“I knew you didn’t have the sand to back your opinion,” chuckled Chipper. “It’s my idea that Grant is a fake and you’re no bettor.”
“Awful bad pun, Chipper,” said Chub Tuttle, a roly-poly, round-faced chap who was munching peanuts. “I think you’re right, though; I don’t believe he’s a Texan. Why, he hasn’t a bit of brogue.”
“Bub-brogue!” stuttered Phil Springer, who had a slight impediment in his speech. “Texans don’t have a brogue; they have a dialect—they talk in the vernacular, you know.”
“Talk in the ver—what?” cried Cooper. “Where did you get that word, Phil? I don’t know what it means, but I do know Rod Grant talks through his hat sometimes. When he tells about living on a ranch and herding cattle and breaking bronchos and chasing rustlers and catching horse thieves, he gives me a cramp. He certainly can reel off some whoppers.”
At this point up spoke Billy Piper, commonly known as “Sleuth” on account of his ambitions to emulate the great detectives of fiction.
“Of late,” said Billy, “I’ve been shadowing this mysterious personage who came into our midst unannounced and unacclaimed and who has been the cause of extensive speculation and comment. My deduction is that the before-mentioned mysterious personage is a big case of bluff, and I must add that, like my astute comrade, Cooper, I gravely doubt if he has ever seen the wild and woolly West. His tales of cowboy life are extremely preposterous. All cowboys are bow-legged from excessive riding in the saddle; the legs of Rod Grant—I should say the before-mentioned mysterious personage—are as straight as my own. Westerners wear their hair long; Grant—the before-mentioned mysterious personage—has his hair cut like any civilized human being. Likewise and also, he does not talk as a true Westerner should. Why, nobody has ever heard him say ‘galoot’ or ‘varmint’ or any of those characteristic words all Westerners scatter promiscuously through their conversation. Therefore—mark me, comrades—I brand him as a double-dyed impostor.”
“Speaking about Grant, I presume?” said Fred Sage, joining the group by the radiator. “I think you’re right, Sleuth. Why, I told him only last night that no one around here believed him the real thing, because he didn’t look like it, act like it or talk like it. What do you suppose he said? He claimed he had to keep on guard all the time to prevent himself from using cowboy lingo—said he was sort of ashamed of it and trying to get out of the habit.”
Berlin Barker, a tall, cold-eyed chap who had been listening without comment to this conversation, now ventured to put in a word.
“Fellows like this Grant are more or less amusing,” he observed. “I’m also inclined to think him a fraud, and I have good reasons. Didn’t Captain Eliot try to get him out for football practice the very day he showed up here at Oakdale Academy? He looks stout and husky, and Roger thought he might work in as a substitute; but, after watching practice one night, he wouldn’t even step onto the field. It’s my opinion the game seemed too rough and rude for this wild and woolly cow-puncher. If anybody should ask me, I’d say that he has all the symptoms of a chap with a yellow streak in him. I don’t believe he has an ounce of sand in his makeup.”
“Somebody ought to be able to find out if he really does come from the West,” said Tuttle. “Why don’t we ask his aunt?”