Sources close to old-timey prospector Cletus Jenkes report that he talks like that because he’s a prospector. “Before he became crazed with goldlust, I never heard him call mountains ‘them thar hills’ or snakes ‘vermin,’ but I guess it comes with the territory,” states Jenkes’s longtime friend Wilbur Booth as he watched Jenkes heave a burlap sack of rocks onto a mule’s back. “His laugh is also different. It used to be normal, but now it’s more of a grating ‘hyuck hyuck hyuck.’ Also, he’s started to throw around a bunch of new words, like ‘vamoose’ and ‘consarn it,’ and he’s been calling me ‘little feller.’ I’m not sure where he learned this stuff, or if it just came naturally to him once he started panning for gold.” At press time, Jenkes was wearing a huge, floppy brown hat and a soiled linen shirt.

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