tlemen, I was once as lively
and happy a little boy as ever did chores on a farm. See me now!
This is the result of mixin' women and politics. If I should tell
you all the kinds of particular and general devilment (to run 'em
alphabetically, as I did to keep track of 'em) that Ann Eliza
Scraggs, and Bridget Scraggs, and Belle Scraggs, and Fanny Scraggs,
and Honoria and Helen Scraggs, and Isabelle Scraggs, and so on up
to zed, raised with me, it would go through any little germs of joy
you may have in your constitutions like Sittin' Bull's gang of
dog-soldiers through an old ladies' sewing bee. Look at me! For
all them years that cussed ambition of mine held me in its deadly
toils. I never heard the sound of blessed silence. Trouble! I'm
bald as a cake of ice; my nerves is ruined. If the wind makes a
noise in the grass like the swish of skirts, I'm a mile up the
track before I get my wits back, sweatin' coldly and profusely,
like a water-cooler.

"'I ain't got anything to tie to but all them women by the name of
Scraggs, and them ties I cut by travelin' fast between daylights.
Wisht I could introduce you to Mrs. Scraggs as she inhabits the
territory of Utah--you'd understand a power of things that may seem
a little misty to you at present. However, I can't do that, nor I
wouldn't neither, if I was to be made general superintendent of the
whole show for my pains. I'll leave the aggregated Mrs. Scraggs in
the hands of Providence, as bein' the only power capable of
handling her. Yet I don't believe in Providence. I don't believe
in no Hereafter, nor Heretofore, nor no Now; I don't believe in no
East nor West, nor Up nor Down, nor Sideways, Lengthways,
'Cross-the-center, Top, Bottom, or Middle. I have lost my faith in
every ram-butted thing a man can hear, see, or touch, includin'
everything I've left out. That's me, Joe Bush.' He stopped a
minute. 'Trouble--' says he. 'Trouble--I wisht nobody'd mention
that word in my hearin' again.'

"Well, he had us gummed fast, all right. Nobody in our outfit
could push up against such a world-without-end experience as that.

"But Scraggs was a gentleman; he didn't crowd us because we broke.
In fact, now that he'd had his say, he loosened up considerable,
and every now and then he'd even smile.

"Then come to us the queerest thing in that whole curiosity-shop of
a ranch. Its name was Alexander Fulton. I reckon Aleck was about
twenty-one by the almanac, and anywhe