And the last named being the secretary himself, he merely put a cross down, to indicate the fact of his being in the line of duty on that occasion.
“You neglected two other important members of the party!” called out Giraffe, who, of course had gained his peculiar name on account of the habit he had of often stretching that unusually long neck of his, until the boys likened him to an ostrich, and then a giraffe.
“Who are they?” demanded Bob White, scenting some sort of joke.
“Mike, and Molly, the honest, hard-working mules here that we have for pack animals,” replied the tall scout, with a chuckle.
“Oh! I reckon, suh, they don’t count on the roll call,” remarked Bob White, who was a Southern boy, as his soft manner of speech, as well as certain phrases he often used, betrayed.
“Well,” protested Giraffe, sturdily, “if you think now, that our pack mules ain’t going to make an impression on our camping through the big timber, and the foothills of the Rockies, you’ve got another guess coming, let me tell you.”
“Mike strikes me as particularly worthy of mention in the log book of the trip. He made a distinct impression on me, right in the start; and left a black and blue record of it that hurts yet,” with which remark, fat Bumpus—whose real name chanced to be Jasper Cornelius, began to ruefully rub a certain portion of his generous anatomy.
A general shout went up at this.
“Well, what could you expect, Bumpus?” demanded Davy Jones. “When Mike, out of the corner of his wicked eye, saw you stooping over that way, and offering such a wide target, the temptation was more than any respectable, well-educated mule could resist.”
“Yes,” put in Step Hen, who had divided his name in that queer fashion as a lad first attending school, and it had clung to him ever since; “you didn’t know the strong points of pack mules, Bumpus, or you would never have gone so close to his heels.”