It was in “The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies” that our readers first learned how this little private club of youthful horsemen came to be organized.  The need of open-air life for the then sickly Walter Perkins was one of the great factors in the organization of this little band of rough-and-ready travelers.  Our readers remember the adventures of our young friends in the fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains.  These lads speedily fitted themselves into the stirring life of the big game land, and had other yet more startling adventures in which wild animals did not play so strong a part as did wild men.  The story of the discovery of Lost Claim, with its accompanying battle with claim-jumpers, was fully told in this first volume.

It was in “The Pony Rider Boys In Texas” that we found the lads learning the first rudiments of the cattle business.  The thrilling part that the young men took in the long cattle drive, with its stampedes, the fording of swollen rivers, the games of the cowboys and the tricks of the cattle thieves, is related in that second volume.  How the boys improved their shooting and mastered the details of that fascinating sport of handling the lariat are all familiar to our readers.

In “The Pony Rider Boys in Montana” is told the story of the long and exciting ride over the old Custer Trail, famous in the tragic annals of our earlier days of Indian fighting.  Here the boys found themselves drawn into the life of the sheep men, on those great ranges where the sheep men must still defend themselves from the prejudices, and sometimes from the extreme violence, of the cattle men.  It was in this connection that Tad Butler and his friends discovered leading clues in the great conspiracy of certain cattle men against the prosperity and safety of the sheep men.  This state of affairs led finally to an angry battle, at which the boys were present.  Then, too, our readers all recall Tad Butler’s capture by the Blackfeet Indians, and all that befell him ere he succeeded in escaping to his friends.

The next stage of adventures took our lads somewhat further east, as told in “The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks.”  It was a thrilling, desperate time when the boys, with their ponies stolen, found themselves facing actual starvation in the wilds.  Tad Butler’s perilous trip for assistance is bound to bring throbs of recollection to every reader of that volume.  The imprisonment of the youngsters in a mine, following a big explosion, formed another interesting scene in the narrative brought forth in that fourth volume of the series.  It was here that Chunky, as our readers know, displayed the splendid stuff that lurked under his odd exterior and behind his sometimes queer manners.  How, in escaping from the mine, the Pony Rider Boys penetrated a mystery that had disquieted the dwellers near the Ozarks for a long time, was one of the most interesting features of the tale.