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Boys of Oakdale Academy
Boys of Oakdale Academy
CHAPTER I.
A BOY OF MYSTERY
“He’s a fake,” declared Chipper Cooper positively, backing up against the steam radiator to warm himself on the other side. “I’ll bet a hundred dollars he never was west of Scranton, Pennsylvania.”
“A hundred dollars,” drawled Sile Crane, grinning. “Why don’t yeou bate something while you’re abaout it? Nobody’d bother to take a measly little wager like that. Now I’ve kinder got an idee that the new feller really comes from Texas, jest as he says he does. I guess he ain’t no fake.”
“Oh, is that so!” retorted Cooper, a bit warmly. “Well, I’ll talk business to you, Mr. Crane; I’ll really bet you fifty cents Rodney Grant never saw the State of Texas in his life. Now put up or shut up.”
“I don’t want to bate on it,” said Sile; “but I guess I’ve got a right to my opinion, and I cal’late Rod Grant ain’t no fake Westerner.”
“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.”