320 IN THE OLD WEST 



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. 



Amongst the Mormons was an old man named 

 Brand, from Memphis County, State of Tennessee, 

 with a family of a daughter and two sons, the lat- 

 ter with their wives and children. Brand was a 

 wiry old fellow, nearly seventy years of age, but 

 still stout and strong, and wielded ax or rifle 

 better than many a younger man. If truth be 

 told, he was not a very red-hot Mormon, and had 

 joined them as much for the sake of company to 

 California, whither he had long resolved to emi- 

 grate, as from any implicit credence in the faith. 

 His sons were strapping fellows, of the sterling 

 stuff that the Western pioneers are made of; his 

 daughter Mary, a fine woman of thirty, for whose 

 state of single blessedness there must doubtless 

 have been sufficient reason ; for she was not only 

 remarkably handsome, but was well known in 

 Memphis to be the best-tempered and most in- 

 dustrious young woman in those diggings. She 

 was known to have received several advantageous 

 offers, all of which she had refused; and report 

 said that it was from having been disappointed in 

 very early life in an affaire du coeur, at an age 

 when such wounds sometimes strike strong and 

 deep, leaving a scar difficult to heal. Neither his 



