They drove along for another hour before a clattering sounded behind them.
“I believe it’s Bad Pete coming,” declared Harry, as he made out, a quarter of a mile behind them, the form of a man mounted on a small, wiry mustang.
“Yep; it is,” nodded the Colorado boy, after a look back.
The trail being wider here Bad Pete whirled by them with a swift drumming of his pony’s hoofs. In a few moments more he was out of sight.
“Tom, you may have your doubts about that fellow,” Hazelton remarked, “but there’s one thing he can do—-ride!”
“Humph! Anyone can ride that knows enough to get into a saddle and stick there,” observed the Colorado boy dryly.
Readers of the “_Grammar School Boys Series_” and of the “_High School Boys Series_”, have already recognized in Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton two famous schoolboy athletes.
Back in old Gridley there had once been a schoolboy crowd of six, known as Dick & Co. Under the leadership of Dick Prescott, these boys had made their start in athletics in the Central Grammar School, winning no small amount of fame as junior schoolboy athletes.
Then in their High School days Dick & Co. had gradually made themselves crack athletes. Baseball and football were their especial sports, and in these they had reached a degree of skill that had made many a college trainer anxious to obtain them.
None of the six, however, had gone to college. Dick Prescott and Greg Holmes had secured appointments as cadets at the United States Military Academy, at West Point. Their adventures are told in the “_West Point Series_.” Dave Darrin and Dan Dalzell, feeling the call to the Navy, had entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Their further doings are all described in the “_Annapolis Series_.”