay, that I will, and I'll have a new ox for the farm. It is good, I tell you, to have friends."

Mistress Garvan wondered what had come over her stern husband.

She knew he had not been drinking, for he would not allow even as much as a drop of dry cider to come into the house.

"What have you been doing, Zeke?" she asked him.

"Nothing; it's only a little surprise we have. Isn't it so, Zeb?"

But Zeb had disappeared, and so no answer was forthcoming from him.

Zeb had seen more than he had heard, and he knew of the encampment on Lake Dunmore.

He had watched the men, and found out that they drilled at night. He had become suspicious, but had no means of verifying his suspicions until that conversation with Eben.

When Eben had incautiously mentioned his name, Zeb remembered that he had heard a man tell his father that Allen was accompanied by a young scout whose name was Pike.

Zeke was getting very fidgety.