The boys finally met their demise in 1942. Probably they were a casualty of the second World War. The last book promised a forthcoming volume called The X Bar X Boys With the Border Patrol, but the book never appeared. (However, see the section of this web site called "The Phantom Title, Etc.") At the end of the series, the boys' fate remains a mystery. One can, however, hazard a guess.

I don't think the boys were done in by any bad guys, in spite of the many attempts made to end their careers prematurely. They were just too smart and too lucky for that, especially after sixteen years and twenty-one adventures in the saddle. I think that, being patriotic and noticing that a war was going on, they probably joined the army and fought bravely. Of course they wrote home regularly, came back heroes, and then went on ranching.

The economic boom after the war brought a lot of people out West, and the boys began to lay low. It wouldn't do to have housing developments in the pristine valleys and meadows within shouting and shooting distance from the ranch, and Eagles warn't made fer no suburbs. Nope, the boys went quiet so nobody would know where they were. They thanked their lucky stars that they had never been too precise about where their ranch was located. The boys finally overcame their shyness and Nell and Curly overcame their stand-offishness and the two couples got married, inherited the adjacent 8 X 8, began producing the fourth generation of ranching Manleys, and now run a ranch nearly twice the size of the X Bar X. But finding its precise location will never be possible. The loss is ours.

It has been six decades since young Roy and Teddy rode freely and exuberantly through the mountains and meadows in the environs of the X Bar X ranch. The world has changed drastically almost everywhere since then. Yet, after we have laid aside these books, which contain some of the finest writing in the series book world (along with a lot that is mediocre and some that is downright bad), we are left with a sense of peace and contentment. It is not hard to lean back and imagine the sound of boot heels on the wooden floor of the verandah, the smell of the sagebrush after an early morning summer cloudburst, and the sight of uncountable millions of stars in the Colorado night sky. As we come to the close of the twentieth century—a time of frenetic living, high technology, pollution, and endangered species—this is a vision which many people long for.

We'll let Dad have the last word, for he always spoke true. Bardwell Manley said to himself once, "Reckon I'm pretty fortunate in having two sons like Teddy an' Roy. Pretty good ole world, after all!" (At the Round Up, page 158)