"The heart of the Rockies!" murmured Roy, at last. "Looks as if we're a million miles from nowhere. Gosh, it's good to be here, Teddy!"

(The X Bar X Boys Lost in the Rockies, pages 95-96)

Roy and Teddy Manley, brothers who live on the X Bar X ranch, were billed by their publishers Grosset & Dunlap as "real cowboys, on the job when required but full of fun and daring." Carol Billman, author of The Secret of the Stratemeyer Syndicate (pages 80-81), describes the boys in these words: "Though fashioned as western heroes, these two brothers form a team of crack explorers, who uncover the schemes of kidnappers, rustlers, and other shady western entrepreneurs."

The twenty-one volumes of the series were published from 1926 to 1942. The books themselves are thick volumes, the early ones with the glossy frontispiece customary in the Grosset & Dunlap books of that era. Through early 1932 the books appeared in gray; after that, they were produced in the dark red which is familiar to collectors of Don Sturdy, early Hardys, and other series of that era. The logo on the front of each red book shows a bucking bronco with a cowboy holding on with his left hand, right hand swinging his ten-gallon hat. (The logo is used to mark each entry in this web site.) With apparent glee, he is glued to his flying mount, coiled lariat and bedroll airborne. The gray books have no logo.

These are books of the West (with a capital W, as the word customarily appears in the stories), but a West not unaware of the modern world—it is the world of the late 1920's and the 1930's. Cars appear once in a while, although very much the exception, until the last few books in the series, when they appear a little more often. In the first book, Mr. Manley, the boys' father, said he preferred "hoss flesh to flivvers" (On the Ranch, page 8). Other modern inventions such as the telephone are not unknown, but not often used. Wrist watches are newfangled items guaranteed to cause fun to be poked at their owners. This is very much a series of chaps and chaparral, guns and lariats, bunk houses and cattle drives, campfire coffee and bacon, leather and rodeos, sombreros and sagebrush, weather and wide open spaces.

This series, in spite of a regrettable flaw which is described in another place in the web site, is too much overlooked by series books fans. Although some of the later volumes are of poor quality, the early books in particular contain some of the most spectacular writing in series book history, with frequent and consistently moving descriptions of the splendor of the unspoiled West. It is topnotch writing indeed! Quality is less consistent after the first nine volumes, but most of the middle books keep an admirable standard before the final whimper.

These are the titles of the books and the years of their publication:

1. The X Bar X Boys on the Ranch (1926)

2. The X Bar X Boys in Thunder Canyon (1926)

3. The X Bar X Boys on Whirlpool River (1926)

4. The X Bar X Boys on Big Bison Trail (1927)

5. The X Bar X Boys at the Round Up (1927)

6. The X Bar X Boys at Nugget Camp (1928)

7. The X Bar X Boys at Rustlers' Gap (1929)

8. The X Bar X Boys at Grizzly Pass (1929)

9. The X Bar X Boys Lost in the Rockies (1930)

10. The X Bar X Boys Riding for Life (1931)

11. The X Bar X Boys in Smoky Valley (1932)

12. The X Bar X Boys at Copperhead Gulch (1933)

13. The X Bar X Boys Branding the Wild Herd (1934)

14. The X Bar X Boys at the Strange Rodeo (1935)

15. The X Bar X Boys With the Secret Rangers (1936)

16. The X Bar X Boys Hunting the Prize Mustangs (1937)

17. The X Bar X Boys at Triangle Mine (1938)

18. The X Bar X Boys and the Sagebrush Mystery (1939)

19. The X Bar X Boys in the Haunted Gully (1940)

20. The X Bar X Boys and the Lost Troopers (1941)

21. The X Bar X Boys Following the Stampede (1942)