he saddle.

Only one of the party remained on his mount. This one was Washington
Washington, the colored boy that they had taken on at Henderson to be
their man of all work, guide and assistant cook, for Washington had
declared that, "Ah knows more 'bout de mountings dan any oder niggah in
Kaintuck." On his own recommendation, Grace and her party had accepted
him.

Washington, however, already had shown a love of leisure that was not
wholly in keeping with his further recommendation for activity, and,
instead of assisting the girls of the Overland unit to unload their
ponies, the boy sat perched on the pack mule that he had been riding,
playing a harmonica, swaying in his saddle in rhythm with the music, and
rolling the whites of his eyes in ecstasy.

"Just look at him, girls," urged Grace Harlowe Gray laughingly. "If that
isn't a picture!"

"I call it a nightmare," objected Emma Dean. "Oh, if I only had a nice
ripe tomato, and could throw straight enough."

"Impossible!" declared Elfreda Briggs, whereupon Anne Nesbit and Nora
Wingate broke forth into merry peals of laughter.

"Laundry!" roared Hippy Wingate. "We didn't hire you for a moving
picture. Shake your lazy bones and get busy. If you don't hustle you'll
get something harder than a tomato."

"Laundry?" wondered Tom Gray. "Why Laundry, Hippy?"

"That's his name, isn't it? Doesn't he call himself Washington
Washington on Sundays and holidays, and Wash-Wash, for short, on
weekdays? I have his word for it. Wash is laundry and laundry is wash in
the neck of the woods where I was reared," explained Hippy, at the same
time narrowly observing the colored boy, who, following Lieutenant
Wingate's threat, had permitted himself to slide to the ground, and
there he sat, still mouthing his harmonica, lost to everything but the
music he was creating.

"Your logic is unassailable," nodded Miss Briggs. "I was wondering why,
while we are about it, we don't hire a brass band. We at least would not
be obliged to listen to the same tune all the time. Does any one know of
a way to put a mute on a harmonica?"

"Ah reckon Ah do," mimicked Emma Dean, taking careful aim and shying a
pebble at Wash.

The pebble went rather wide of the mark--that is, the mark for which it
was intended, but it reached another and a fully as satisfactory one.
The pebble hit Washington's pack mule on the tender part of its hind
leg, galvanizing that member into instant and vigorous action.

Th