“Still thinking about Gilly Froud?� Roy asked. “Come on, snap out of it! Lots of nicer things to think about. For instance, that wrist watch you bought at school. Baby, wait till Nick Looker finds out you own a wrist watch! Maybe he won’t ride you a little!�
Teddy grinned in reply, and pushed his sombrero back from his forehead. It was certainly a hot day.
The two Manley brothers, Teddy, aged fifteen, and Roy, one year older, were at home, for a long time, they hoped, if not for good, from the Hopper Boarding School, an institution just outside of Denver. Teddy had the golden hair and blue eyes of his mother, Barbara Manley, “the blonde angel of the West,â€� her husband often jokingly called her. But the laugh that always went with this remark deceived no one—least of all the boys. They caught the note of love in their father’s voice, and it found an echo in their own hearts.
“Jinks! She is an angel!�
Roy, the taller of the two, had hair as brown as the hills around him, and eyes but a trifle lighter in hue. He it was who had inherited from his mother a fondness for literature, and, though this last was carefully concealed, a liking for poetry.
Barbara Manley, before her marriage, had been a teacher of English in a Denver school, and until she had met Bardwell Manley, poetry had been her only sweetheart. Her eyes would shine with maternal pride when she observed Roy reading a “book of silly verses,� as Teddy called it.
Yet Roy was a real boy. More, he was a real Western boy, which is saying a great deal. He was one of the best shots on the X Bar X ranch, and although Teddy had a slight edge on him when it came to riding, Roy could “forkâ€� an unbroken bronco almost as well as any man on the ranch. In build the boys were much alike—lean, wiry products of range life.
Their father, Bardwell Manley, owned the X Bar X, a cattle ranch some thirty hours’ ride “on the cars� west from Chicago on Rocky Run River, a small stream. This ranch had been in the Manley family since Temple Manley, the boys’ grandfather, now several years dead, had settled there in 1868.
Roy and Teddy, together with their sister, Belle Ada, a girl now twelve years old, had, of course, lived much of their lives on the X Bar X. But as soon as they became old enough Mrs. Manley had insisted that the two brothers go away to study in Denver, and the last three winters Roy and Teddy had spent at the Hopper Academy.
Although their school days were happy enough, both boys were always eager for summer to come, bringing with it vacation time, which meant the ranch, with Flash and Star to gallop about on over many a winding trail. Roy and Teddy had the real cowboy’s love for a good pony and the wind-swept range. Though they did as well as most boys at their studies and Roy rather better than the average, they were both eager for the time to come when they could leave school and follow in the footsteps of their father.