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 anywhere's from three to ninety by the way you figure a man. Aleck stood six foot high _as_ he stood, but if you ran the tape along his curves he was about six-foot-four. "He weighed one hundred and twenty pounds, of which twenty-five went to head and fifty to feet. Feet! You never saw such feet. They were the grandest feet that ever wore a man; long and high and wide, and all that feet should be. Chawley said that Alexander had ground plan enough for a company of nigger soldiers. And hung to Aleck's running gear, they reminded you of the swinging jigger in a clock. They almost make me forget his hands. When Aleck laid a flipper on a cayuse's back, you'd think the critter was blanketed. And then there was his Adam's apple--he had so many special features, it's hard to keep track of them. About a foot of Aleck's protrudin' into air was due to neck. In the center of that neck was an Adam's apple that any man might be proud of.