“Oh, it isn’t likely that we’ll ever meet again,” replied the young major. But in this he was mistaken. He was to meet Bill Ferguson again and under the most thrilling of circumstances.
Once more the two automobiles proceeded on their way. And while they are thus rolling along let me take the opportunity to introduce my characters more specifically.
In the first volume of this series, entitled “The Rover Boys at School,” I introduced three brothers, Dick, Tom and Sam Rover, who resided at that time with their Uncle Randolph and their Aunt Martha at Valley Brook Farm, a pleasant country place in New York state. From the farm the boys had been sent to Putnam Hall Military Academy and, later on, to Brill College. Then they had gone into business in Wall Street, New York, under the name of The Rover Company. Each had been married to a boyhood sweetheart, and now the three families resided in adjoining residences on Riverside Drive overlooking the beautiful Hudson River, in New York City.
Not a long while after his marriage to Dora Stanhope, Dick had been blessed with a son, John, who was always called Jack, and a daughter, Martha, who was a year younger than her brother. To Sam Rover and his wife Grace had come a daughter, Mary, and, about a year later, a son, who was named Fred after an old school chum, Fred Garrison. Tom and his wife, Nellie, were blessed with a healthy pair of boy twins, one called Andy, after his grandfather, Anderson, and the other Randy, after Uncle Randolph.
As they resided side by side, the younger generation of Rover boys, as well as their sisters, were brought up very much as one large family. At first the young folks were sent to some private institutions of learning in the Metropolis. But presently Andy and Randy, as well as the other boys, began to develop such a propensity for fun it was decided to send them to some stricter institution of learning.
At that time Larry Colby was at the head of a military academy, called Colby Hall. How Jack and Fred and the twins were sent to that institution of learning and what happened to them, has already been related in the volume entitled “The Rover Boys at Colby Hall.”
At the school the lads made many friends and also a few enemies. Among their warmest chums were Gif Garrison, the son of their fathers’ old friend, Fred Garrison, after whom Fred Rover was named, and Spouter Powell, the son of the older Rovers’ chum, John Powell, always known as Songbird because of his propensity for writing what he called poetry.
A term at Colby Hall had been followed by some winter adventures on “Snowshoe Island.” Then the boys had returned to school to go into an encampment “Under Canvas.” Later still the lads had gone on a great “Hunt,” which had been productive of many adventures. Later still, after another term at the military academy, where Jack had gradually worked his way up from being an under officer to becoming major of the school battalion and where Fred had risen until he was now the captain of Company C, the four boys, along with several chums, had gone into “The Land of Luck,” otherwise the great oil regions of Texas and Oklahoma.
Shortly after this Spouter announced that his father had purchased a place in the far West called “Big Bear Ranch.” The boys were invited to visit this place and had a glorious time in the saddle and otherwise.