Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.); Hunting -- United States; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
A mountaineer, Rube Herring, whom we have more than once met in the
course of this narrative, became a convert to the Mormon creed, and held
forth its wonderful doctrines to such of the incredulous trappers as
he could induce to listen to him. Old Rube stood nearly six feet six
in height, and was spare and bony in make. He had picked up a most
extraordinary cloth coat amongst the Mormons, which had belonged to some
one his equal in stature. This coat, which was of a snuff-brown color,
had its waist about a hand's span from the nape of Rube's neck, or about
a yard above its proper position, and the skirts reached to his ankles.
A slouching felt-hat covered his head, from which long black hair
escaped, hanging in flakes over his lantern jaws. His pantaloons of
buckskin were shrunk with wet, and reached midway between his knees and
ankles, and his huge feet were incased in moccasins of buffalo-cow skin.
Rube was never without the book of Mormon in his hand, and his sonorous
voice might be heard, at all hours of the day and night, reading
passages from its wonderful pages. He stood the badgering of the hunters
with most perfect good-humor, and said there never was such a book as
that ever before printed; that the Mormons were the "biggest kind" of
prophets, and theirs the best faith ever man believed in.
Rube had let out one day that he was to be hired as guide by this party
of Mormons to the Great Salt Lake; but their destination being changed,
and his services not required, a wonderful change came over his mind. He
was, as usual, book of Mormon in hand, when brother Brown announced the
change in their plans; at which the book was cast into the Arkansa, and
Rube exclaimed--"Cuss your darned Mummum and Thummum! thar's not one
among you knows fat cow from poor bull, and you may go to h---- for me."
And turning away, old Rube spat out a quid of tobacco and his Mormonism
together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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