“Oh, I guess I didn’t get anything more than a good shaking up. And you didn’t escape entirely, either. See, your hand is bleeding.”
“Oh, it’s only a scrape. Come on;” and thus speaking Dave ran off in the direction the runaway horses had taken, and his chum followed.
To my old readers Dave Porter will need no special introduction. For the benefit of others, however, let me state that when a small boy he had been found wandering alongside the railroad tracks in Crumville. As nobody claimed him he had been put in the local poorhouse, and, later on, bound out to a broken-down college professor, Caspar Potts, who at that time was farming for his health.
In an elegant mansion on the outskirts of Crumville, lived Mr. Oliver Wadsworth, a wealthy jewelry manufacturer, with his wife and his daughter Jessie. One day the gasoline tank of an automobile took fire, and Jessie was in danger of being burned to death when Dave came to her rescue. As a consequence of this Mr. Wadsworth became interested in the boy, and decided that he should be given the benefits of a good education and had sent him to a first-class boarding school, as related in the first volume of this series, entitled “Dave Porter at Oak Hall.” With Dave went Ben Basswood, his one boy friend in the town.
At Oak Hall Dave made a number of close friends, including Roger Morr, the son of a well-known United States Senator; Phil Lawrence, the offspring of a rich ship-owner; “Shadow” Hamilton, who loved to tell stories; and Buster Beggs, who was as fat as he was jolly.
In those days the principal thing that troubled Dave was the question of his parentage. To solve the mystery of his identity he took a long sea voyage, as related in “Dave Porter in the South Seas,” where he met his uncle, Dunston Porter, and learned much concerning his father, David Breslow Porter, and also his sister Laura, who were at that time traveling in Europe.
On his return to school, and during the time that our hero spent in trying to locate his father and his sister, as related in succeeding volumes of this series, Dave made many new friends. But there were some lads who were jealous of the boy’s success, and two of them, Nick Jasniff and Link Merwell, did what they could to get our hero into trouble. The plot against Dave, however, was exposed, and in sheer fright Nick Jasniff ran away and went to Europe while Merwell went out West to a ranch owned by his father.
Dave’s sister Laura had an intimate friend, Belle Endicott, who lived on Star Ranch in Montana, and through this friendship all of the boys and girls were invited out to the ranch. There, to his surprise, Dave fell in once more with Link Merwell and finally exposed that young rascal so that Link thought it would be to his advantage to disappear.
“You’ll have to keep your eyes open for those wretches,” was Roger’s comment at the time.
“They’ll get the better of you if they possibly can, Dave,” Phil Lawrence had added.