The X Bar X Boys In Thunder Canyon

The X Bar X Boys #2

by James Cody Ferris, Walter S. Rogers (Illustrator)

Belle Ada has gone to visit Nell and Ethel for a few days at the 8 X 8. The ranchers become concerned when all three girls fail to appear after they had set out in good time to come to the X Bar X to continue their visit there. When the news arrives that some of the rustlers, who had been put away at the end of the first volume, have escaped from the local jail, the hypothesis that the girls had been kidnapped is all but confirmed. The X Bar X boys, with punchers of both ranches, follow the "clews" to locate and liberate the captives, whom they suspect have been detained deep in Thunder Canyon.

Genres: Westerns

216 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1926

About the author

James Cody Ferris is one of the Stratemeyer Syndicate pseudonyms. Includes authors: Edward Stratemeyer, Howard Roger Garis, Edna Camilla Stratemeyer Squier, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, Roger Carroll Garis, Frank Dorrance Hopley, Walter Karig, Grace May North, John W. Duffield, Dr. John Conyers Button, Jr and Leslie McFarlane.

Series:
* The X-Bar-X Boys

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

The X Bar X boys were Roy and Teddy Manley, the 16- and 17-year-old sons of Bardwell and Barbara Manley, who, along with 12-year-old sister Belle Ada, lived on the family ranch they owned and operated, along with a tight-knit crew of cowboys who are treated more like friends than employees. This is the second of a series of 21 books published between 1926 and 1942, when the war time paper shortage brought their adventures to a premature end, sadly leaving a 22nd volume which had been written by the great Leslie McFarlane (literary father of the Hardy Boys) unpublished. The books were produced by the Stratemeyer syndicate and published by Grosset & Dunlap. They were published under the very cooly Western house pseudonym James Cody Ferris. This one, which came out in 1926, was ghost written by Roger Garis, son of the more-famous author Howard Garis, creator of Uncle Wiggily. The setting is contemporary (well, it was a century ago, but you know what I mean!), though the Western flavor is always prevalent. They have automobiles (though they prefer their horses!) and telephones, though they frequently break down as the plot demands. In the first book, The X Bar X Boys on the Ranch, they'd had a run-in with rustlers, and at the end had seen most of the gang arrested. As this one begins, the rustlers have escaped and are out for revenge. The most hair-raising point is that Belle and her two friends Nell and Ethel (who just happen to be Roy's and Teddy's girlfriends) are kidnapped from the nearby 8 X 8 ranch where they're visiting and held hostage in a cave in Thunder Canyon. The Manley's and their friends have to mount a rescue, following "clews" to track them down. They frequently use the phrase "I'll tell a maverick!" to express agreement and enthusiasm. The made-up word "quakermast" is used a lot to describe cactus. The bad guys sign a note as "Reltsur," and one of the weakest points is trying to solve the mystery of who that is. It never occurs to the otherwise bright boys to spell it backwards... (Remember the Heinlein book with the "stobor"?) Belle is the youngest but brightest of her friends and takes the lead in keeping their spirits up during their incarceration. She has a nice moment on page 173, musing on Western stories and her reality: "Belle thought of the Western books she had read and how she had scoffed at the adventures the heroes and heroines had gone through. "As though we of the West lived in a land of nothing but rattlesnakes, cyclones, and rustlers!" she once exclaimed. "Those things they write about just don't happen!" And now here she was, riding through a canyon to some unknown, far-off place, with a savage old woman forcing them on with a pistol! "I guess they do happen, after all," she said to herself ruefully. "Although I'd rather read about this than be where I am!"" There are some unfortunate racial problems with the book, as there was with most books of the time. There's a Chinese cook on the ranch, Sing Lung, with a tendency to mangle words with his chip-chop speech, and the concluding complement Mr. Manley is paid for caring for his employees on page 211 is that he "...is sure one white guy." Still, allowing for the problems of aging, it's a fine Western adventure, and is a good example of why the Manley boys lasted longer than most of their juvenile-series literary contemporaries.

[Jay Daze · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hardy Boys western, very much of its time and targeting at making young guys of the 1920s into men. Racial slur in the mouths of both Teddy and Roy Manley, the heroes, which goes back to the dictum that everybody in the past was racist. Those not are a rounding error. :(

[Ronald]

possibly read in winter 1967