Two Boys in Wyoming

CONTENTS.


I. Jack and Fred

II. Riding Northward

III. On Guard

IV. Visitors of the Night

V. "Now for the Ranch"

VI. At the Ranch

VII. The First Game

VIII. Look Before You Leap

IX. Night in the Mountains

X. The Signal-Fires

XI. A King of the Forest

XII. The Tug of War

XIII. A Strange Occurrence

XIV. Missing

XV. Tozer

XVI. Watching and Watched

XVII. Into and Out of the Canyon

XVIII. The Quest of the Cowman

XIX. Into the Cavern

XX. A Climb for Liberty

XXI. How It All Ended




CHAPTER I.

JACK AND FRED.


You should have seen those youths, for it gives me pleasure to say that
two manlier, more plucky and upright boys it would be hard to find
anywhere in this broad land of ours. I have set out to tell you about
their remarkable adventures in the grandest section of the West, and,
before doing so, it is necessary for you to know something concerning
the lads themselves.

Jack Dudley was in his seventeenth year. His father was a prosperous
merchant, who intended his only son for the legal profession. Jack was
bright and studious, and a leader in his class at the Orphion Academy;
and this leadership was not confined to his studies, for he was a fine
athlete and an ardent lover of outdoor sports. If you witnessed the game
between the eleven of the Orphion Academy and the Oakdale Football Club,
which decided the championship by a single point in favor of the former,
you were thrilled by the sight of the half-back, who, at a critical
point in the contest, burst through the group which thronged about him,
and, with a clear field in front, made a superb run of fifty yards,
never pausing until he stooped behind the goal-posts and made a
touchdown. Then, amid the cheers of the delighted thousands, he walked
back on the field, and while one of the players lay down on the ground,
with the spheroid delicately poised before his face, the same youth who
made the touchdown smote the ball mightily with his sturdy right foot
and sent it sailing between the goal-posts as accurately as an arrow
launched from a bow.