ith another man. So, if we
crowded Smithy too hard in debate, he used to slip behind that girl
and say, 'Oh, well! You fellers will know better when you've had
more experience," although we might have been talkin' about what's
best for frost-bite at the time.

"He noticed this new man Scraggs seemed to hold over him a trifle
in sadness, and he thought he'd find out why.

"'You appear to me like a man that's seen trouble,' says he.

"'Trouble!' says Scraggs. 'Trouble!' Then he spit out of the door
and turned his back deliberate, like there wasn't any use
conversin' on the subject, unless in the presence of an equal.

"Scraggs was a hard man to break into, but Smithy scratched his
head and took a brace.

"'I've met with misfortune myself,' says he.

"'Ah?' says Scraggs. 'What's happened to you?' He sounded as if
he didn't believe it amounted to much, and Smithy warmed up. He
ladled out his woes like a catalogue. How he'd been blew up in
mines; squizzled down a mountain on a snow-slide; chawed by a bear;
caught under a felled tree; sunk on a Missouri River steamboat, and
her afire, so you couldn't tell whether to holler for the
life-savers or the fire-engine; shot up by Injuns and personal
friends; mistook for a horse-thief by the committee, and much else,
closing the list with his right bower. 'And, Mr. Scraggs, I have
put my faith in woman, and she done me to the tune of all I had.'

"'_Have_ you?' says Scraggs, still perfectly polite and
uninterested. "'_Have_ you?' says he, removin' his pipe and
spitting carefully outdoors again. And then he slid the joker
a'top of Smithy's play. 'Well, _I_ have been a Mormon,' says he.

"'What?' says all of us.

"'Yessir!' says Mr. Scraggs, getting his feet under him, and with a
mournful pride I can't give you the least idea of. 'A Mormon; none
of your tinkerin' little Mormonettes. I was ambitious; hence E. G.
W. Scraggs as you now behold him. In most countries a man's
standin' is regulated by the number of wives he ain't got; in Utah
it's just the reverse--and a fair test, too, when you come to think
of it. I wanted to be the head of the hull Mormon kingdom, so I
married right and left. Every time I added to the available supply
of Mrs. Scraggs, I went up a step in the government. I ain't all
the persimmons for personal beauty, so I had to take what was
willin' to take me, and they turned out to be mostly black-eyed
women with peculiar dispositions. Gen