Categories
- Antiques & Collectibles 13
- Architecture 36
- Art 47
- Bibles 22
- Biography & Autobiography 813
- Body, Mind & Spirit 137
- Business & Economics 27
- Computers 4
- Cooking 94
- Crafts & Hobbies 3
- Drama 346
- Education 45
- Family & Relationships 57
- Fiction 11812
- Games 19
- Gardening 17
- Health & Fitness 34
- History 1377
- House & Home 1
- Humor 147
- Juvenile Fiction 1873
- Juvenile Nonfiction 202
- Language Arts & Disciplines 88
- Law 16
- Literary Collections 686
- Literary Criticism 179
- Mathematics 13
- Medical 41
- Music 39
- Nature 179
- Non-Classifiable 1768
- Performing Arts 7
- Periodicals 1453
- Philosophy 63
- Photography 2
- Poetry 896
- Political Science 203
- Psychology 42
- Reference 154
- Religion 498
- Science 126
- Self-Help 79
- Social Science 80
- Sports & Recreation 34
- Study Aids 3
- Technology & Engineering 59
- Transportation 23
- Travel 463
- True Crime 29
Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers
Categories:
Description:
Excerpt
CHAPTER I
EXCITEMENT IN THE FOOTHILLS
The foothills of the Kentucky Mountains echoed to the strains of a rollicking college song, as Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders rode into a laurel-bordered clearing and dismounted to make their first camp of this, their third summer's outing in the 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 markāthat 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.
The eyes of the Overlanders were not quick enough to see the movement that followed. What they did see, however, was Washington Washington lifted from the ground and pitched head first into a clump of laurel, where the light foot of an outraged mule had landed him.
"He's killed!" cried Anne, voicing the thought that was in the mind of each of her companions, and a concerted rush was made for the clump of laurel....