ix-footers. His arms swung listlessly to his knees from
the shoulder socket, as if lacking in elbow joints, terminating in hands
fashioned more after the talons of an eagle than those of a human being.
His nose was also like the beak of that fierce bird, while his chin
retreated from his underlip in a direct line to the "Adam's apple." High
cheek bones and protruding forehead caused the deep sunken orbital
spaces to appear sightless, except for the nervous batting of his
eyelids. His shoulders were broad, but being thin chested, he was short
on lung capacity, which caused a most extraordinary mixture of guttural
whispers and shrill wheezes every time he tried to talk. His strength
was prodigious, and on more than one occasion he had won his drink by
taking hold of the chines of a full barrel of liquor, raising it from
the ground to his lips and drinking his fill from the bunghole. The most
startling of all, though, was his wardrobe, and it was an open secret
that Joe had his surname thrust upon him by reason of the various rigs
in which he was clad. As the winter season approached and Joe got cold,
he would appropriate any and all old garments he could find lying around
loose; old pants, overalls, shirts, vests and socks which others had
cast away as useless. These he would patch and sew together where
necessity demanded, lengthening or widening, and pull one garment on
over another. In this semi-annual outfitting he would appear one day
with overalls reaching just below the knees, the pair under them
revealing their "frazzled" ornamentations for a foot or more. The next
day, as like as not, he would find an old pair of red drawers, and these
would go on right over the last pair of overalls. When the spring came
and warm weather got the best of his clothes, Joe proceeded to divest
himself of a lot of useless and uncomfortable rags, for by that time
they could not be called garments.

Joe at the present time was conducting a vest-pocket ranch on the sunny
slopes of the cedar-treed hills rising from the Grand River tributaries
and in what were termed "warm holes," being little areas of sage-brush
covered mesas found upon the banks of the streams. These miniature parks
were quite fertile in bunch and even buffalo grass, and varied from five
acres to a whole section in extent. His herd of cattle consisted of two
heifers, six old cows and ten three-year-old steers. This constituted
the nucleus of an expectant million-dollar s