Talking of their adventure with the bears, the boys rode slowly home. Teddy was anxious to tell Pop Burns about it, to see what he would say. But as they neared the ranch yard of the X Bar X, they heard something that drove these topics from their minds.
From around the corner of the bunk-house came voices, loud in anger. They listened. One of the speakers was their father!
CHAPTER III
An Angry Visitor
“What do you reckon is up, Teddy?” asked Roy Manley.
“Haven’t the least idea, but we’ll soon find out!”
The two urged their mounts forward anxiously.
Digressing here, for a moment, it will be recalled that these two youths were first introduced in a book called “The X Bar X Boys on the Ranch,” the opening volume of this series. Therein was told of the long and dangerous hunt they, in company with their father and other members of the outfit, had undertaken to round-up a gang of rustlers who had stolen Flash, Star, and General, the ponies of Teddy, Roy, and Mr. Manley.
The boys felt keenly the loss of their ponies, and braved many dangers before regaining them. The fact that the Manley posse caught the rustlers when they were about to make a raid on the cattle of X Bar X added not a little to the excitement.
In the second book, called “The X Bar X Boys in Thunder Canyon,” the adventures of Teddy and Roy on the trail of kidnappers are related. These scoundrels, in revenge for a wrong they fancied Mr. Manley had done them, took Belle Ada, the boys’ sister, and Nell Willis and Ethel Carew, her friends, to a cavern far up Thunder Canyon. Guarded there by an old woman and a number of men, the girls had a terrifying time until Roy and Teddy found them and brought them safely home after rounding up the kidnappers, who turned out to be the same gang that had made trouble at the X Bar X Ranch before.
The voice of the man who was quarreling with their father in the ranch yard was not an unfamiliar one to the Manley boys. Teddy, who was leading, reined up sharply and jerked his head in the direction from which the words were coming.